Cynical Cinema

The original Prom Night movie, while by no means a classic, was at least profitable. It made 15 million dollars upon it’s 1980 release, and inspired at least a few cult followers. It sucked, but that has never been a huge determining factor when it comes to cult followings. That cult following, however, was enough to spawn three sequels (Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 made about 2 million dollars) and now a bigger budget remake in 2008. That remake comes to DVD today, August 19th, from Alliance Films, and it may even be worse than the original. Which, as I have already said, sucked. The only thing Prom Night of 2008 has in common with Prom Night of 1980 is the title. Well, that and the fact that it’s a horror movie that happens on prom night. The 2008 version, in an absolutely amazing feat for a movie that was this bad, made 43 million dollars at the box office. Here’s the basic plot:

You see, there was once a teacher at this school who became obsessed with one of his students. He murdered her family, and came after her, but was caught and locked up. Now, on Prom Night, he has managed to escape from prison. The cops know exactly where he is going - to the prom, to get Donna (played by Brittany Snow). So the cops go to the hotel where the prom is being held. And they stand around foolishly, sucking at their jobs so much that not only does this killer get into the hotel, but he is able to check in and murder four people before the alarm bell even sounds. Once that alarm bell is sounded, the girl whose life has been traumatized by this predatory stalker is…the ONLY one who doesn’t leave the hotel in single file like everyone else. You see, she forgot her SHAWL upstairs. So she goes back to her room, where of course the killer is waiting.

After a narrow escape, she runs out the door with the killer in hot pursuit, right into a bunch of cops. Who still can’t catch him. With this killer still on the loose, they bundle Donna up into a car, and take her to the only other place in the whole city where the killer would know to look for her - her house. Now, with the young girl hiding out, all alone in her room, at home, the cops continue to sweep the hotel. It’s not just that these cops have never seen a horror movie, it’s just that they are terrible police officers. And Brittany Snow is a terrible victim. She does this thing where she scrunches up her face to cry, and her screams are at best unconvincing.

The biggest problem with Prom Night, however, is that it follows every major slasher-film cliche to the T, except for the most important one. The obvious stuff is there. The cell phones that are out of service. The cop in the car outside the window that is protecting the girl, and then the second look out the window and…his car is empty! But the one horror cliche that could have saved this movie, or at least given it a moderately cool factor, is not observed. That being the cliche where no one knows who the killer is until he is unmasked at the very end! We know from the very beginning WHO the killer is, WHAT his motivation is, WHERE he will strike, WHO he is after, WHEN he will get to her, and HOW he will get to her. Which leaves precious little drama in the process.

All the worst cliches in horror movies, and none of the charming ones, combined with a film in which absolutely nothing interesting happens, makes Prom Night one of the worst films of 2008. Garbage!

When I first started watching Rogue, the killer-crocodile movie out next Tuesday, August 12th, from Alliance Films, I was struck by the beauty of the scenery. Later, I was amazed at the quality of the filming. The killer crocodile is actually fairly realistic. Most of these killer-monster movies have a really cheesy, blue-screen monster that looks nothing like a real sabretooth tiger, or mammoth, or whatever it is. Or, they’re massive-budget, Jurassic Park type films with super-realistic monsters and dinosaurs. And Rogue falls somewhere between Mammoth and King Kong in terms of realism. Which is a pleasant surprise. The cinematography, the realism of the monster itself, and the fact that you can actually SEE it throughout the film make Rogue stand out from other cheesy schlocky monster movies.

And yet, the script is very much the same as other monster movies. At the beginning, the crocodile eats a big wildebeest. And then a bunch of tourists venture into it’s habitat. There are scared ladies who panic and freeze and put everyone else in danger. There are bad guys who get eaten by the beast, thereby saving the tourists from further irritation. There are stupid men who push little girls out of the way to go first in escaping and of course meet their well-deserved fate. There are smart guys and tough chicks and smart chicks and tough guys and kids and a dog. I bet that the dog, the kid, the smart guy and the tough chick are the ones who are left alive at the end of this movie…I was wrong. I won’t tell you which one dies, because I actually want people to watch this movie.

I couldn’t figure something out throughout the film though. There was so much cheese in it, and so many silly cliches, that I couldn’t tell whether it was just standard monster-movie idiocy or whether they were trying to be ironic and lampoon the monster movies of the world to a degree. The crocodile’s jaws make funny noises when they snap shut. Like that sound jar lids make when they are opened for the first time and that little freshness-seal button pops up. There is a LOT of blood, and some pretty gruesome death scenes. And of course there are all the characters who come straight from other monster movies. And I didn’t really know until the movie was already over. In the final credits. The song playing during the final credits - “Never Smile At A Crocodile”.

Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin
He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skinNever smile at a crocodileNever dip your hat and stop to talk awhileNever run, walk away, say good-night, not good-dayClear the aisle but never smile at Mister Crocodile
You may very well be well bred
Lots ot etiquette in your head
But there’s always some special case, time or place
To forget etiquette
For instance:
Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin
He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skin
Never smile at a crocodile
Never dip your hat and stop to talk awhile
Never run, walk away, say good-night, not good-day
Clear the aisle but never smile at Mister Crocodile

You know, from the Peter Pan soundtrack. And then I finally knew - it really WAS meant to be ironic! This was the big wink at the end of the movie that proved the film makers’ intentions. The movie was supposed to be cheesy and silly. And I would let people watch the movie and figure this out for themselves, but I assume that most people turn the DVD off for the credits. And as such they may be left with the confused feeling I myself had until I heard that song. So here’s what I suggest. Watch Rogue. Enjoy this movie. And take it all with a grain of salt. A grain of highly-entertaining, totally brutal and fun-filled salt.

The biggest problem with The Ruins is that it tries to be something it’s not. And by that I mean - it tries to be something new. And it isn’t. You see there are four hot college kids…stop me if you’ve heard this before…who go on a vacation to a foreign country…still with me?…and decide to check out an area off the beaten track that isn’t on the maps or the tourist brochures…is it different yet? Is it new? No? OK, how about this - there are plants. That kill people! Which is a little different. I guess. But the plants are not used for the scares. In fact, nothing is really used to scare us. And it’s supposed to be a horror movie. This supposed horror movie comes out July 8th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

The thing is - the plants could actually BE scary if they were used well. The plants are able to imitate people, and cell phone rings, in order to lure people to their doom. This could be scary, or at least interesting. But this takes up about four minutes of the 93 minute running time. So the rest of the time we have the standard hot-teen-in-a-foreign-country horror cliches. Like, the fact that each of the hot kids takes turns being the sane one while everyone around is losing their minds. And the standard, gratuitous boob shot. The boob shot wouldn’t have made sense later on in the film, so they get it out of the way in a totally gratuitous way as early as possible. Then the cheesy, ridiculous lines that are supposed to be prescient - “four Americans on vacation don’t just disappear!” Come ON!

Then, of course, the torture-porn. The one kid, you see, is studying to be a doctor. So he knows when legs need to be amputated. Which is a great excuse for some seriously disgusting, over-the-top gory detail, which proves to be useless anyway, and certainly not scary. So, where does the “horror” come from? It isn’t the plants, because although they’re the villains, they’re underused. It doesn’t come from the gory gross useless flesh-cutting. And it doesn’t come from the people, who are just annoying. The best they can do are some vaguely creepy medical explanations from the vaguely creepy wannabe-doctor guy. So - there are no scares. And no scares in a horror movie makes for a bad horror movie. And The Ruins is certainly a bad horror movie.

Shannyn Sossamon looks to be the Jamie Lee Curtis of the last few years.  After One Missed Call came out on DVD a few weeks ago, she adds to her horror resume with Catacombs, a new horror flick about the Catacombs that apparently exist under Paris.  This myriad of tunnels apparently also houses thousands of dead bodies that couldn’t be buried elsewhere.  Well, this is actually true.  And they are actually lined and paved with human skulls.  That seems far-fetched to me, but wikipedia says it’s true, so I believe.  There is a cult classic called Les Gaspards, starring a young Gerard Depardieu, that was filmed and set in the creepy Paris catacombs.  It was far, far better than this one.  Here’s an indication that should have tipped viewers off - Les Gaspards, (The Holes in English), had permission to film there.  Catacombs didn’t.  Maybe because the people in charge of the catacombs knew how stupid this movie would be.

But here’s the thing - this movie should be good!  This is one of only two major motion pictures that has made use of the creepiness of the Paris catacombs, one of the most naturally creepy places in the world!  So how can you make a non-creepy movie about it?  Well, you can do a movie like this.  Catacombs reminded me a lot of one of those jokes that goes on for ever and ever and then has no real punchline, or an obvious one.  For example:  that joke about the guy who stays overnight at a monastery, and hears some really weird noises, but the monks say they can’t tell him what it is.  They say “I can’t tell you, you’re not a monk”.  So he becomes obsessed with finding out, so he sets out to become a monk.  And he takes eleven years of theology, and four years of monastery training, and becomes a junior monk, and moves up through the ranks until he gets back to the monastery (all explained in FAR greater detail in the joke).  And once he gets there, he can finally find the secret of the bizarre noises.  So he opens the door and you know what he sees?  I can’t tell you.  You’re not a monk. 

That’s the joke, where the punchline is irrelevant, the fact that it took two hours to tell the joke is what is supposed to be funny.  That’s how this movie feels.  The ending is not only a sour punchline to a pretty boring film, but it’s also completely implausible given the rest of the film.  (And, for those of you who have seen this, completely forseeable for the people involved, which makes their reaction idiotic.)  Shannyn Sossamon is actually a very hot, very good actress, and I really hope she manages to move on to something other than annoying horror movies very soon.  Also starring in this film is Pink, the singer, who is bizarrely hot in a goth-freaky-chick sort of way.  She’s pretty good too, but this movie is so boring it doesn’t matter. 

Getting lost in this creepy place could be good for some scares.  Especially if, somewhere in the shadows elsewhere in the catacombs, there was a homicidal maniac wearing (for some odd reason) a pig mask.  But just being lost in a creepy place could make for ten minutes of fright.  Not sixty.  The beginning is promising, with Sossamon arriving in Paris to meet Pink, her sister, and being taken to this creepy rave party in the catacombs.  She drinks some absinthe, and the guys try to creep her out with a story about a crazy dude in a pig mask who may very well be the antichrist who lives in the catacombs and kills everyone he meets.  Although it’s supposed to be a silly story, we know very well that it will turn out to be true.  And therefore…silly.

The first twenty minutes are like some sort of bizarre, obnoxious music video, with lights flickering so fast that you can hardly make anything out, and the strobe effect obscuring the right things at the right times which could lead to a huge scare…but it doesn’t.  Even the flickering camera and lights can’t pull off the most obvious scare, which is intended to begin the proceedings.  More flickering obscures other seemingly important plot points - like, did the cops actually kill that guy themselves?  Or what…who knows?  Then the catacombs.  Which are dark.  And full of skulls.  And creepy.  For ten minutes.  Then there are the noises in the distance, which are not frightening at all, but rather irritating and lame.  Of course, she has to eventually meet another guy lost in the catacombs, because one woman walking around, alone and lost, for an hour would be…tedious?  But the new guy is useless and is gone quickly.

This whole movie is basically useless, and was gone quickly.  It premiered on a scary-movie channel in the States called FearNet, and disappeared onto DVD almost right away.  Likely, it will disappear from there soon too.

If a line like “that’s not my ringtone” scares you, you might enjoy One Missed Call.  Then again, if “that’s not my ringtone” scares you, you really need to watch The Exorcist.  Or Alien.  Or Night of the Living Dead.  Because you are missing out on life, I think.  Cell phones are, try as they might in this film, not scary.  They are not even slightly fearsome.  They are just cell phones.  At best, they’re irritating.  The premise in the movie is that people are dying.  As they tend to do in horror movies.  Before they die, they get a voicemail message on their cell phones from the person who just died.  But it’s their own voice!  And that voice is scared.  And screaming.  And the message is dated at the exact time and date that they are scheduled to die.  Now, if you heard yourself say “if only I could get my head screwed on straight” at the exact time you’re scheduled to die, wouldn’t you really, REALLY avoid using that phrase?  Just a thought.

So these people know they’re going to die, but of course the main character can somehow figure out the mystery of where this evil comes from and why these kids specifically have been targeted.  None of it really makes any sense.  As Shannyn Sossamon gets the ear of sympathetic cop Edward Burns, the two of them are racing against the clock because you see…she got the call too!  Which leads to a final showdown in an…abandoned hospital.  Come on people.  Let’s stop using abandoned hospitals as creepy locations in horror movies, shall we?  Has the concept not played itself out by now?  How about an abandoned 4-H club, or an abandoned cardboard box factory?  We’re done with hospitals.  At least I am.  Then the final FINAL scare, because you know that there has to be another twist and another scare and another death before it’s all over.  Blah blah blah.  This is a remake of the genuinely chilling Japanese film of the same name, directed ably by the Japanese horror master Takashi Miike, who is one of the best in the world.  This film does not live up to his standard.

At least the star of the film is attractive, in a  Denise-from-the-Cosby-Show sort of way.  Shannyn Sossamon is gorgeous, and has a great story - one that is far better than the one in the movie.  She was discovered by a Hollywood casting director while DJing at a Hollywood party.  Figuring she looked a lot like Angelina Jolie (and she does - she is a cross between Jolie and Lisa Bonet from the Cosby Show), she was thrust into a starring role opposite Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale, a film that was designed to make stars of both actors.  It worked for Ledger in a big way, although the film itself didn’t fare particularly well.  And it worked a little for Sossamon, who next got a star turn in 40 Days And 40 Nights with Josh Hartnett.  But since then, she has been working in low-rent horror flicks like this one.  Don’t rent this or buy it or glance at it for free.  Instead, here are some pictures.  Who does Shannyn Sossamon resemble more?  Angelina Jolie or Lisa Bonet?

John Cusack can do clever dialogue in his sleep.  And at the beginning of 1408, he does.  He and Samuel L. Jackson engage in a very intelligent exchange, through which they both appear to be phoning it in.  You see, Cusack is a ghost-story-debunker, and Jackson is a hotel manager whose hotel has a demon room.  Room 1408.  Jackson does not want Cusack to stay in that room, but Cusack insists, and cannot be persuaded otherwise.  Sam Jackson and John Cusack will never suck, they are both too good for that, but their performances here are average at best.  Jackson is good, however, when he begins to warn Cusack away from the room.  His delivery, while matter-of-fact, is decidedly unsettling, and he gets better as the scene goes on. 

And the movie gets better as it goes on.  It’s based on a short story by Stephen King, which is nice and succinct and interesting.  But the movie expands on that short story in a big way.  And good thing too, because the story, while quick, to the point, and fun, would have made a fairly lousy movie, and the resolution would have been pretty trite and boring on screen.  For those of you who have read the story, rest assured.  It does NOT end the same way.  And it doesn’t develop the same way either.  The only thing the book and the movie have in common is the beginning.  Cusack is a writer, who has given up what looked to be a very promising career as a brilliant writer to churn out a bunch of low-rent ghost-story books about haunted castles and hotels and such.  And in the course of his research, he happens upon the Dolphin hotel, where 56 people have died in room 1408 since the hotel opened.

What happens next is not so much a ghost story as it is a bizarre, horrific acid trip for Cusack.  Describing what goes on would be pointless, since much of it is meaningless, a lot of it is boring, and very little is actually scary.  But there are some freaky moments, and frightening ones, that involve Cusack himself.  A tense moment on the ledge outside the hotel, and another tense claustrophobic scene in the air ducts above room 1408.  In the end, the creepy vibe and the actual scares come from Cusack himself more so than from his surroundings and the happenings in the room.  And as such, the movie is decent because Cusack himself is decent.  At times he just doesn’t seem cut out for the terror-acting, and at other times his bemusement turns to alarm which turns into fear in a very believeable progression.  As Cusack goes, so goes 1408.  He’s decent, the movie is decent.

Nightmare Detective opens with a scene of a man sitting at a table. Behind him, on the wall, is some super-long, disembodied hair, hanging from a hook like a hat. It takes a while to notice the hair, but when you do, and you realize what it is, you become instantly creeped right out. And that feeling will not leave you until this film is over. It’s the latest offering from Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto, who has been called Japan’s answer to David Lynch or David Cronenberg. And that description is certainly apt. This man knows how to create a mood so creepy that even if nothing at all happens, the sense of foreboding resonates within the viewer. In Nightmare Detective, two things are constantly sources of fear and malice. Bridges and bicycles. They don’t sound so creepy thinking of them now, but these are the scariest bikes and bridges I’ve ever seen in a movie. And that includes that brilliant Emilio Estevez classic, Maximum Overdrive.

We are introduced to the Nightmare Detective almost immediately. You see, the guy with the hair on his wall is having a nightmare. And the Nightmare Detective is able to enter peoples’ dreams in order to explain them to those people, and perhaps they will not be so frightened. However, this man having this dream decides he would rather remain in the dream than wake up, and he chooses to die. This screws up Kyoichi Kagenuma, the Nightmare Detective. He has lost the will to live, after seeing so many scary and creepy things in his life. In fact, we are not sure he has ever had the will to live. And this ties in nicely with the theme of suicides. A series of incredibly brutal suicides have been taking place in the city. Each of the victims have stabbed themselves to death, in bloody and gory fashion, while having nightmares. And just before they do, they have all called the phone number “0″. Which I assume in Japan does not connect you with an operator.

Japanese horror movies love this kind of stuff. Something anyone could do - like playing a VHS tape in Ringu, or dialing 0 on a cell phone. Simple things that are accessible to regular people are scary when all of a sudden they become supernatural. It turns out that the guy at the other end of the phone sucks the people who call into suicide pacts with them, and has the supernatural ability to enter their dreams and go after them. Which is always creepy, scary and gory. The cops go after him, but anyone who calls him ends up committing suicide in their sleep. So they enlist the help of the Nightmare Detective, who is legitimately suicidal himself. The hot-chick cop who convinces him to help is played by Reiko Hitomi, one of the sexiest Japanese actresses in the world, but a relative newcomer to movies with international distribution. She eventually sets up the obvious Nightmare On Elm Street style showdown where she confronts the killer in her sleep, with help from the Nightmare Detective.

The final showdown, while it is obvious from the beginning, is bonkers and difficult to understand, and it goes on for a very long time. But somehow it works. After all, it is a nightmare, and all kinds of strange things can happen in a nightmare that don’t have to make sense. The fact that Tsukamoto is able to sustain terror and tense creepiness for a solid half-hour without making it tedious is a testament to his skill. Nightmare Detective is a solid, frightening horror film that is worth seeking out. It arrives in stores tomorrow, May 27th, from Alliance Films.

Guillermo Del Toro has made some of the best films of recent years.  Dark, brooding, beautifully filmed movies like Blade II, Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth.  And he must have an eye for other great directores, because as a producer he has achieved a great succes with The Orphanage.  Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, The Orphanage is not really a horror movie, although it was marketed as such.  There are definitely some creepy scenes and scary moments, but it’s the atmosphere that tells the story as much as the scares and the characters themselves.  Belen Rueda plays the main character, Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage where she was raised in order to build it up again, and take in some more kids.  She lives there with her husband and her own son, seven-year-old Simon.  But when Simon begins to talk to a series of imaginary friends, and soon goes missing, Laura tears her life apart to find him, and that means unearthing some long-dormant secrets and spirits in the orphanage.

The movie may be reminiscent of several others.  Hallowe’en, Poltergeist, Final Destination, any number of Peter Pan movies, and Del Toro’s own The Devil’s Backbone.  But it’s the Peter Pan theme that holds the key to The Orphanage.  Suppose the Peter Pan story was, instead of being a kids’ tale, the work of some deviously evil murderous freak show?  I know, I know, I’m describing the Neverland Ranch.  But Michael Jackson aside, only Bayona has managed to make the Peter Pan story this creepy.  Rueda, as Laura, undergoes a transformation that is part obsession and part a growing belief in the spirits that surround her in the house, and it is a remarkable acting performance.  There are red herrings, but not too many.  There are many characters that come in and out of the movie with varying degrees of effectiveness.  The best is the old lady who gets dispatched in a fairly memorable and gory fashion.

 The Orphanage is a good, creepy, evocative flim, with terrific camera work and a genuinely gothic sense of foreboding.  The direction is first-rate, the acting is for the most part excellent, and the film is very much worth watching.  A few quibbles prevent it from being a truly great movie, like the pacing and the length, which I think is a little unnecessary.  But all in all, a quality movie experience.  Oh, but it has subtitles.  So it isn’t for those who hate to read.

The premise behind Diary of the Dead seems like old hat. In fact, it seems unbearably lame, the Frankenstein-monster piecing together of all the modern successful horror movies, thrown into a pot and stirred and spit out in six hours. However, the director is very intriguing. George A. Romero is one of the all-time great directors not just in horror, but in cinema. And with Diary of the Dead, he returns to his uber-successful roots, the zombie flick. Romero is the genius behind such zombie classics as the one that started it all, Night Of The Living Dead, and the one that many would suggest perfected the genre, Dawn of the Dead. (The original, not the poorly-thought-out crazy-kinetic 2005 sequel.) So the question with Diary of the Dead was this: Which Romero was going to show up? The one who made many of the most classic and original zombie movies of all time, or the one who jumped on the fast-moving zombie bandwagon and laid the turd that was that recent Land of the Dead?

Diary of the Dead is shot like Blair Witch, and Cloverfield. First-person, hand-held camera narrative, where the guy with the camera keeps it on because either “it’s the only thing keeping me sane in all this chaos”, or “if this turns out to be something big I want to record it for posterity”. Which is always a lame explanation for continuing to film during a monster attack or a scary time in the woods, but in the end, they’re the only explanations that work. The first good news - Romero has reverted to the slow-moving zombies of yore. The second good news, in fact, great news - Romero retains his sense of social commentary and political bent throughout this movie. This is something he has never lost, and it exists as much in the tone of his movies as it does in the actual story and dialogue. In this case, the entire construct of the film is a commentary on the media itself. The set-up tells us that this is the story the mainstream news media will not tell you, that this film is the only way to find out what really happened.

And what really happened is awesome! The dead are genuinely creepy, the scares are real, and the dialogue is terrific. It’s that classic Romero dialogue, that borders on the cheesy in making it’s point, but it works nearly every time. The voiceovers are suitably amateurish, and the best speeches about the nature of violence and war and the capabilities of individual men to confront their worst fears come from the film professor who accompanies the protagonists. The one, key line that is repeated more than once, refers to a gun. Three different characters hand it off to someone else saying “here, take this. It’s too easy to use.” There is some great black humour, suitable only for the zombie movie genre, like the bit with the deaf Amish guy who blows up some zombies with dynamite.

After a while, however, the voiceover narration from the girl who (obviously) has survived the zombie massacre becomes pretty tiresome, since it all seems so obvious and cliched. And there are a few scenes that are nothing new, in fact they are so familiar it’s almost insulting in the middle of a movie like this one. Like the one where a girl gets attacked by her own zombified family member and doesn’t know what to do, and the scenes where the military who show up to save the day might be too good to be true…but all in all, it works. Diary of the Dead is a quality film from a quality director who hasn’t lost a step. It’s impossible to make another Night Of The Living Dead. Once Romero made that one, he changed the zombie game for everyone, including himself. And he can’t make another Dawn of the Dead or Day of the Dead either. So he makes a Diary of the Dead and adds to his already considerable legacy. Diary of the Dead comes out Tuesday May 20th from Alliance Films.

Inside is the latest horror-splatter movie released by Dimension Extreme. It’s a French film, starring Alysson Paradis and Beatrice Dalle. Dalle is a very well-known actress in France, where she has been one of the hottest women around for a long time. She is as well-known for her crazy behaviour off the screen as she is for her amazing presence on the screen. She was apparently cast to play opposite Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, but had to turn the part down when she couldn’t get an American work visa because of her arrest record. Alysson Paradis is a relatively unknown actress about whom I know almost nothing. The two of them are the central characters in “Inside”, Paradis as Sarah, a pregnant woman, and Dalle as an utter maniac who has invaded Sarah’s house.

In this case, it is Dalle who really needs to carry the movie, and this has got to be one of the most entertaining roles an actress can play. The homicidal, raving lunatic who kills everyone. But she isn’t really up to the task here. She’s kind of…too hot, I think? And even when she gets that mad-crazy look on her face, she still looks a little like she’s posing for a modeling shoot. Which means the horror will have to carry the film. And to a certain extent, it does. The people who made this movie must have cleaned out every fake-blood supplier in the thirty miles surrounding the shoot. Heads blown in half, eyes stabbed with knitting needles, faces burned off, and all kinds of gruesome, bloody death. Also, there’s a self-performed tracheotomoy. But most of the damage in the film is done with sewing scissors. Which is gory as all hell.

As far as these movies go, there is almost never anything new, plot-wise. And there is never anything interesting in the dialogue or the actual filming. The reason they are made is simply to sue more blood and create more gore than the last guy. And “Inside” falls somewhere in the middle. It’s certainly a first for me. The first time I have seen a French splatter-gore movie. The first time I have seen scissors used so gruesomely as a weapon. And the first time I have seen Beatrice Dalle play anything but the sexy vampish ingenue. But all these things do not make the movie original, they just mean I ought to expand my horizons. There are some scares, and lots of gross, but Inside is just not that great. It comes out tomorrow, May 13th, from Alliance Films.