Editorials
Best & Worst of ’10: DAVID HARLEY’S TOP 10 OF 2010
Out of all the lists I’ve done for the site, this year’s best-of compilation was easily the most difficult to write. When I first starting thinking about this way back in August, I was hard pressed to come up with five films that I liked, let alone ones that were strictly horror. But by the time we crossed over into December and all was said and done, my tally sheet was much harder to sort through but for a different reason: I had to narrow a list of twenty-two films down to ten, with an extra three as honorable mentions. Even after I had run them through my normal list of criteria of what I think makes a film great, my count-down order changed numerous times, and only one question helped me determine the iteration you’re looking at now: if I had the option to march right back into the theatre after watching any of these to see it again, which ones would I watch first? Immediately, the fight between a killer tire and ballerina had a winner, and my decision as to whether or not a powerful film was worth including if it made me depressed for days afterwards became clear.
BC (Best/Worst) | Micah (Best/Worst) | Keenan (Best/Worst) | Theo (Best/Worst)
Best One Sheets | Worst One Sheets
Most Memorable Moments | Top Trailers | Memorable Quotes
DAVID HARLEY’S TOP 10 OF 2010
The Last Exorcism‘s writers Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland struck a really good balance between the horrific, comedic, and dramatic elements that make up their gothic yarn. Cotton is a smarmy, though endearing, swindler, dishing out puns and dry humor left and right. And in Louis and Nell (and even her brother, Caleb, to some extent), they’ve created a sympathetic family who lead very tortured lives. And even though the story flip-flops through many different developments and theories, causing character arcs to drastically shift, you have that initial investment through the setup that makes you cling to these characters through their troubles. The atmosphere created by director Daniel Stamm and cinematographer Zoltan Honti is a breath of fresh air, creating tension and several chilling scenes by just walking through a dark room. With a minimal amount of jump scares, and virtually no blood and special effects in the entire film, The Last Exorcism manages to make you uncomfortable for most of its running time ala the horror classics of yesteryear. As for the ending, which divided audiences, I love it and think it was the most appropriate pay-off they could’ve had for the characters.
Like Joe Dante’s The Hole, Rare Exports is pretty much the best Goosebumps book never written. A kid-ish (emphasis on the -ish) horror tale, this retelling of the Santa Claus mythos is a return to fantastical frights (think Lady In White or Lemora), with an opening scene that is more Raiders Of The Lost Ark than anything found in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.
It’s weird; sometimes the dumbest/simplest ideas make for the best films, leaving everyone scratching their heads as to why they didn’t come up with it themselves.Burning Bright‘s ridiculous plot (gorgeous girl and her autistic brother stuck in their house with an evil, ex-circus tiger during a hurricane) might be enough to turn people away, but man, is it fun. The story is pretty congested at times, but everything resolves itself, and it’s a tense ride getting there.
Let’s be honest: this is not Scorsese’s best flick, nor is it unpredictable. What it is, however, is the most atmospheric film this year, and a fantastic homage to Val Lewton films. Performances are exceptional across the board, and the New England charms and culture in the film provide for not one haunted house (Ashecliffe), but two (Teddy Daniels’ mind), the latter of which is bolstered by the great director/actor relationship of Scorsese and DiCaprio.
James Nguyen, the self-proclaimed master of the “romantic thriller”, is my new hero. Like Troll 2‘s director Claudio Fragasso, Nguyen has no idea that Birdemic: Shock And Terror is an amazing riff on The Birds, failing on almost every level except the entertainment factor, of which it’s off the scale. It’s kind of hard to narrow down ONE thing that I love the most about Birdemic; the MS Paint birds, hanger fighting, having automatic rifles handy in the back of your vintage 1990 minivan, the overly long master shot inside of a Chinese restaurant (obviously put there to show the audience the entire wall mural)… there’s just so much to choose from. It’s not as close to (im)perfection as a trip to Nilbog, but it’s the most awfully fun movie anyone has made in the last decade.
REC 2 is one of those rare sequels that doesn’t necessarily improve upon the formula as much as it successfully changes it up without making it feel like it doesn’t fit into the same universe as its predecessor – think the Alien franchise. Respectably referencing classics like The Thing and The Exorcist, Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s follow-up builds upon the premise of the original, while adding a new explanation for the outbreak, which I never saw coming and, I think, is more clever than what was “discovered” in the first film.
The Loved Ones, in many ways, is as much of a love letter to Texas Chainsaw Massacre as Wolf Creek is. Sure, they’re both Australian productions, so it’s easy to compare them in that respect, but Sean Byrne’s film succeeds where Greg McLean’s failed: it has more than an interesting villain going for it. Byrne spends time with each of his characters, both primary and secondary, giving insight into their world and what was going on with them previous and during Brent’s imprisonment – there’s a brilliant bit of contrast between the film’s protagonist and his friend Jamie, showcased through well-placed intercutting. The violence is brutal and uncompromising, though it never overshadows the story and characters, both of which are greatly fleshed out. If more gore-centric films could strike a great balance like The Loved Ones does, our genre would be in a better place.
Back in 2009, I managed to see Stuart Gordon’s Nevermore, a one-man stage show featuring Jeffrey Combs as the legendary poet and drunkard. I had never actually seen a play in-person before, and while it was memorable in that aspect, I was totally floored by Combs’ performance, and the character immersion I saw before me – as the play goes on, he gets drunker, and it’s completely believable. Much of the same can be said about Buried, which stars Ryan Reynolds as Paul, a government contractor who finds himself buried alive in a coffin with nothing but a cell phone, a few glow sticks, and a canteen filled with water. Not only does the film prove that Reynolds has what it takes to carry a non-comedic film on his shoulders, but it’s a showcase for up-and-coming director Rodrigo Cortes’ talent.
Imagine if David Lynch had directed Jaws with a tire instead of a shark as his villain, and you’d have a pretty good idea of what Rubber is like. But that’s just half of what Quentin Dupieux’s post-modern smorgasbord of Rod Serling inspired bizarreness has to offer. Instead of just stopping at the absurd notion of having a tire blowing people’s heads up, the film throws its audience for a loop, introducing it as a film with a film that ends up crossing over and disrupting reality, resulting in one of the most unique cinematic experiences in quite some time.
Black Swan is, in a lot of ways, a companion piece to The Wrestler; they both feature characters pushing themselves to be their best, and how the journey to get there affects them mentally, physically, and spiritually. Aronofsky’s latest just happens to be more Polanski than inspirational, fitting in with the Apartment Trilogy more than it does any inspirational, feel-good sports flick.
For the record, I didn’t enjoy A Serbian Film, nor would I watch it again or recommend anyone watch it a first time. In fact, I fell into a deep state of depression for days after seeing it at SXSW this past March. I don’t think any of us can properly identify with the trials and tribulations Serbians have been through, but if the way this film made me feel even comes close to their collective state of mind over the past few years, I don’t envy them that much more. I honestly think this is the sort of outrage, confusion, and repulsion people felt when they saw Cannibal Holocaust back in the 80s, and if all horror flicks made me feel this way, I wouldn’t watch them anymore. In other words, this is one of the most powerful and affecting films I have seen, and while I do not relish the thought of sitting through it a second time, it has put images and ideas into my head that I simply cannot erase from my memory, no matter how hard I try.
Because any documentary that puts me on a quest to find a new – to me, anyway – Peter Jackson script (Freddy is a washed-up hobo in dreamland, and gets beat up by kids who intentionally make themselves fall asleep so they can pick on him) is worth a mention.
Everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Tom Cruise was involved at different points in The Killer Inside Me‘s long road to the big screen. Based on a novel by Jim Thompson, the film was left to rot in development hell for years after Andrew Dominick left, leaving him to adapt The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. While the story is gripping and many of the scenes left me mouth agape, Casey Affleck’s Lou Ford steals the show and is probably one of the most disturbing characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. He’s similar to Henry (Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer) and Harry Powell (Night Of The Hunter), in the sense that he plays the good-old boy and buffoon quite convincingly, and seamlessly shifts to psychopath at the drop of a dime. All of the aforementioned characters are morally reprehensible, but the small shreds of humanity that exist (or are convincingly faked) in them is what makes them so extraordinary and endlessly watchable.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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