Editorials
A Beast in the Streets: Dutch Movie ‘Prey’ Unleashes a Killer Lion on Amsterdam [Horrors Elsewhere]
After terrorizing the Dutch with a living elevator, a canal-dwelling slasher, and an evil Sinterklaas, rebellious filmmaker Dick Maas returned with a more natural kind of killer. The people of Amsterdam are not under attack by a mere animal; a displaced predator is on the prowl. The blood trail of Prooi (Prey) starts outside the city where a family is brutally slaughtered in the middle of the night. It doesn’t take more than a glimpse of the massacre before a local zoo veterinarian determines the culprit. A lion is on the loose, and it’s heading deeper and deeper into the concrete jungle.
When the Netherlands said they can’t compete with Hollywood movies, Maas set out to prove them wrong. And since then, the audacious auteur has succeeded — his brand of absurd and entertaining filmmaking is enjoyed by not only the Dutch but also the rest of the world. Here Maas tapped into another popular subgenre, and the results are damn entertaining. The movie plays out like a standard “when animals attack” flick. The structure is not unlike something found on Syfy’s Saturday schedule circa 2000s, however, what ultimately sets this movie apart from its predecessors is of course Maas’ handling.
Before the fun of Prey truly kicks in, the movie gives an idea of who’s hunting who. The ravenous male lion closes in on Amsterdam while his main pursuer, a big-animal vet named Lizzy (Sophie van Winden), attempts to tame her on-and-off boyfriend Dave (Julian Looman). Their playful discord pales in comparison to an A.B.C. (alien big cat) chowing down on the city, of course, but you still hope these two kids can work things out. Another major player is introduced later on as the cat-and-mouse game becomes more intense.
This beastie romp follows the blueprint of many other “natural horror” movies. The local government wants to keep the threat on the down-low, a nosy member of the press has a personal stake in the story, the hired guns fail miserably, and a second animal expert is brought in later to help close the case. The beats are certainly familiar, and Maas doesn’t quite subvert them in any significant manner, but their sheer presence can also be comforting in this sort of story. Prey satisfies expectations in all the right ways without being phoned in, either.
Maas’ trademark sense of black humor distinguishes Prey and gives the whole thing a longer lifespan. Much of said comedy is found in the lion’s brutal kills. From the outset, the filmmaker has his dial set to “droll” — when asked where the father’s arm is, after the maned murderer devours an entire family, the assigned detective nonchalantly tells Lindsay it’s probably wherever the mother’s head is. It’s exactly that style of comedy, along with sight gags, that compensates for an admittedly threadbare plot. In addition, there’s nothing to undercut here, seeing as the movie is hardly serious.
It just wouldn’t be a Maas joint without a series of memorable set pieces. From the lion chasing down a delivery driver to a boy being snatched off a playground, Prey proves it has claws and it isn’t afraid to use them. Not a soul is spared, and that body count definitely includes children. Maas isn’t above threatening the security of kiddos on screen, although in this instance he refuses to waste an opportunity to shock the audience. This lion picks off at least three young’uns. One of whom is a baby in the wrong place at the wrong time; the standout scene has the lion boarding a city bus and then making a meal out of every single passenger. It seems twisted to use little ones as fodder, yet as a reminder to the uninitiated, Maas doesn’t care about what’s appropriate or not.
That other key character finally shows up around the halfway mark; Lindsay’s ex Jack (Mark Frost) is flown in after the Dutch authorities fail to catch the cat themselves. Now, Maas can be accused of being distasteful with how he writes Jack, a one-legged hunter who literally gives his remaining leg to take the lion down. Not to belabor the point, but the offbeat director has no concern for decency. Never has, and probably never will. Had he been worried about coming off as indelicate, he probably wouldn’t have had a lion eating a baby on a bus. And if anything, he should be applauded for showing restraint where it mattered most. Viewers almost had to endure a “love triangle” subplot no one asked for.
When there’s a lion in a modern movie, there is bound to be CGI. It’s much too dangerous and costly to have a real one on set. The lion, when done digitally, is passable-looking, but at the same time, he never looks real or intimidating. Meanwhile, the puppet effects are sparingly used and equally obvious. Keeping in mind Prey is a low-budgeted production, audiences have to look past the visual hiccups every now and then. For the record, though, the effects are far from bottom-barrel quality.
Prey is a rousing, weird and delightful movie where any small snags can surely be overlooked in favor of the whole picture. Another director might have seen this as a chance to play it safe and turned in a cookie-cutter creature-feature, but Dick Maas doesn’t color within the lines. Lion or no lion, this director’s work always has some bite to it.
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
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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