Mockingbird (2014)

Writer-director Bryan Bertino started his film career pretty strong. He gave us The Strangers, which a lot of people view as one of the better home invasion horrors in the past couple of decades. He also played a part in giving us the better sequel to that movie. When I discovered Mockingbird, it was in a bundle of movies that I'd mostly heard of. This was one of the only titles I didn't know about. There's a reason for that. It's not good.

Three people are left a video camera on their doorstep, each one thinking they have won it and may have the chance to win something more if they keep recording. You have Tom (Todd Stashwick) and Emmy (Audrey Marie Anderson), a loving couple who also have children, you have Beth (Alexandra Lydon), a young student, and you have Leonard (Barak Hardley), a "momma's boy" who is also given a clown suit, and make-up, along with the camera.

That's the start of everything here. People think they have won a prize, there's some celebration and fun, and then they are told to keep recording or die. So they keep recording. Which all adds up to a found footage horror movie that jumps between the various parties, leaving viewers wondering about the motivation as it builds to a climax that is as predictable as it is decidedly un-shocking, despite what Bertino thinks he is giving the audience.

First of all, the acting from everyone isn't bad. Stashwick and Anderson are the best of the leads, feeling the most authentic as they play around with the camera before things take a turn for the manacing. Lydon is left to flounder around alone, becoming more and more frightened before the other characters, because she's the character who seems the least likely to want to keep using a videocamera without any specific reason. Hardley, given the props of the clown suit and make-up, is okay, but his enthusiasm never feels quite real. It's necessary though, especially as things start to ramp up in the third act.

That's the positive out of the way then. I have nothing more. At all.

Bertino obviously thought he had something worthy of a movie here, he had an idea of using the video footage to create something with multiple strands that will ultimately start to twine together before the end credits roll. It just doesn't work. This is due to a number of reasons. One, we don't really care about any of the characters. Two, it doesn't solidify the threat to make it convincing that people would keep recording. Three, viewers will see what is coming a mile away as it all leads up to the grand finale. Four, it all gets harder and harder to believe as the plot becomes more interconnected and complex, which is even sillier when you get a reveal at the very end of the film.

I've already seen a lot of bad horror movies this year, but this feels like one of the worst of them. It's competently done, in some ways, but it's also completely mishandled throughout. One to avoid, and one to stay at the bottom of a barrel until it is forgotten by everyone. Which hopefully includes myself.

2/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Monster (2016)

Part horror movie and part an effective study of a seriously damaged mother-daughter relationship, The Monster is yet another worthwhile horror that gets things right by ensuring that both of the main components are given the right amount of care and attention.

Zoe Kazan is Kathy, a mother driving her daughter, Lizzy (Ella Ballentine), to go and live with her father. There doesn't seem to be too much sadness about this, not from either party, and a lot of that has to do with the problems that Kathy has had with alcohol. The daughter has sometimes had to act like the parent, which has rarely been appreciated, especially when Kathy has been trying to hang on to some new asshole boyfriend. As they drive along a quiet road at night, they hit a wolf that runs out in front of them. But it seems that the wolf was running way from something. Something bigger, and much more dangerous.

Written and directed by Bryan Bertino, The Monster is so good that I'm even willing to forgive him for the awfulness of Mockingbird. It's a decent creature feature elevated by the portrait of a parent-child relationship that has already spent some time being put through the wringer, which leads to the strongest mix of love and hate that you can have in any damaged relationship.

Kazan is very good in her role, being allowed to give a performance that shows her at her worst, in a number of flashbacks were her selfish, and abusive, behaviour is shown, and also at her best. No matter how good she is, however, the star here is Ballentine, who has to consistently show a wider mix of emotions, and also a sharper mind, as the child so used to acting like the adult, with the resentment and the sadness, and maturity, that brings. There are some other characters who pop onscreen to be put in peril, but the main one is, Jesse, a roadside mechanic who has been called to the scene. Aaron Douglas gets to play this role, which is written in a slightly odd way. I'm not sure if Bertino wanted viewers to consider Jesse as a potential danger, or if he was just playing up the fact that being stuck in a broken-down car in an isolated road makes EVERYTHING seem like a potential danger, especially to a mother and young daughter. Whatever his reasons, Jesse is the one part that doesn't work as well, but that's no fault of Douglas, who does just fine.

There's not much to comment on elsewhere. The cinematography seems to have been kept slightly too dark in order to hide any flaws in the creature design (which isn't that bad, but would have been better if they had avoided showing it out in the open so often), and the music by tomandandy is far from their best work, although that is probably just my preference for some of their more bombastic numbers. The creature is interesting, imperfect in a way that still has you trying to take in some of the details, but there's really nothing else onscreen, visually, that makes a strong impression (with the exception of a very tender moment that shows Lizzy looking after her mother after some alcohol-induced illness).

Despite criticising the overall look of the film, The Monster is well worth your time. It's not a film that's wanting to give you beautiful frames and original imagery. It's a film exploring something painful and depressingly common. It's a film about parents who can act like monsters, and it just happens to also have another monster in it.

8/10

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Leprechaun's Revenge (2012)

If you haven't seen any of Drew Daywalt's short horror movies, under the FEWDIO banner, then head to YouTube now and check them out. Bedfellows remains my favourite (Creep and Mockingbird are also brilliant), but so many of them are perfect little gems that you really can just go through them all. Drew is clearly a very talented man. And when he's not making horror movies he's creating astoundingly successful children's books. Well, one so far. The Day The Crayons Quit. Which makes viewing Leprechaun's Revenge a frustrating experience. It's not all that bad for a TV movie, but fans of Mr. Daywalt know that he's capable of something much better.

The story is quite simple, and gets moving quite quickly. Karen (Courtney Halverson) is out hunting with her grandfather (William Devane) when she spies something in the woods and also gets her hand marked with a red clover. It turns out that a vicious leprechaun has sprung to life, and Karen has a limited window of time to destroy it before she is doomed. Convincing her father, the local Sheriff (Billy Zane), isn't going to be easy, but she won't be able to do it alone.

There's a bit more to it than that, with a backstory about how the main family involved are descended from people who made their fortune by, well, not being nice to a leprechaun, but that just about sums it up. It's a creature feature, with a leprechaun that's far removed from the other main leprechaun known to cinema fans, but it also has some good jump scares interspersed randomly throughout as the main character succumbs to visions of what she knows is coming after her.

The direction is solid, and the script by Anthony C. Ferrante tries to do a decent job (especially when poking fun at itself), but it's not long until cracks start to appear and the movie crumbles to a state that it can't recover from. The potential for genuine scares soon dissipates, to be replaced by more standard jumps and moments of ridiculousness. Worst of all, the last few minutes feel really rushed and anti-climactic.

Halverson is fine in the main role, and Devane and Zane are both people I always enjoy watching onscreen. Zane deserves bonus points for his straight delivery during the moment in which he relates a personal tragedy that's one of the funniest I have heard in a movie of this kind. Thankfully, the comedic aspect of the material is always intentional, I think. Dave Davis is the young man who wants to help Halverson stay safe, understandably, and Azure Parsons makes a great impression with her few scenes, playing another officer of the law caught up in the madness.

It's a bit of fun, no more and no less. Worth watching if it comes on the TV and you can't be bothered to reach for the remote control, but I hope to see something much better whenever Daywalt is allowed to make a feature film completely on his own terms.

5/10

You can buy it here, under the title "Red Clover" - http://www.amazon.com/Red-Clover/dp/B00E99FYD6/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1402686976&sr=1-1&keywords=leprechaun%27s+revenge

Shudder Saturday: The Dark And The Wicked (2020)

Written and directed by Bryan Bertino, this just shows that the dismal Mockingbird was a momentary blip from someone able to keep delivering the goods for horror genre fans. With this and his last film, The Monster, Bertino has provided two equally impressive, yet very different, horror movies.

The Dark And The Wicked has Louise (Marin Ireland) and her brother, Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) returning to the family farm in Texas because of a very ill father. It's not long until their mother (Julie Oliver-Touchstone) harms herself and then dies, which leads to both Louise and Michael then starting to feel a strong presence taking over the area. It seems to want to wish harm open them, and upon anyone else who associates with them.

Although made with a decent amount of skill and polish, The Dark And The Wicked is not a film for those who just want some safe, mainstream, horror. It's not too bothered about making sure you get a full explanation for the unfolding events, for example, and there's a sense of puzzlement about the whole thing that simply adds to the horror. As has been said many times before, and by many writers better than myself, a strange killer without any obvious motivation is much scarier than a killer with a very specific agenda. This is, in many ways, an interesting companion piece to Bertino's first film, The Strangers, with the random acts of evil this time around perpetuated by a supernatural force, as opposed to a group of psychopathic strangers.

Ireland and Abbott Jr. are decent leads, and they’re also happy to not really be the focus of the film. Although Ireland gets a few more scenes that let her get her teeth into some more emotional content, this is a film about a pervasive evil. It’s almost a non-stop walk under a cloudy and portentous sky. Too Nowicki also does good work, and has a memorable encounter just as the third act starts to build towards the very end of everything, and Xander Berkeley is excellent as a priest who stops by to visit the farm. And it should be said that all of the visuals are accompanied by a superb, menacing score from Tom Schrader, providing music so good that it almost feels like the embodiment of the dark force at the heart of the movie.

Blending some occasional gore moments with some superb scares, The Dark And The Wicked is highly recommended. Bertino has a knack for keeping viewers on edge, even during scenes in which nothing much seems to be happening, and it's great to see his filmography expanding in a way that both highlights his strengths and also shows him happily moving between various sub-genres. Let's just hope he never decides to try another found footage horror and we're all good.

8/10

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The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas (1996)

Ahhhh, how I used to love The Munsters. Great personalities, lots of gags (both good and bad) and lovely design throughout from the house itself, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, to each one of the main characters. I don't know what I was expecting from this Christmas special, considering the fact that it was about 30 years after the original series and just how much the world, and my view on it, had changed in those intervening years.

Surprising as it is, The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas gets by and may please fans of the show as it pleased me. I didn't love it and I won't be rushing to rewatch it but I felt comfortable watching it and enjoying the many obvious jokes. Fred Gwynne, the original Herman Munster, is irreplaceable but Sam McMurray tries to do his best by the role.

The story is all about The Munsters getting ready for Christmas. This involves decorating their home, trying to cheer up a morose Eddie and sending out the invites to family and friends. Herman is still scaring people with his appearance, Lily (Ann Magnuson) is still rolling her eyes while keeping her family in line, Grandpa (Sandy Baron) is as troublesome as a pesky child and Marilyn (Elaine Hendrix) is the ugly duckling of the family. Then there's Eddie (Bug Hall), struggling to adjust to life away from his homeland. All of this starts to pale into insignificance, however, when Santa Claus ends up with the Munsters and in need of some serious help.

Written by Ed Ferrara and Kevin Murphy, and directed by Ian Emes, everything here is handled capably enough. I can't really say that The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas is good but it's certainly a lot better than I thought it was going to be. That's thanks to two things. First of all, the tone is quite close to the tone of the old series. Everything is silly and fun as opposed to sharp and cool. Secondly, the cast may not be able to fill the big shoes of the original players but a couple of key players - namely Sandy Baron and Elaine Hendrix - do very well while everyone else involved manages to at least acquit themselves capably enough. There's also a small role for Mary Woronov as a nosey neighbour, which is a bonus for genre fans. Mark Mitchell, Ed Gale and Arturo Gil as Santa and his two elves don't really add much fun to the proceedings but their characters add the required Christmas magic, of course, so their presence is bearable.

Not worth rushing out to buy and not even worth rushing out to watch but if you're lazing around during the Christmas holidays and this comes on TV then it's a painless time-waster that might remind you to hunt down the original series and relive some fond memories.

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/The-Munsters-Scary-Little-Christmas/dp/B000V6LSNQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354228759&sr=8-1&keywords=the+munsters%27+scary+little+christmas