The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  Miriam Dearing (Elyssa Mersdorf) is turning 21, and for her birthday is taking four of her best friends to her aunt and uncle’s house in the deep woods. Navigator Leo (Ryan Maslin) just bought a new video camera the day before and insists on constantly filming to document the whole weekend. In the back seat are carsick Tanya (Torrey Weiss) and couple Cassy (Laurel Casillo) and Mark (Morgan Hooper). They leave New York and head north into a snowstorm, and on a dangerous road a big van passes them and then slows down and nearly causes Miriam to crash.

  The van seems to follow them around for a while until Mark finally goes to confront the driver when he appears at a diner where the friends are eating. After that, the van disappears and they make their way to the house in the woods, where they begin their birthday party in earnest. However all is not as calm as it appears so far from civilization, and soon the friends find themselves in a life-or-death struggle against someone– or something– with evil intentions.

  The first hour of Evil Things is basically just like watching an hour of someone’s home videos of a weekend trip– a lot of shots out the windshield and windows of the car, the camera sticking in the face of people in the car, and many short shots abruptly running into other shots where someone has hit the RECORD button, stopped, and resumed later. Leo, the guy with the camera, supposedly wants to be a filmmaker, but still shoots everything like a teenager who has no idea what he’s doing. And, in typical “found footage” style, he doesn’t bother to put the camera down even when it’s clear that he and his friends are in mortal danger. This fact is even more frustrating given the fact that his camera is HUGE. He’s not shooting with a little digital home movie camcorder, he’s shooting with a pretty big digital movie camera with a big light attached to it!

  Aside from the fact that watching someone else’s home movies is almost always really dull, the establishing of the characters and their relationships is done fairly well. The actors are all actually pretty good, and they look like real college kids. Their interactions with each other seem easy and natural, which is nice, but too much time is spent setting them up for the last act. Especially given that we know how it ends, thanks to the opening title card that explains they are all missing. The illusion that Evil Things is “actual footage” from Leo’s camera is never really established after an opening shot of some television static in a dark room that fades into Leo prepping for the trip, and later in the film there is footage from another camcorder cut in. While the actors do a good job of creating their characters, the form and structure of the film constantly undermine the idea that any of this is “real.”

  Despite these problems, Evil Things does manage a few moments of tension, although its best moment is lifted wholesale from a classic film (and is given away by the DVD cover). Hopefully its young cast manages to go on to do more from here, as the scenes where they are having the birthday party indicate they can do more than just scream and cry, although that’s all they’re really required to do during the last section of the film. The trailer for the film not only includes the film’s best bits, but it’s actually considerably more interesting to watch, leading to the conclusion that a faux-documentary style (like the excellent, still unreleased The Poughkeepsie Tapes) would have been a more effective take on this material.

  Exit Humanity (2011)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 19 June 2012

  If there is any one thing sorely lacking in modern horror genre cinema as a whole, it is ambition. With a few notable examples that pop up each year, most horror films in general– and zombie films in particular– are happy to keep grinding away at the same story beats, with the same few characters, over and over again. When a truly ambitious horror film does come along, it’s natural for the hardcore genre fan to latch onto it like it’s a life preserver keeping them from drowning in an ocean of samey direct-to-disc horror exercises. Exit Humanity comes subtitled “A Zombie Saga,” and that title hints at the scope of the film. Like Jim Mickle’s similarly epic Stake Land, Exit Humanity puts its characters on a long, hard road, trying to survive in a decidedly hostile environment. However, Exit Humanity is arguably even more ambitious than Stake Land in that it does not take place in an apocalyptic future, but a very different time: the United States following the Civil War.

  Exit Humanity opens with a prologue explaining that near the end of the Civil War, the dead began returning to life and roaming the country. This put an end to the conflict as everyone had to fend for themselves against the zombie hordes. Years after the war, Edward Young (Mark Gibson) returns home from hunting one day to find his wife a zombie and his young son missing. He puts his wife down and buries her, and then sets out to find his son, although given the situation and era it is clear the boy’s chances of survival are slim. Indeed, Edward is beset at every turn by the walking dead, wandering in wide open fields and lurking in the forests. The young country is beautiful, but dangerous, and there are some folks out there who are not yet done fighting the war.

  Edward meets a variety of characters on his trek: Isaac (Adam Seybold), a cocksure former soldier, Isaac’s sister Emma (Jordan Hayes), and the mysterious witch Eve (Dee Wallace) all seem to be on Edward’s side, although it is difficult for him to determine anyone’s character in these strange times. In addition to the walking dead, Edward crosses paths with a potentially even more deadly threat, a rogue army unit run by General Williams (Bill Mosely), who thinks the war is still on. Along with his brutal enforcers and drunken medic Johnson (Stephen McHattie), Williams roams the countryside kidnapping people and putting Johnson to work finding a cure for the zombie plague. As in many zombie films, these men are far more aggressive and animal than the zombies that seemingly pose the biggest threat to Edward and his cohorts.

  Exit Humanity is a great example of how to make an epic film on a small budget. The cinematography is fantastic– like Stake Land, it’s obviously indebted to Terrence Malick– and the tone is appropriately somber. In fact, the tone of Exit Humanity may be too somber. The film treats its subject with complete seriousness, as much in the zombie scenes as in the Civil War prologue. The relentlessly downbeat action makes Exit Humanity somewhat difficult to engage with, which is unfortunate as technically it is a strong production. Gorgeous cinematography, an effective score, excellent makeup and effects, and interesting hand-drawn animation all come together to make Exit Humanity one of the most handsomely mounted zombie films to come along in some time. The film’s action picks up a bit in its second half, but for the first half the piles of misery visited on Edward become exhausting. Despite this, Exit Humanity is worth a watch on the strength of its unique concept alone, and its excellent production values certainly don’t hurt.

  Exit 33 (2011)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 2 August 2011

  Making a movie is hard work. Even the worst, most inept film requires the dedication and effort of many people working together. When you watch a bad movie– one that’s just genuinely terrible, completely devoid of any entertainment value whatever– you can’t help but feel bad that somebody poured a lot of work into it. And so it goes with Exit 33: I felt absolutely terrible for all those people in the credits, because this is one of the worst films I have seen in recent memory. Often, that phrase is followed by the explanation that I also recommend the film in question, but not in this case.

  Kane Hodder plays Ike, a hulking, quiet man who runs Ike’s Last Chance Gas. Ike clearly knew how to buy a location for his business, because literally every car that drives by the station has to stop for gas. This also works to Ike’s benefit because he likes to trick people into putting water in their gas tank, then go find them a little while later as they’re stranded by the side of the road. The ladies he knocks out and takes back to his rec room, the men he just murders outright. Ike collects women’s eyeballs and also turns ladies into beef jerky. He actually uses one woman’s entire body, which would probably make a hell of a lot of jerky, but he only seems to have a few bags on hand at any given tim
e.

  This is probably just as well, since he’s not smart enough to remove her jewelry before the jerkinating process. Ike does not make good decisions, and neither does anyone else in the film. For one thing, Ike knocks off about ten people over the course of two days. Seems pretty likely that, at that pace, someone would notice an awful lot of people going missing near Last Chance Gas. Thankfully, the unrelentingly grim storyline is given some late-game comic relief when a hunter sits down on a toilet with a porno mag and makes a lot of moaning sounds while some “hilarious” poop noises play on the soundtrack. How his feces makes a splashing noise in a dry toilet is just one more mystery to throw on the pile.

  In fact, Exit 33 is about as inept as it gets without actually moving into accidental entertainment. The technical and story problems are just infuriating: every single scene opens with a fade in and ends with a fade to black, making the film feel like a particularly awful compilation of web shorts. It seems like everyone who stops to get gas– and there are a lot of people getting gas in this movie– is actually shown pumping their gas in real time. Probably about a third of the film’s slim 83-minute running time is spent watching people putting gas in their car. And, in what is a new blatant technical error to me, scenes of two characters in a car are shot with a completely different frame rate than the rest of the movie. Whenever it cuts back to them, it seems like the picture resolution and frame rate totally changes. Maybe they used a Flipcam to pick up those shots?

  This new kind of technological error is probably the most interesting thing about Exit 33. The characters are utterly uninteresting and the gore effects are so bad that even I did not flinch when Ike removed a character’s eye with a spoon. I really hate seeing bad things happen to eyes in a movie– Fulci’s Zombie still gets me squirming every time– so when I say that I didn’t even blink at this, you can trust that it’s truly stunningly unrealistic. The only possible audience I can imagine for Exit 33 is hardcore fans of Kane Hodder, and it’s tough to believe even they would find this a worthwhile way to spend 83 minutes. Maybe the extra footage of someone cleaning a deer carcass over the end credits helps, as it is clinical enough that it may be educational. Exit 33 is direct-to-disc horror at its absolute worst, and I hope all the folks who worked on it can find better work soon and put this well behind them.

  The Exorcism of Molly Hartley (2015)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 16 November 2015

  Released on Halloween in 2008, The Haunting of Molly Hartley was not exactly a hit. And in the years since, it does not seem to have gained much of a reputation or more passionate fans since it hit home video. This makes sense given that the film was a mostly dull teen horror movie that leaned very hard on pointless jump scares for its thrills and probably just barely earned its PG-13 rating thanks to a little blood and a party scene where some teenagers might be drinking alcohol. Still, the film at least had an ending that set up some interesting possibilities for a sequel. And since the movie was at least profitable, that sequel was depressingly inevitable. Not surprisingly, the resulting sequel immediately discards any of the ideas that made the first film’s finale its most redeeming quality and opts for a standard-issue exorcism story instead.

  Six years after turning 18, Molly Hartley (Sarah Lind) has just made partner at her firm on her 24th birthday. She takes a co-worker and his girlfriend home with her to celebrate, but the next morning they turn up brutally murdered in Molly’s bathroom. She is sent to the Clovesdale Institute, a mental hospital, for psychiatric evaluation. Demonic activity starts almost as soon as Molly walks in the front door, and her psychiatrist Dr. Laurie Hawthorne (Gina Holden) quickly comes to the conclusion that Molly is not insane but possessed. She consults defrocked priest John Barrow (Devon Sawa), who has ended up in Clovesdale as part of a plea bargain after an exorcism he was performing took a deadly turn. While hesitant at first, Barrow pays a visit to retired Clovesdale chaplain Henry Davies (Peter MacNeill), who convinces Barrow to help the girl. Molly’s possession seems infectious, and other patients begin behaving even more erratically than usual. Can Barrow and Hawthorne help Molly, or will she fulfill the prophecy of the cult that gave her power and unleash untold evil into the world?

  It is hard to tell exactly for whom The Exorcism of Molly Hartley was produced. Fans of the first film will likely be disappointed that none of the creative team either in front of or behind the camera have returned for the sequel. Any characters other than Molly who may have returned have been conveniently written off, and this film only makes the most vague, passing references to any events in the first film. In that way, it would be easy for new audiences to jump in without seeing the first film, but if the producers weren’t banking on returning fans, why even use the character’s name? While Haunting got a light PG-13, this film is luridly advertised as hitting video “Unrated,” and does in fact feature more explicit content than the first film. Perhaps the assumption is that the teenagers who liked the first movie would be old enough to want racier content this time around? In any case, it is probably no coincidence that the title is both extremely utilitarian (this is an exorcism movie with a character named Molly Hartley) and similar enough that some people might buy or rent it on accident thinking it is The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

  As for the film itself, it is very familiar stuff. Molly vomits green slime, speaks in a growling, demonic voice, and floats around a lot. There is also a swarm of CG insects. As Barrow, Devon Sawa basically just has to look really worried and yell the typical things these characters yell during exorcisms. At one point it seems like he’s just making them up, which he may well be. There are some late-film plot twists that are not all that surprising, and a frankly hilarious deus ex machina during the climax that is almost unbelievably shameless. That is not to say the movie is worth watching just for this moment, but after about 80 minutes of utterly predictable “exorcism movie” done with depressing straight-faced adherence to standard tropes and story beats, it’s something of a relief when the film descends into ludicrous camp for a moment. That moment is the only time the film really has any personality; for the most part, this is an overly serious, forgettably competent run through the exact same story points that countless exorcism films have gone before.

  Faces of Death (1978): 30th Anniversary Edition

  Originally published on Film Monthly 19 October 2008

  If you grew up in the 1980s, chances are good that your local video store had Faces of Death (and its sequels) on the shelves. As an adolescent rite of passage, Faces of Death was hugely popular among young horror fans looking for the most disgusting, horrific images they could find. Once the slashers in your local video store stopped doing the trick, it was time to gather up your courage and rent Faces of Death. The film was a huge success on home video, and was the center of controversy for years. This is due both to the film’s content and the fact that debates have raged over what in the film is real and what isn’t.

  For anyone who doesn’t know, a bit of backstory is required: Faces of Death purported to be the first documentary to show actual deaths from various places around the world, both of humans and of animals. The most infamous sequence involves a group of people eating at a restaurant in “the middle East” where a live monkey is killed by the diners, who then eat its brain directly out of its skull. Other notorious scenes include a beheading as punishment for some sort of crime (also in the middle East), an animal control employee being attacked by an alligator, and a police raid on the home of a man who has murdered his wife and family. Aside from the monkey, animals fare little better: there’s footage of cows being slaughtered for kosher, Alaskan seal populations being curbed, and more.

  And now, 30 years after the film was originally released, is a 30th anniversary edition DVD (and Blu-ray), lovingly remastered from the original vault materials, with a commentary track and extras that finally put to rest any questions about what is real and what is re-enactment. These extras are really the most interesting part of the packag
e, although the film is certainly worth a look as a strange curio from the late 1970s. While there certainly is some disturbing footage in the film (including some of an actual autopsy), overall the film itself feels pretty tame compared to modern horror films and just about anything you’re likely to see on cable.

  Looking back, Faces of Death predates and seemingly predicts “reality” entertainment, most notably COPS– the raid on the murderer’s house basically is the same thing you’d see on any given episode of that show. Popular crime investigation series like CSI and documentary series like The First 48 often get into graphic details of various crimes. Even though the crimes on CSI are fictional, the amount of detail on that show often makes Faces of Death look conservative. It’s a sad commentary on our modern media when Faces of Death seems like the product of a more innocent time!

  All that aside, however, the extras on the disc are fascinating. Director “Conan LeCilaire” explains the film’s origins in a lively and extremely informative commentary track. Interestingly, the version of the film that appears on the 30th anniversary discs is not the U.S. home video version, but the original Japanese theatrical cut. “LeCilaire” explains early on in the commentary that the film was financed by Japanese producers for a theatrical run there, and only later became a success in the States during its home video release. The commentary completely demystifies the origins of the film’s scenes, and the featurettes on the editing and makeup effects put to rest any questions about how the film was put together. There’s a sense of a gleeful pulling back of the curtains, almost a relief that after all this time the filmmakers can finally expose all the secrets that helped make the film such a success and such a magnet for controversy.