GINGER SNAPS 2 – A Movie With Hardly Any Ginger In It

Prepare for a Ginger movie with hardly any Ginger Fitzgerald in it. Yes, the title was a bit misleading for me, even if I knew what had happened to Ginger in the first Ginger Snaps movie.

I was not expecting much from Ginger Snaps 2, probably because most sequels to successful horror movies are bad, or at least do not perform as well as their predecessors. (see The Ring 2, The Grudge 2, Paranormal Activity 2)

Ginger Snaps 2 brings us back to Brigitte Fitzgerald. After the events of the first film, wherein she was bitten by her werewolf sister Ginger, is struggling to contain her lycanthrophy. She frequently injects herself with monkshood, though Ginger tells her through an apparition that monkshood is only a treatment to hold her lycanthrophy at bay, but not cure it for good. In the meantime, she is apparently being pursued by another werewolf.

Brigitte ends up in a hospital after passing out from a monkshood overdose. She unsuccessfuly tries to several times to escape, but is foiled by Tyler. Tyler, a nurse at the rehab ward, also confiscates and denies her monkshood. Without monkshood, her transformation into a werewolf accelerates. Brigitte becomes hornier and more violent by each passing day.

She meets Ghost, the granddaughter of Barbara, a burn victim at the hospital. Ghost finds out about Brigitte’s lycantrophy and tries to help her obtain more monkshood. Eventually, Brigitte and Ghost escape together through the hospitals air vents.

They stay at Barbara’s house. They later go to a gas station to procure monkshood from Tyler. Ghost tricks Brigitte into thinking that Tyler hurt her, and Brigitte locks Tyler outside to be killed by the other werewolf.

Eventually, Brigitte finds out that Ghost herself burnt Barbara alive, and that she was not abused by Tyler. The other werewolf also arrives, just as Brigitte’s transformation into a werewolf is completed. Brigitte and the other werewolf fight, and the latter is killed when it is impaled on a trapped mattress. Ghost locks a wounded Brigitte in the basement, intent on keeping Brigitte as a pet.

Ginger Snaps 2 is darker compared to its predecessor, but perhaps too dark. There are way too many jump scares and false jump scares. They’re not even the enjoyable sort of jump scares like those in Evil Dead. While the first Ginger Snaps still had humour, the sequel has little to none of that, as far as I can remember.

For that reason alone, I didn’t enjoy Ginger Snaps 2 as much as I did the first Ginger Snaps. That’s not to say Ginger Snaps 2 is bad. As far as the reviews in IMDb say, Ginger Snaps 2 is supposedly a huge improvement over the original. It’s grittier, more violent and more serious, at the cost of having minimal humour compared to the first Ginger Snaps. I remember chuckling a bit during the first Ginger Snaps. I don’t remember even smiling anytime during Ginger Snaps 2.

Well, the only funny person or thing in Ginger Snaps 2 is Ghost. Almost nothing else.

The most intriguing new character other than Brigitte herself is Ghost. I’d like to know why she was named that way too, though I got the feeling its a name she gave herself given her obsession with the supernatural. She appears innocent, but she’s also creepy in a quiet and subtle manner. She seems harmless, but ever since she appeared, I wasn’t quite comfortable with her. My gut feeling was, in fact, correct. As we find out towards the end of the film, she’s manipulative and cunning as well as brutal and violent.

The scenery is quite fitting for a movie about trying to contain a disease, but can get tiring at times since most of it is set in the hospital. The new cast is wonderful, easily making up for the titular character, Ginger, barely making an appearance.

Other than its lack of humour, Ginger Snaps 2 is a decent film, but it barely overshadows the original. Like I said, I wasn’t expecting that much from Ginger Snaps 2, and when I did finally get to see it, it exceeded my expectations by only a small bit.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN – Twilight Done Right

Let The Right One In brings together two very contrasting genres – horror and romance – but does it quite nicely, unlike Twilight, which incidentally came out the same year. The result is a fine blend of the two said genres. It’s heartwarming yet horrifying. Gory yet sweet. Delightful yet terrifying.

Let The Right One In tells the story of Oskar, a young 12-year old boy who is constantly bullied in schools. One night, he meets Eli, another 12-year old who had just moved in the apartment next to Oskar’s. Eli seems quite distant at first, but the two later become friends. He gives her his rubix cube, which she later solves, and also teaches her morse code. She, in turn, encourages him to fight back against his bullies in school.

As it turns out, Eli is actually a vampire. She had, in fact, been 12-years old for more than two centuries, and is also biologically male. Like a typical vampire. she lives off blood, which she usually acquires with the help of her guardian Hakan. None of this stops Oskar from falling in love with Eli, after they spend time together. They even go out on a date.

A neighbour, Lacke, whose friend and girlfriend were killed by Eli, eventually tries to kill her while she is asleep. Oskar distracts Lacke long enough for Eli to wake up and kill him. Eli leaves after realising that she is no longer safe to stay.

The bullies also gang up on Oskar again. They ambush him when while he’s swimming, and they threaten to gouge his eye out with a knife unless he holds his breath underwater for three minutes. As they hold him underwater, Eli crashes into the swimming area and brutally murders all the bullies, save for one.

The two eventually depart in a train, with Eli hiding in a box.

The best thing about Let The Right One In is the chemistry between the two main characters. First and foremost, these two are outcasts. Oskar, being weak, is a target of bullies in his school, while Eli, for obvious reasons, has little to no interaction outside her home other than Hakan. It’s from this shared feeling of isolation that Oskar and Eli form a bond. A bond wherein these two lonely characters are each other’s only companions, and are also each other’s only source of strength and happiness. This is despite Oskar knowing well that Eli is a bloodthirsty vampire, and that they should be both physically and emotionally incompatible. These two characters were written well, whilst remaining realistic as to how 12-year olds would interact at their age. The child actors who play these two also share a chemistry.

Being a horror romance film, Let The Right One In is still romantic while still having its fair share of terrifying and gory moments. One thing Oskar and Eli have in common are their desire to kill – Oskar wants to do it out of anger, and Eli needs to do it for her own nourishment. That’s both sweet and disturbing. Eli also brutally kills or attacks people several times throughout the film. The first two people she attacks and kills just happened to be walking by, while the rest were in defense of either herself or Oskar.

The ending may be happy and generally on a positive note, but deeper thought suggests a gloomier future for the two. Is Oskar destined to end up like Hakan, who was only being used by Eli to serve her needs and nothing else? Did Hakan fall in love with Eli the same way Oskar does in the movie? Is this a never-ending cycle that Eli perpetrates and manipulates? I personally want to think that Eli’s love for Oskar is eternal and he wouldn’t wind up like Hakan. But then again, I could be wrong.

Let The Right One In won 75 movie awards and 34 nominations, and rightfully so. Out of all the films we’ve watched so far in horror film class, this would probably be my favourite. I’m not even a fan of romance, but I find this movie better as a romantic movie than a lot of actual romantic movies.

Pontypool – A Thinking Man’s Horror Film

For me, Pontypool is the most ingenious of all horror movie we’ve watched so far for horror film class. I never thought the words ‘zombies’ and ‘linguistics’ could go together in a sentence until I saw this movie.

Pontypool tells the story of a radio jockey Grant Mazzy, station manager Sydney Briar and radio technical assistant Laurel Ann Drummond.

As the three prepare for another day’s work, reports come in from (fake) helicopter reporter Ken of a riot taking place at the office of a Dr. Mendez. He details how some rioters have been killed. Mazzy, Sydney and Laurel Ann try to confirm his report by contacting other witnesses, but barely maintain contact with any for long.

Sometime in the midst of all this, a radio message in barely audible French is heard. The message instructs everyone to remain indoors and avoid speaking in the English. Pontypool is to be put under quarantine. Slowly, the group piece together that a virus is somehow turning the citizens of Pontypool violent.

Eventually, some infected people try to attack the radio station. Dr. Mendez himself manages to sneak inside the station, while Laurel Ann is infected, being fixated on the word ‘Missing’. Mazzy, Sidney and Dr. Mendez are forced to barricade themselves in a soundproof room, as a violent Laurel Ann attempts to barge in and dies in the process.

The group eventually piece together that the new virus is passed on through the English language. When a person understands a certain word, he or she can become infected. Mazzy later realises that there is in fact a cure to this virus – the meanings of the infected words must be changed, as the virus is only passed on whenever the meaning of a word is understood.

They try to cure the inhabitants of the virus by confusing the meanings of several random words, but they may be too late. It’s implied that the (Canadian) military atomizes Pontypool in an attempt to contain the virus.

Pontypool seems to have a bit of medical science fiction it. The zombies may be what’s causing the protagonists to run and hide for their lives, but they’re not the story’s antagonists – they’re rather just victims of the real antagonist, which is is neither a physical or supernatural being. The antagonist of the story does not consciously and selectively target its victims. The antagonist is the virus itself. This virus does not work like other viruses like the plague or AH1N1 – the virus is much more evolved and sophisticated in in how it spreads. It spreads by word of mouth, and anyone who talks a lot are most likely to be infected. This makes the virus perhaps the most unique antagonist in all the movies we have watched in horror film class so far. It’s not as creepy, frightening or intimidating as Madeline from The Innkeepers, Ginger-wolf from Gingersnaps or Evil Dead’s Abomination, but it’s perhaps the most dangerous. So dangerous that the (Canadian) military, in a desperate attempt to destroy the virus before it spreads, may have been forced to nuke Pontypool. It also has claimed the most victims, infecting all if not most of the entire town.

Interestingly, all of the action in Pontypool takes place in the radio station, save for its opening scene and post credits scene. There’s one moment where Mazzy tries to leave the radio station, but even then, the camera is careful not to show the outside of the station’s exit. The film may be titled Pontypool, but ironically, we barely see any of Pontypool.

And about the post credits scene – what even? Was the post credits scene some blooper scene that the director or editor decided to add in the end? Were Mazzy and Sidney in Purgatory or some sort of afterlife? Was it a flashback to before the events of the movie? That scene’s driving me nuts. It was probably added by the director as one last slap to the face to us moviegoers.

As for a zombie movie, moviegoers hoping for a movie with the style of The Living Dead or 28 Days Later may be disappointed. For me, the film is somewhat more similar to Contagion, which was released three years after Pontypool was released.

Pontypool is a one of a kind horror movie – a thinking man’s horror film. And everything about it is superb, including its acting, cinematography, music and most especially, the plot. It falls easily into my top ten favourite horror films so far.Ponty

MAY

For some reason, I can’t decide whether I like May or not. On one hand, it has a fittingly creepy atmosphere. The cast is exceptionally wonderful. On the other hand, the plot is can be a little too slow-paced that I found it a little boring at times. Some imagery in the film can also be downright unpleasant, especially in the final third act of the film.

May tells the story of May, a social outcast with lazy eye. Her only friend is an Suzie, an old ugly doll given to her by her mother on her birthday. She works in a veterinary clinic. Her lesbian colleague in the clinic, Polly, flirts with May. One day, May remarks that Polly has a beautiful neck.

May also befriends Adam, a local mechanic. She has a fixation on his hands, which she considers to be the most attractive part of him, and the two start dating.

One night, Adam shows May a film he made for his university, which is about two lovers who go on a picnic and end up cannibalising each other. May is aroused by this, and she makes out with Adam, but bites him in the lip while doing so.

As she begins volunteering at a school, May begins another affair with Polly. However, May overhears Adam say how he’s glad he could finally get rid of May. Heartbroken, she later finds out that Polly has been cheating on her with a girl named Ambrosia.

Sometime later, while waiting for a bus, she meets a boy whom she invites to her house. May is particularly attracted to his arms. Later, she stabs and kills him.

On Halloween night, dressed in a costume that weirdly resembles her doll Suzie, she goes out to meet Polly and murders her by slitting her throat. She also kills Ambrosia. She later goes to Adam’s house and kills him and his new girlfriend.

She goes back home, with body parts of the people she had just murdered, including Adam’s hands, Polly’s neck, Ambrosia’s legs, among others. She stitches these parts into life-sized doll named Amy. She later realises the doll lacks eyes and in a bout of misery, stabs and gouges out her lazy eye. Putting it on Amy, she begs the doll to look at her before collapsing beside it. The film ends with the doll seemingly come to life and stroke her face as she lays beside it.

As I’ve said, the film is a little slow-paced, but nonetheless maintains a creepy and unsettling atmosphere for most of the movie. This is a little reminiscent of The Innkeepers, another slow-paced but still creepy movie. Much of the creepiness comes from the presence of the Suzie. Many of us were under the notion there was a supernatural force or entity within or behind Suzie, much like Annabelle from the Conjuring and Chuckie from Child’s Play. There are scenes wherein the glass box containing Suzie slowly breaks. Many of us were actually expecting that Suzie would come to life towards the final act of the film. Surprisingly, that doesn’t happen. However, there is a similar supernatural phenomenon at the end of the film when Amy strokes May’s face.

Now that I’ve mentioned it, I like how whether Amy really comes to life or not is open to debate. Was Amy really alive through some supernatural power or were her movements just part of May’s imagination as a result of her deteriorating psychological condition? Most audience would probably think it’s the former, but we shouldn’t forget that Amy probably would have been so insane and so deep in her fantasy world that she can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s not.

It’s a tragedy, really. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the innocent and pitiful May. Almost everything she does in the movie is a result of her trying to find friends, and when she can’t find them, she decides to make a friend instead. But I’m also a tad frightened about how far May would go to make a friend. Remember, she kills at least five people to make a doll with their most attractive body parts.

EVIL Dead – One Hell of a Movie

Here’s a fun drinking game while watching the Evil Dead. Take a shot every time there’s a jump scare. Take another everytime a character gets possessed. And take another every time someone’s arm is dismembered.

 

I’ve been reading reviews of the Evil Dead in IMDB. Most of them are negative. Apparently, the Evil Dead has way too many plot holes, mediocre to outright poor acting and lacks much of character and story depth.

 

But none of those stopped me from having a hell of a time watching the Evil Dead. Evil Dead is so cliched and so over the top, it’s incredibly fun to watch.

 

Evil Dead is a remake of the 1981 cult classic that starred Bruce Campbell. The Bruce Campbell-less remake tells the story of a group of friends, Mia, played by Jane Levy, David, played by Shiloh Fernandez from Deadgirl, and Eric, Natalie and Olivia. They bring Mia to a cabin in the woods to help her recover from a drug addiction. The friends find rotting cat corpses and a chained up book in the basement. A curious Eric opens the book and begins reading.

 

Mia unexpectedly runs away from the cabin after sensing something off, or evil, within the house. Driving away from the house, she encounters a demonic twin of herself. David and Olivia eventually find Mia and take her back to the cabin. Mia kills their dog, Grandpa, and starts displaying strange behavior, such as showering with boiling water. The friends consider bringing Mia to the hospital, but floods brought about by rain block the road to and from the cabin.

 

Mia shoots David, threatens the group that they will die and possesses Olivia by vomiting on her face. Eric is forced to kill Olivia by smashing her head with a toilet. A now fully possessed Mia, after being locked in the cellar, possesses Natalie by biting her hand. Natalie attempts to stop herself from possession by sawing off her arm, but she gets possessed anyways. Meanwhile, Eric discovers that the demon possessing Mia must take five souls in order to summon another more dangerous demon called the Abomination. A possesed Natalie attacks Eric and David with a nailgun, but has her other arm shot off by David and dies from her wounds.

 

David tries to bury Mia alive, as it is one of the methods of exorcism indicated in the book Eric opened. Eric is mortally wounded by Mia when he saves David. David tranquilizes Mia and partially buries her in a shallow grave, before digging her up and reviving her. Mia apparently has been exorcised. David is attacked by a reanimated, possessed Eric when he returns to the house. He locks Mia out of the house, before igniting a gasoline can and blowing up the cabin, killing him and the possessed Eric.

 

With the prophecy fulfilled, blood rains from the sky, and the Abomination rises from the ground. Mia and the Abomination fight, and Mia loses her arm in the struggle. Nonetheless, Mia manages to kill the Abomination by ramming a chainsaw into its face. The rain of blood stops and Mia walks away presumably to find help.

 

Oh, and the movie isn’t actually Bruce Campbell-less. Audience who watch until the end of the credits are in for a treat – Ash from the original Evil Dead, appears and utters his famous line, ‘Groovy’.

 

Like the original, Evil Dead is over the top, ultraviolent and prides itself in all its blood and gore. Moviegoers looking for any sort of complex storyline and character development would be disappointed. On the other hand, moviegoers who are happy with quick-paced action, simple storylines and a lot of blood and gore would most definitely enjoy Evil Dead.

 

Out of all the movies we have watched so far in film class, Evil Dead is the one I’ve enjoyed the most. Its simple story and quick pacing is a nice rest from previous movies like Grace and Deadgirl. It’s the one movie that really was not meant to be realistic or grounded at all.

 

I know this because although I have not seen the original Evil Dead, I have seen Army of Darkness and that was also a fast paced, over the top movie. The Evil Dead series are almost just as action movies as they are horror movies, in the likes of the Resident Evil.

 

There were plans to make a remake of Army of Darkness as well. This movie most likely would’ve had both Mia and Ash. Sadly, those plans were scrapped. Shame.

Evil Dead in one word: Awesome.

Grace

If I were to summarize this film in one word, it would be ‘uncomfortable’.

 

Grace tells the story of Madeline, a mother frustrated with not being able to conceive. She and her husband Michael eventually do conceive. One night, on the way home from the hospital after receiving treatment, Madeline and Michael get into a car accident. Michael is killed, and apparently, so is the baby.

 

Madeline refuses to have the dead fetus removed, and sometime later the baby, named Grace, is born alive. How this is possible puzzles everyone except Madeline, who is just glad that she finally has a child after year of frustration and misfortune.

 

Almost immediately, strange things occur. Grace starts attracting flies, lets out a putrid smell and bleeds when Madeline attempts to bathe her. Madeline also discovers that instead of feeding on her breastmilk whenever she breastfeeds, Grace feeds on her blood.

 

I just shivered upon remembering that scene as I wrote that last paragraph. That’s how uncomfortable I find this movie.

 

Anyways, Madeline tries to feed Grace cow blood, but she vomits that out. Eventually, Madeline’s doctor pays her a visit and gets bludgeoned to death when he tries to check up on an apparently sick Grace. Madeline drains his blood and feeds it to Grace.

 

I really don’t think I can emphasize how uncomfortable this movie is. I kept shivering while writing that plot summary just above. It’s disturbing. It’s so sickening. It’s so disgusting.

 

It doesn’t help that the movie is rather slow-paced. For the first act of the film, I thought its strange calm atmosphere is actually quite intriguing and fascinating, but by the time you get to the start of the third act, I was bored as hell, save for the more disturbing scenes like when Madeline has to let Grace suck blood off her breast. Other than those moments, the movie is outright boring. Every now and then, it would try to throw in some black humour to add some character, but that usually comes off as awkward and unwanted. There’s a vegan character and the film pokes fun at her obsession with healthy food, but usually that leads to nowhere and is not even that funny.

 

I’d also like to point out that judging from Grace’s thirst for blood, among other things, she is in fact a vampire. And if I’m right about that, then that makes Grace the most realistic vampire film I have ever seen. Grace does not display the more over-the-top traits of vampires. She does not sleep in a coffin. She is not repelled by garlic, silver or holy water, though being bathing in warm bath water somehow made her bleed. She does not get burned by sunlight. She does not sparkle. Yet she possesses the most basic vampire trait – her thirst for blood as her source of nourishment.

 

However, I can also argue that Grace is also in fact a zombie, judging from the fact that Grace then, then suddenly comes back to life. When she does come back to life, she thirst for human blood instead of breastmilk. She also attracts flies, which for me, is an indication that Grace is slowly decomposing. Much like real zombies, who are undead. Towards the end of the movie, Grace starts chewing off Madeline’s breast as well. Someone tell me that isn’t like zombie behavior.

 

So basically, Grace can be either a vampire or a zombie. Or maybe she’s a combination of both? A vambie? A zompire?

 

If the movie’s purpose was just to disturb us, and absolutely nothing else, then it certainly has succeeded. Because of that, I wouldn’t really want to watch this movie again.

RECkt

Apparently, REC is so well received that it has an American remake in the form of Quarantine, perhaps for English-speakers who are too lazy to read subtitles.

REC tells the story of TV reporter Angela Vidal and her cameraman Pablo following a fire crew for a documentary one night. The fire crew respond to a call from an apartment building after an elderly was reported to be unwell and perhaps in distress. They arrive to find the residents gathered, terrified, at the lobby of the building. Upon entering her apartment, the elderly woman attacks the crew, who shoot and kill her. From then on, the situation worsens when the fire crew and the residents find themselves trapped inside the building when it is sealed off by government forces outside. Other residents start to display the same symptoms the old lady had. More and more residents are infected, and Angela and Pablo eventually are forced to barricade themselves in the building’s topmost apartment, which is somewhat deserted. There they discover the origins of the virus that has infected the buildings residents – a young girl believed to have been possessed by a demon. The apartment was apparently a research facility for a scientist looking for a way to cure aforementioned demon girl. He was forced to flee the apartment when he fails to find a cure the demon girl. The demon girl emerges, apparently still living in the apartment. She kills Pablo and drags a screaming Angela off-camera, leaving the TV reporter’s fate unknown.

REC is of an increasingly popular genre of horror film, the found footage film. The whole film is shown from the perspective of Pablo’s camera, with Angela giving a running commentary. To describe this film as scary is an understatement. This film is downright absolutely terrifying, especially for a cheap horror film. The first ten minutes may seem dragging and uneventful, but for the hour there will be no letting down of tension.

The film plays upon our claustrophobia, taking place in an apartment building sealed off by quarantine officials. There are very limited places to run or hide, and most of the action in the film takes place on or near the apartment’s main stairway. The characters are almost completely helpless, even when a quarantine official in a hazmat suit steps in. Spoiler: Hazmat suit guy dies. We already know their fates are sealed when the apartment is closed off from the world. It’s only a matter of who dies first and how do they die.

A sort of downer for this film is that the acting is not good. The actors are not bad, but at times their acting can come off as unnatural.  I could tell, even if I don’t understand Spanish. Sometimes, the actors playing infected or undead residents where more natural than those playing living or uninfected characters. Also, some of the scenes are difficult to focus on with the shuddering and rapid movement of the camera, not to mention the lighting and poor video quality. However, the acting and the camera work don’t endanger the film’s solid performance.

DEADGIRL – Who Is The Real Monster?

Before I finally got to watch it, I used to brush off Deadgirl as another torture porn within the likes of Hostel, The Human Centipede and A Serbian Film. The premise itself sounded like that of a porno. Yet of all the horror movies we’ve watched so far in horror film class, Deadgirl seems to be film that explores the human psyche the most. While all the other films like Ginger Snaps and Triangle do touch upon the psychology of their characters, it’s the characters of Deadgirl that are a little more complex, and in need of more understanding.

Deadgirl tells the story of two high school students, Rickie, played by Shiloh Fernandez, and JT, played by Noah Segan. One day, the two skip school to explore and mess around in an abandoned mental hospital. There, they stumble upon the naked seemingly lifeless body of a girl chained to a table. However, the girl turns out to be alive, despite having room temperature. Rickie and JT realize the girl is, in fact, undead when the JT bludgeons and shoots the girl to no effect.

The girl is vicious and animal-like, growling and trying to bite anyone who tries to touch her. Nonetheless, JT wants to keep her as a sex slave. This horrifies Rickie, who wants to free the girl as soon as he can but doesn’t know how as she’s under constant watch by JT. JT also invites another friend of theirs and the two take advantage of the girl.

Eventually, Johnny, the boyfriend of Rickie’s crush, Joann, finds out about the undead girl and is convinced by JT to also take advantage of the girl. Johnny forces the girl to give him a blowjob, but gets his penis bitten off instead. Johnny dies later from an infection.

JT later figures out that the undead girl’s zombie condition is passed on by being bitten and that they have to find another girl to turn into an dead girl, as their current undead girl is getting more damaged from their abuse. They kidnap, of all people, Joann and are about to have her get bitten by the dead girl when Rickie arrives. He, JT and Wheeler have a standoff that results in the dead girl escaping, JT getting bitten and Wheeler getting killed. The dead girl confronts Rickie, but ultimately she ignores him and escapes from the hospital. Joann has been stabbed by an infected JT sometime during all of this and JT explains that Joann can only be saved if Rickie lets JT bite her.

The film ends with Rickie coming back to the hospital as Joann, having been bitten by JT, is the new dead girl, also tied down to the table like first dead girl had been.

I’d like to think that there are two monsters in Deadgirl. There’s the literal monster, the titular dead girl, and the figurative monster, JT, who takes advantage of the former by raping her.

The dead girl is intimidating enough, but ultimately she’s not the main antagonist of the film. She definitely frightened me during the first act of the film but come second act, I couldn’t help but start to feel a tad sorry for the dead girl. Monster or not, she is still a victim of forces beyond her control. All her aggressions, for the most part, are for self-defense.

Rickie and JT are fairly simple contrasts. Rickie is the more righteous and compassionate, but JT is outright sadistic and brutal. However, Rickie is not totally pure and moral. He himself has fantasies, particularly toward his crush Joann, but doesn’t act upon these fantasies. We have the slight idea that he is vulnerable to change for the worse. JT instantly took advantage of the dead girl once he saw his opportunity to do so, and for the rest of the film, grows increasingly mentally unstable. At one point, I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be more scared of JT or the dead girl.

Perhaps like everybody, I thought Rickie would eventually manage to free the dead girl, put JT in his place and win over the girl he wants. And that’s what pretty much happens, but not in the way I thought. He frees the dead girl, who attacks and mortally wounds JT. He also now has an infected Joann, the new dead girl, as his sex slave. This presents a shocking and frightening change in Rickie’s psyche. For most of the film, Rickie intended to free the dead girl, but in the end has a new dead girl in Joann. This serves to show that even the meek and righteous can be overcome by their own disgusting fantasies.

In a nutshell, what looks like another typical torture porn is also, in fact, a dark and brutal character study.

The Innkeepers

Out of all horror movies we’ve seen for horror film class as of now, The Innkeepers is surprisingly the only ghost story so far. The rest of the movies have crazed gunwomen, werewolves and zombies as their antagonists, but only The Innkeepers has ghosts as its main supernatural entities. This makes The Innkeepers perhaps the most classic and traditional of all films we’ve seen for horror film class so far.

Innkeepers has a relatively simple plot compared to the movies. The two titular innkeepers, Claire and Luke, played by Sara Paxton and Pat Healy respectively, are fascinated with ghosts and the inn’s haunted history. One of the ghosts supposedly is Madeline, a bride who hanged herself when her husband abandoned her. And so, the two ghost enthusiasts set out to find Madeline.

While they do find some ghostly activity, such as a piano playing by itself, they’re not sure whether this is the work of Madeline. Eventually, they find out one of the guests in the hotel, Lianne, is a psychic. Claire finally encounters Madeline, but only for a brief moment.

The two innkeepers continue investigating the hotel, where they make contact with spirits in the basement, where Madeline was buried by the inn’s former innkeepers. Luke flees the hotel in horror. Panicking, Claire asks help from Lianne, who makes contact with the spirits in the basement and warns Claire that they need to leave the hotel immediately. Claire searches for the only other guest in the hotel, an elderly man, but finds his body, wrists slashed, in a suicide. As it turns out, he may have been Madeline’s husband who abandoned her several years ago. She also sees Madeline’s ghost hanging in the same room. After being frightened by the ghost of the elderly man, she runs down to the basement where she gets locked inside with the ghost of Madeline and dies of an asthma attack.

In an ironic twist of faith, Claire is now one of the hotel’s resident ghosts herself.

The plot is easy to follow, but it’s rather drawn out. It’s paced a little too slow, with many moments and dialogue that serve little to the actual plot. While a lot of us may find this a little too much of a bore, I think this works to the film’s advantage by the time we actually start seeing the ghosts. The film is initially so uneventful and slow that we let down our guard when expecting to see ghosts, that when ghosts finally do appear, we’re more than usually frightened out of our pants and we are reminded in an unpleasant way that we are still watching a horror movie.

The film’s primary ghost character, Madeline, is crap-your-pants scary. She’s frightening as hell. She’s terrifying. She’s near the par with other famous female ghosts like Samara from The Ring and Kayako from The Grudge. I almost had an asthma attack myself during the final basement scene with Claire and Madeline. The film’s other ghost character, the elderly man, for some reason is not as scary, though.

The dark humour is nothing to behold. I find it a little forced and out of place. The only genuinely funny moment in the film was when Luke frightens Claire with a jump scare in his computer, but the other supposedly humorous moments fall flat on where it tries to entertain. I think these funny moments were to make up for the film’s slow pacing and let down our guard to maximise the scariness of the genuinely frightening scales. To an extent, it does work that way, but the jokes themselves are a little too cliche, out of place and awkward.

The Innkeepers is an okay film. It’s the most basic horror story we may ever see in horror film class.

Astudillo, 130307

GINGER SNAPS

I never thought the words ‘puberty’ and ‘werewolf’ would ever go together, but after Ginger Snaps, apparently they can.

Ginger Snaps tells the story of two sisters, Brigitte and Ginger FitzGerald are obsessed with death and anything death-related, going as posing as dead bodies in bizarre accidents for a school project. They’re outcasts in their school, not that they mind anyway. They have each other and that’s all that matters.

One night, a canine-like creature that has been mauling dogs around the neighbourhood for some time attacks the girls. The creature bites and wounds Ginger, but gets run over by the neighbourhood drug dealer, Sam.

Ginger starts to undergo physical and mental changes. She starts menstruating heavily. She grows a tail. She also grows a lot of hair. She also becomes more sexually aggressive, giving in to sex with a guy who has been hitting on her since the start of the film. Eventually, Ginger realizes that she has, in fact, turning into a werewolf herself. Not wanting to lose her sister, Brigitte turns to Sam for help. He suggests that they pierce Ginger’s navel. When that doesn’t work, Sam suggests that they use monkshood.

Ginger also accidentally kills the school bully when she accuses Ginger of killing her dog. Realizing that Ginger is a grave threat to all those around her, Brigitte locks her in their bathroom, but she escapes and goes to kill. After murdering the school guidance counselor and the janitor, she turns into a full-blown werewolf. She kills Sam and attacks Brigitte, who is forced to stab her sister with a knife.

It’s no secret that Ginger transforming into a werewolf is a metaphor for transforming into a woman, or rather, puberty. The woman-werewolf parallel is very pronounced throughout the film. Ginger’s transformation into a werewolf is marked by mood swings, bleeding and hair growing in unwanted places. Doesn’t that sound familiar? The tail sprouting may be not as common though. As the movie proclaims in a not so subtle manner, lycanthropy and womanhood are both daunting and gruesome things for a young girl to undergo, and has both good and bad physical and psychological effects.

With the context of puberty in mind, besides being a horror film, Ginger Snaps is also a sort of a coming-of-age film. Whether they like it or not, both sisters mature physically and psychologically in the film in response to the circumstances they are thrown into.

I’d also like to add that the film is in fact more of a monster movie than it is a horror movie. I personally didn’t find Ginger as a werewolf, or the process of her transforming into one, terrifying. What defines a horror movie is its playing on our fear of the unknown, but we all know about werewolves and therefore, we sort of already knew the changes Ginger was to undergo. The main difference between the film’s werewolves and other werewolves in pop culture like Twilight is that the transformation from human to werewolf is prolonged drawn out. Ginger does not immediately transform into a full-on werewolf when she gets bitten, nor does the full moon have any effect on the transformation process.

All in all, the film does a good job in balancing horror, humor and tragedy. Is Ginger Snaps a good horror film? Its good but not great, as it’s not traditionally scary as most horror films are. As Imentioned before, Ginger Snaps is more of a monster film than it is a horror film. How is the humor in the film? Ginger Snaps is definitely not a comedy, but the instances of humor in the film are well played and nicely put. How is the film a tragedy? For a film that has a decent sense of humor, it does not end happily, much to our surprise. We all expected Ginger to be cured and the sisters settle their differences and be the happy pair they once were. But no, Brigitte is forced to kill her own sister, or at least, the monster she has become. This lends to the coming-of-age aspect of the film, where Brigitte learns that sometimes you are left with no choice but to make the morally displeasing decision, for the sake of all those around her.

Lastly, I’d like to add that the name Ginger Snaps sounds like a candy.