Editorials
[BEST & WORST ’11] BC’s List of the Worst Horror Films of 2011!
As I mentioned in my “Best of” list, this wasn’t exactly a banner year for horror, and thus it was a lot easier finding 10 stinkers than 10 flicks that will continue to find audiences for years to come. Indeed, many of the films below are disposable, worthless efforts (to use the term loosely) that were cynically produced in order to cash in on a craze, fill in a gap on a studio’s slate, or (in at least one case) merely extend a property’s lease on life. Others… I have no idea why they exist, unless “Giving BC a headache” is something that folks actually set out to do. If so: mission accomplished, and out of nearly 400 horror movies, these 10 were the ones that made me wish I had absolutely no interest in the genre in the first place.
Worst Horror of 2011: BC
Micah (Best/Worst) | Lonmonster (Best/Worst) | Evan Dickson (Best/Worst) | Lauren Taylor (Best/Worst)
Posters (Best/Worst) | Trailers (Best/Worst) | Performances (Best)
I don’t know why there are so many “Snow White” and other fairy tale “horror” movies coming out when Red Riding Hood was a. unsuccessful and b. lousy. The average Twilight film makes more in its first day than this snoozefest took in in its entire run, and that’s not even really a crime. Say what you will about the Twi-films, at least they don’t drag down talented actors like Gary Oldman and Julie Christie down with them, nor do they boast scripts by the guy who wrote Orphan – one of my favorite horror films of the past decade. This should have at LEAST been a decent enough time-killer; instead I kept wishing I was watching Breaking Dawn instead – at least that promised a vampire c-section. Looked cheap too; I’ve seen better production value on seasonal carnival rides.
Leave it to Screen Gems to fuck up a Single White Female remake (which it most certainly is; that film’s writers could probably win if they sued for plagiarism) with two of the most attractive actresses in their age group (that age group being about 5 years too old to be college freshmen, but whatever). Watching Leighton Meester unleash her psycho-sexual fury on Minka Kelly in The Roommate should have been the year’s most trashy fun, but instead it was a tepid affair that seemingly went out of its way to be idiotic. When Cam Gigandet is the best part of a movie (due to the fact that he seemed to be stoned during all of his scenes), you know you’re in trouble. And fuck you for the cat scene!
Dumped on DVD after sitting on the shelf for years (it was made BEFORE the big 3D boom), this lousy slasher would suck in any dimension, given the pointlessly “twisty” plot that tries to make you think heroine Angela Bettis is the killer, despite the fact that the few times we actually see him in action we can see that he’s not 5 feet tall. And it’s ugly as hell too – I’ve seen soap operas that were better lit and shot. Hilariously, they didn’t even get the 3D right on the DVD – as of this writing, only the terrible blue and red anaglyph version is available in the US (not the legit 3D that you need a special TV for). Thus, there is absolutely no reason for Scar 3D to exist at all, let alone be watched.
Kudos to the cast and crew for landing a surprising theatrical release for this movie; too bad it wasn’t worthy of one. The main problem with Dylan Dog is that the title character is always a step or two ahead of the audience, and thus spends a chunk of his screen time delivering lengthy passages of exposition to the female lead while occasionally engaging in unfunny banter with buddy Sam Huntington. Thus, the audience has no surrogate (said female – spoiler – turns out to be a villain anyway), resulting in a movie that never engages the viewer on a plot level, and the budget was too low for anything approaching satisfying action or FX. In other words, it’s pointless. Brandon Routh deserves better.
The first one was pretty bad, and unfortunately Zombie Diaries 2 wasn’t as good. Can we stop with the “found footage” zombie movies now? I can happily live the rest of my life without watching some asshole stand there and film his friend being eaten instead of dropping the camera and helping (or at least running away). The scariest thing about the movie is that they threaten more entries on the DVD, so do your part by not buying or renting this drivel. P.S. nobody liked the original enough to remember the character’s names, so bringing one back but having a different actress play her doesn’t do anyone any good.
Not that every original Hammer movie was a classic, but none that I’ve seen were ever as bad as The Resident, a poor excuse for a film that somehow roped three great actors (Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Christopher Lee) into an obnoxiously stupid story about a landlord (Morgan) who is obsessed with his new tenant (Swank). It doesn’t help any that Jaume BalaguerÛ’s film Sleep Tight tells pretty much the same story, but in a far more unnerving and plausible way. I implore you to wait until that one comes around if you seek some old school Pacific Heights-style thrills.
Inside. Trick ër Treat. (presumably) Mandy Lane and Poughkeepsie Tapes. All of these and several other good/great horror films went direct to video, but Creature somehow managed to land a 1500 screen release in September, despite the fact that its biggest star was Sid Haig. Oh, and it was a terrible movie to boot, the type that wouldn’t even qualify as a decent direct to video offering – most After Dark films are better than this, in fact. Silver lining – it will likely forever live near the top of the “Worst Opening Weekends Ever” list on Boxofficemojo, as only about 20 tickets per theater were sold for its ENTIRE opening weekend! Assuming not everyone went by themselves, that means it played to literally empty houses on many of those showings. Heh.
This thing was slapped together quickly and cheaply by Dimension in order to keep their rights to the franchise. But the irony is, thanks to years of increasingly terrible DTV sequels in this series (remember when we thought Inferno was an insult? Now it actually looks somewhat respectable in comparison), that property can’t be worth a hell of a lot – will a single horror fan ever get excited about a Hellraiser movie again as long as it has that Dimension logo at the beginning? The fake, kid-in-a-costume-esque Pinhead that Hellraiser Revelations offers (no Doug Bradley here; he apparently finally came to his senses) will provide a few laughs, but the jarring direction and overtly cheap production will constantly remind you of how cynical this entire project is, and why it should be ignored.
Fun fact: I swore that if the 2nd volume of this piece of trash was actually WORSE that I would quit doing Horror Movie A Day on the spot. “Luckily” it was a marginal improvement over Deadtime Stories Volume 1, which fails on every single level one can possibly judge a film. You would think that at least ONE of the segments would be worth a look, even just in comparison to the others, but they’re all equally terrible written, poorly made, woefully actedÖ you get the idea. That it drags Romero’s good name down with it just makes me somewhat ill. Avoid at all costs.
If the DVD wasn’t so damn expensive I would actually recommend this shit pickle to would-be filmmakers as a cautionary tale of sorts; “Do not under any circumstances let your film resemble Beneath The Mississippi in any way shape or form.” Some bad movies can be cathartic or even fun (The Room!), but there is not a single second of joy to be found in this mess, which runs just under two painful hours but feels like several hundred more. I THINK it’s a Blair Witch-esque tale of a documentary crew getting lost, but the embarrassing audio makes it nearly impossible to understand what anyone is saying, as does the blurry, lo-res camerawork. By far the most agonizing movie viewing experience of the year, one I hope you never have to endure unless you intend on learning from it before you set out to make your own movie, which I can already guarantee is better than this.
Dishonorable Mentions: Apollo 18, Dream House, River Of Darkness, Savage County, Bear (note – Bear is a special kind of bad and thus highly recommended as well)
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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