DVD - The Roost

Ti West is someone who I became interested in after having seen House of the Devil. That film was extremely well done, and felt like a return to what made old school horror films so great, valuing suspense and dread, over gore and shock. I recently watched his debut feature, The Roost, and, while the film about a group of young adults on their way to a wedding getting sidetracked to a farm with some malevolent evil waiting for them was not quite up to par with his later film, or his most recent film, The Innkeepers, once it got going, it got a lot better. Its major handicap was its molasses pace in the beginning. You can see that West is trying to establish that dread and suspense, but in this film, it just ends up being a little much, and you end up looking at the clock after a while. Overall, it was a decent first feature, and if you haven't seen any of his other films*, I can vouch that House and Innkeepers are considerably better.

*I haven't seen Cabin Fever 2 or Trigger Man.

The Monster Squad

I've seen The Monster Squad a million times. When I was a kid, my mom used to rent the VHS for me from the grocery store, and I'm pretty sure I wore that tape out. When it was released on DVD, my brother got it for me for Christmas. Many more views. This time, though, I got to see it on the big screen for the first time.

The film is, basically, a step-brother to The Goonies. Produced two years later, and with the same spirit of "group of friends band together to face a challenge greater than them", Monster Squad may not have lived up to the success of Goonies, but it remains as endearing. The film focuses on a group of friends who, when the classic Universal Monsters* show up (Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, Frankenstein, and Creature From The Black Lagoon), they must defend their town, and themselves, from the ghastly group and its plans to take over the world.

I love it, but I'm not sure how much of that is nostalgia, and how much is that it is legitimately good. The acting is what it is (kids are always hit or miss), and, it was the 80's, so a lot of those movies were being churned out with less focus on quality and more focus on whether or not they could get an audience to show up for the premise. I love it, though, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.

* I recognize that Dracula, etc, were not invented by Universal Pictures, but their visual portrayal in this film seems highly influenced by those classic films.

DVD - The House of the Devil

There is a new generation of filmmakers that have been trying to ape many of the 1970's and 80's "classics" of the genre, from well known slashers to B-movie video store shelf jockey's. The majority of the time, I'm positive these filmmakers have the best of intentions, but all too often, they end up wearing there inspirations on their sleeves, and making less than inspiring films. Ti West's latest, The House of the Devil, is the only film I've ever seen that actually gets the look and the feel of that era dead on.

Jocelin Donahue plays Samantha, a college student who wants to move into her own apartment and get away from her over sexed dorm roommate. She finds the place of her dreams, but has no idea how she's going to come up with the deposit, AND the first months rent. Upon returning to her dorm, after looking at the apartment one last time, she finds a notice for a babysitting job, and calls the number. She's lead to the Ullman household, a creepy Victorian style mini mansion, housed deep in the woods. With her best friend in tow (played by Greta Gerwig), Samantha meets the incredibly creepy Mr. and Mrs. Ullman, and finds out they haven't told her the complete truth. There is no baby to watch over, but, in fact, it is their mother. Samantha is worried about this, and tries to back out, but when Mr. Ullman waves 400 dollars in her face, she accepts. After all, all she has to do is sit there for a few hours. She doesn't even need to check on the woman, unless she hears something go wrong. But things aren't what they seem in the Ullman house, and Samantha is soon to find out that she's not there to watch anyone.

House of the Devil is classic, old school, horror. It is a slow burn, with climactic moments spread throughout the film, and an ending that's so crazy it will leave the TRUE fan of movies from that era very satisfied. Donahue is perfect as the shy, understated lead, an innocent who simply wants to make enough money to move into her own place, to be her own woman. Gerwig delivers well, for how little of the movie she's actually in, and Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov are significantly creepy as the Ullman's. Ti West has a real victory on his hands with this film, which is something I never thought I'd say about some one who's previous film was Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. If he keeps making films like this, I'll watch.

Synecdoche, New York

I don't know how to describe this film. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, a theater director who receives a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and decides to use it to create a massive stage play that he spends twenty years of his life trying to create. That's about the best I can do. The film, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, is... amazing. That being said, its almost impossible to do it justice in a paragraph. It's just one of those movies you have to see. It's, basically, Cotard's life, from shortly before he receives the grant, into his very old age. It is funny, awkward, truthful, and far out all at the same time. Kaufman really creates his own world, going way beyond the strangeness of his previous writing efforts like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Just see it. That's all I can say. You'll either like it, or you won't, but you'll never forget it.