Is That a Sausage In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Hoarding Food In the Bomb Shelter?

Time and time again I say: I love films set around the apocalypse. 

Set them on the last day of the world 

Set them as the world is slowly dying from a flesh-devouring plague

Set them as it tries to recover 

Set them just on the cusp of maybe/maybe not world destroying disaster 

Set them during a time when Tiger from The Brady Bunch helps Don Johnson get laid

Point is, if you ring the bell for the end of the world, I will skip to faster than Pavlov’s puppy being weaned on Red Bull. Hence, The Divide!

Quick Plot: As nuclear war wages on the streets of Manhattan, a gaggle of apartment dwellers follows grizzly super Mickey (Terminator’s Michael Biehn) down into his well-fortified bomb shelter. Among those who make it before John Connor’s dad seals the door:

Eva (Hostel 2’s Lauren German), quietly smart and strong

Sam, her twerpy French lawyer boyfriend

Adrian, a thoughtful 20something

Josh, his alpha half-brother

Bobby, their slightly punkish pal

Delvin (Courtney B. Vance), a paranoid (or IS HE?) middle ager

And Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette!) and her 10ish year old daughter

Funny. About a half hour into The Divide, I worried, as in the case in these types of ensemble films, that I had and would continue to have no real differentiation between the younger male characters. Yes, ‘Sam’ had an accent, but he also looked quite a bit like ‘Josh.' Meanwhile, I still had no real idea how ‘Bobby’ fit into any of it: was he Josh’s boyfriend? A drug dealer? A good guy or villain? A redhead who shares Matthew McConoughy's allergy to wearing shirts?

One of the many pleasant surprises about The Divide was that eventually, I knew exactly who Bobby was, even if I, well, still didn’t. He wasn’t The Hothead or The Jerk or The Horny Guy. He was Bobby. 

(See what I mean about the shirt thing?)

He was all of these things. He was hotheaded, pretty jerky, and eventually, incredibly horny. Because that’s what people are like. They aren’t easily defined with one character trait, no matter how easy it generally is for screenwriters to create their cast as such. Hence, despite the characters of The Divide NOT necessarily fitting into easy stereotypes, I ultimately remembered every single one of their names.

But I’m getting ahead of myself with enthusiasm. I haven’t even told you what actually happens in the movie now, have I, and shame on me when film in question includes John Connor’s dad slapping people, jokes about cannibalism, threesomes in Hazmat suits, and Chekhov’s Law of Septic Holes. 

Well, maybe we should forget about that one...

Once safe and snug in Mickey’s decently stocked lair, the gang slowly falls ill to the worst form of cabin fever that doesn’t involve skin peeling and pancakes. Because this is a new DVD release, I’ll avoid spoiling anything specific, but trust me when I say The Divide doesn’t shy away from making some pretty dire decisions, from surprise early deaths to physically AND emotionally horrific side effects of, you know, being trapped in a basement during a nuclear holocaust.

Yes, some characters turn to the dark side when the future’s bleakness never lifts. You could sniff that out as soon as Delvin catches Mickey hoarding sausage while the rest of the gang sucks up canned beans. But for as easily as some characters follow the obvious path, The Divide packs plenty of surprises. Arquette’s Marilyn begins as a worried mother and ends as...

Well, let’s just say it’s a brave performance.

Similarly, German’s Eva is our clear heroine from frame one, and while she does serve as our stable center, she also takes turns we never see coming. Xavier Gens pulled off a similar tract with his lead in Frontier(s), an effective but slightly rote torture flick that demonstrated great promise from the French director. The Divide definitely proves Gens to be one to watch, with great skills at getting solid performances and an effectively escalating sense of doom. Credit also goes to screenwriting team Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean, plus a cast that probably ate from the lamest craft service table since Hunger.

High Points

Oh okay fine, I’ve held out this long, but here we go with one SPOILER

I kind of love that The Divide never REALLY gives us answers about its external conflict. We know that the city (and possibly the world) is indeed coated in nuclear fallout, but what that ultimately means for Eva and what went on in those Hazmat wearing soldiers(?) child-keeping lab is left a mystery. Not knowing is somehow so much more horrifying than any explanation would probably suggest.

THUS END'TH SPOILERS

Low Points

While I do think The Divide went further in uglying up its actors than most films of its type would, there’s a part of me that simply wishes one could take the complete cast of Jim Mickle’s Mulberry Street--another fine low budget New York-set horror film--and plug them in instead. The actors in The Divide are perfectly good once they get going, but how common is it to find that seven out of seven survivors of a nuclear apocalypse like, really really ridiculously good-looking.

For such a strong and different genre movie, it’s an absolute shame that the DVD (at least the one Netflix stocks) is naked of any special features. Considering the entire cast was apparently put on starvation diets (and boy do the effects show) it’s incredibly frustrating to feel deprived of a grumpy Dorito filled commentary track where they duct tape the screenwriters down to a chair for putting them through hell or behind-the-scenes featurettes catching Rosanna Arquette sneaking Milky Ways

Lessons Learned

Why you should never let a man pack a bomb shelter: there are certain, um, female toiletries that he might forget are needed on a monthly basis

Removing the helmet of a man whom you’ve just caused intense head trauma to is an act that should be done with extreme care

Nobody but nobody eats Bobby’s penis

Rent/Bury/Buy

I would be all too willing to recommend a bargain-priced blind buy, but since The Divide comes with nary a special feature (well, there IS a scene selection option which is more than one could say for David Lynch releases) then I’ll just say put it on the top of your rental queue. It’s a harsh watch, but if you’re one of those weirdos who really enjoys harsh watches about the end of the world and horror of mankind, then boy is this the movie for you!

Weirdo.

Liberty! Equality! Fraternity! Bloggity!

Missed Bastille Day? There’s always alternative ways to celebrate France’s favorite summer holiday, especially when it comes to horror movies.

Prison Breaks

Since the Bastille was primarily used as a high security fortress, it makes perfect sense to kick back with, say, Stuart Gordon’s Fortress. As a bonus, it even stars a pseudo-French Christopher Lambert! Not into early 90s sci-fi horror? Zombies are the universal language for making a stand against society, so why not queue up an internationally friendly undead film set during a prison riot? Of course, I’m speaking of 1987’s John Saxon directed Zombie Death House. It’s the most holiday appropriate viewing since Santa Clause conquered the Martians.

Rich vs. Poor

Without royalty and peasants, there would be no cause for fireworks this 14th. How does horror celebrate the tragic beauty of class division? Generally, with the poor kicking the rich’s ass or better yet, eating them. Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs has a nice ghetto vengeance on oppressive slumlords plot, while George Romero’s still underrated Land of the Dead teaches the wealthy a fine--and final--lesson on oppressing the poor from a glass house. 

I Love a Parade

The French like to honor Bastille Day with a parade and thankfully, so does horror. Scariest parade ever? The coulrophobes among film fans will rightfully cite Killer Klowns From Outer Space, where the full-blown devastation of the titular villain invasion is revealed via ticker tape marching. Alternative watches? I suppose I Know What You Did Last Summer could suffice (especially since it’s so seasonal). Except it doesn’t have cotton candy. And it kind of sucks. 

War...What Is It Good For?

National change, societal fixings, and occasionally, good movies. Sadly I come up empty in identifying official French Revolution-set horror, but its American counterpart The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has a nice flashback colonial touch. Something more current? Choose your battle. Class of 1999 features good old fashioned gang warfare (and psychotic robot teachers, natch). Something more epic? Three films in and those werewolves and vampires still can’t get along in the Underworld series. For a simple wartime setting, there’s always the historical--if still 70 years past the original 1789 anniversary--Dead Birds, an eerie and incredibly well-cast (Michael Shannon, Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit, plus more) ghost story set during the American Civil War.

National Pride

Perhaps it’s a resurgence of past mentality (this is the birthplace of the Grand Guignol, after all), but something in the Seine is causing France to produce some of the best--and most brutal--horror films of the decade. High Tension, Martyrs, and Inside are easy recommendations but to best capture the political spirit inherent in July 14th, check out Xavier Gens’ Frontier(s). Part torture porn and part backwoods horror, this 2007 film is set in a near future dystopia where a few petty criminals flee a rioting urban French society (get the connection?). Of course, this gory little slice also features evil Nazis, mutants, and slashed Achilles tendons, If that’s not revolutionary, what is?

It should be noted that I have not one drop of French blood in my veins, so if you have any of your own celebrations, add them in the comments section and wave your flag with pride. If it’s any good, I’ll even let you eat cake.

Martyrs, Spoiled

Me: Psst. Did you see Martyrs?


You: No.


Me: Go away.


You: Dude(tte). What’s your problem?


Me: I can’t go into any detail whatsoever about this movie without spoiling it grosser than a gallon of milk left open in an Elm St. boiler room.


You: Oh.


Me: Yeah.


You: So...should I, like, watch the movie?


Me: Yes.


You: Is it great?


Me: Eh. Yes. No.


You: Yes or no?


Me: I’m not sure. But it’s definitely very good.


You: Okay.


Me: Yeah.


You: Um, later.


Me: I’m glad we had this conversation.


That’s right folks. I did indeed major in Playwriting and English and graduate cum laude. Onto the review, which, in case my Shakespearean dialogue was a little too dense, contains SPOILERS that will make you want to throw hungry wolverine clawed kittens in my direction.

You’ve been warned:


Like many works of art and the artists that create them, a good deal of horror films struggle with identity crises. Their makers have clearly seen enough canon to know what’s expected of their genre and strive to recreate what’s worked in the past while occasionally casting a line out to catch something fresh. The recent (and recently reviewed) Frontier(s), for example, hit all the notes of backwoods horror birthed by classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or the earlier and beloved Spider Baby), but hinted at something new with Nazi undertones and a disappointingly unexplored dystopian setting. Unfortunately, Frontier(s) stopped short of forming anything revolutionary. For all the moody chaos in the bleak police state future, it delivered straight--if exceptionally well-done--gore cinema (known today as the heavily stigmatized torture porn).


Martyrs, the Canadian/French sleeper that has been making its prestigious rounds through the DVD community this past year, turns the confines of horror sub-genres into a fascinating, intelligent, and imperfect collage. Just when you think you know what type of film auteur Pascal Laugier is delivering (mangled ghostly girl? J-horror!), one shockingly explicit action transforms the story and style into another (shotgun in suburbia? home invasion!) and another (secret torture den? Underground society conspiracy!) until finally, the last 30 minutes lets Martyrs come into its own... for better and worse.


Quick Plot: Somewhere I never want to go in an industrial area of France, a young girl runs screaming through an empty morning street. We soon learn that this is Lucie, a mysterious orphan who was held captive and tortured, though no culprit or motive has been discovered. The understandably disturbed child is befriended by the pretty and maternal Anna, her roommate at a sad little orphanage that seems not entirely safe from the ghosts of Lucie’s past.

15 years later, the action shifts to a secluded upper middle class home where a typical family eats breakfast over the usual morning bickering. The doorbell rings. Father answers it, his face registering confusion, fear, and (possibly) recognition before a blast of shotgun busts through his stomach. At the other end of the smoking weapon is a now grown Lucie, her face still holding all the fear and hell of the little girl we met ten minutes earlier.

And then other stuff happens.


I could continue to describe the story, but if you’re reading this far, you already know it (and if you don’t and therefore haven’t heeded my SPOILER warning, you deserve a large heaping of force-fed gruel and systematic beatdowns). A lot of things happen in Martyrs, and none of them are good. Okay, a lot of things happen in Martyrs and none of them are any more pleasant than a route canal performed by Steve Martin’s dentist character in Little Shop of Horrors. At the same time, this isn’t a Saw sausage fest that tries to top itself or other extreme films with cinematic violence for shock’s sake. Bad things happen because the story demands them. Bad things happen because there are people in this world that do them.

Long haunted by a gollum-ish female, Lucie shoots some people--two innocent, two not. This does nothing to quell the demon that hunts her. When Anna meets the inspiration for Lucie’s trauma, she (and we) is equally repulsed, terrified, and heartbroken. It’s almost a relief to see her head blown off, for both the character’s sake and our own.

Like the film itself, there is no clear morality in the universe. People torture young women to unlock a mystery that probably shouldn’t be unlocked. Lives are destroyed in beyond painful ways. Yet the head mistress of this diabolical underground community gets her answer: a martyr is made in Anna, a skinless Joan of Arc without the independence to do anything with her bravery.


Or maybe Anna wins. What she tells the grand torturess, we never know. Maybe she lies. Maybe she whispers horrors of what lies beyond this world to terrify and guilt this macabre madame into suicide. Maybe she creates an imaginary eden to lure the old woman closer and quicker to an eternity of hell. Or maybe she has nothing to report and proves that the years of cruelty were for naught. We don’t know.

Personally, I’m not ready to rank Martyrs as a Great Film just yet. It’s an excellent movie, yes, and one that is clearly made by an artist with the potential to steer the genre in a solidly new direction. Technically, Martyrs is near perfect; the acting is spot on, the visuals are beautiful, and the editing is effective. If there’s a flaw, it comes somewhere at the 40 minute mark, where, despite what I recall as being tense and engrossing staging, something starts to drag. Maybe it’s the Haute Tension-ish look sparked by a pretty girl in a bloody tanktop or the not-too-surprising first reveal of Lucie’s real tormentor. I can’t put my finger on it, but at some point, I fell out before coming back.

Laugier does not reinvent the horror film, but he does reshape what’s already there with fascinating results. One hour in, I realized that I had absolutely no idea where this film was going. I haven’t really felt that way since the total surprise of The Descent. Where Neil Marshall’s spelunking scarefest led us into a nightmare with jumps and fear, Laugier’s Martyrs starts with hell and philosophically transforms it into purgatory.

High Points
Although we never get to truly know either character, both Morjana Alaoui and Mylene Jamponoi make intensely sympathetic and haunted characters


The minimalist score constantly evolves throughout the film, never settling on a predictable pattern to warn us of mood shifts


From the snowing feather gunshot to Anna’s gleaming eyes, Laugier creates some incredibly memorable visuals

Low Points
While I originally admired the opening Peeping Tom-esque home movie documentary feel of the child Anna and Lucie, it’s abandoned so quickly that I wonder if it was a simple exposition device


Lessons Learned
Overachieving in butterfly swimming competitions is just asking for trouble


When your shower is clogged, the best solution is to dig a ten foot hole in your front yard and find the little mouse bastard that’s been hanging out in the pipes


There are few things more frightening than old French ladies with money and Norma Desmond headwraps

Rent/Bury/Buy
You need to see this movie, if only to throw your hat into the discussion of what the fuss is all about. (But then, if you’re reading this far, you’ve already seen it.) As I explained in my yesterday’s posting, Martyrs didn’t quite live up to the hype I’d been hearing about it through podcasts and the blogosphere, but it definitely did leave an equally deep emotional and philosophical impression. Because of its ambiguous ending, it’s also a film to share and discuss, so I could certainly endorse a buy from your local independent dealer. A thorough making-of is included in the extras, giving you detailed discussions about every aspect of filming. All in all, it’s a solid, unique, and thoughtful horror that highlights Pascal Laugier as a filmmaker to watch with two open eyes. As the man tapped to helm the remake (reboot? I can’t keep up with the evolving language of stale cinematic trends) of Hellraiser, it’s guaranteed that we’ll be seeing more of him. Let’s hope he continues to make cinema his own.

France: The Final Frontier(s)

Of all the historical villains in recent history, it's hard to top Nazis when it comes to real-life monsters. Anybody that's watched a beauty pageant should know that white confidence is scary, and who's more confident in their own genes than Hitler's loyal fans? Retired Nazis are even more disturbing. What does a zealot--in this case, one with the religion of Aryan superiority--do when his or her cause has been defeated?


In the case of Frontier(s), you move to the French countryside, start procreating to produce very tall children, bait wayward travelers and cook some human flesh. The fact that France is now a fascist state in violent turmoil is just gravy.


Our hero/victims are a young group of thieves on the run: a shy Muslim, an obnoxious bleach job straight out of a teen sex comedy, a gun-waving angry guy, his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her bleeding brother. After a botched robbery and even botchier ER stop, the youths split up and set for the border, eventually reuniting at the kind of roadside inn that makes Motel Hell look like a five star resort (okay, maybe just a Best Western with free HBO). Two hostesses--one seemingly escaped from a haute couture runway, the other with more blond rage than Daryl Hannah's Kill Bill stunt double-- offer/demand carnal credit as an appetizer to what turns into a full family meal. The only real drawback is that said family includes a psychotic Third Reich exile and his gargantuan sons.

Frontier(s) follows a long, sometimes illustrious but more often low-rent tradition of hillbilly horror. Terrible things happen to our young cast, some of which is suspenseful and all of which is plain nasty. Recent years have shown that if there's one thing the French do well that isn't croissants, it's blood-soaked slashery flicks. From unique classics (Inside) to deeply flawed yet well-made gorefests (High Tension), French horror is stomping on the roses of Uncle Sam's turf and using the thorns to slowly bleed anyone that gets in the way (at least in the PG13 version; anything stronger usually involves more attacks on genitalia or filleting in the style of the Iron Chef). Frontier(s) is, in the modern definition, your fairly standard torture porn, but it's certainly worth its weight in guts and bones. And let's face it: fertile Nazis make nasty patriarchs.

High Points
A tunnel crawl chase makes the best use of claustrophobia since The Descent


From the vertically gifted family to leading lady Karina Testa, the actors attack their roles with energy and intrigue

The final imagery of our heroines has a paper dollish quality that adds beauty to extreme horror


Low Points
The political backdrop tries to set a chaotic mood, but it's lost too quickly once the predictable cannibal craze kicks in

The middle female child seems to have boiling resentment that's never explored


Call me greedy, but one or two quick glimpses at deformed mine-dwelling children just doesn't satisfy my appetite


Lessons Learned
When fleeing an isolated home at the end of the road, do not jump into the first car you see that's heading in the very direction you just crawled through pig shit to escape from


Nazis will honor last requests with promptness and efficiency


If you knock out one racist murderer with two very large and equally racist brothers, always remember that gloating just buys time for the next one to come along


French hospitals are not particularly hospitable


Rent/Bury/Buy
Rent: It's a definite horror experience, but I don't see Frontier(s) having a strong re-watchability factor. My Netflix disc was rather barebones, and while the gore is unique and refreshingly rough, the plot offers little innovation or food (of the non-human kind) for thought. I would love to see a prequel that allows for a more creative storyline rather than the by-the-numbers backwoods massacre formula that seems to be required of a film of this type. I'm certainly intrigued to see director Xavier Gens' next foray; let's home he keeps the executions but finds a new buildup.