Light It Up

 

I'm a sucker for a good hat. When you open a film with an outfit like this, complete with sequins that don't quite come across in this still, you've got me:

Quick Plot: Incredibly stylish, woefully sad Maria Jose is considering jumping off a ledge in her small rural town when a mysterious, muddied child appears. Maria pauses her end of life plans to take the girl to the nearest police station but gets pulled over instead. When the cops get physical with her new surrogate mother, the child summons some telekinesis to make one policeman kill the other before bursting into flames.

As babysitting gigs go, it's not the worst job.

See, Maria Jose has had a rough life. Thirteen years earlier, her son Lolo, a dwarf hated by his classmates, died by suicide after severe bullying by the mayor's son. Maria Jose's husband David has since left to start a new family with the much younger (but very sweet) Ari. Teenagers dub her as a witch, and their parents are no better. Even the town's head priest treats her as if she's infected.

The arrival of Lucia, as Maria Jose soon dubs her, changes her mood significantly. Lucia is a dwarf and fits perfectly into Lolo's clothes. She also brings news that she's going to destroy the town and its awful inhabitants. Maria Jose is fully down.

As the locals are struck by unexplained illness and physically impossible suicides, all eyes fall on the outsiders. In doing so, the town's own ugly history (long-term and recent) comes to roost. Chaos ensues, and honestly, I don't know that I can actually explain it.

That's not a spoiler warning. I mean at the 3/4 mark, Everyone Will Burn seems to spin out of control in terms of landing any kind of narrative. Shocking things happen only to be immediately undone. Characters are killed...and then they're not. The credits roll and a coda pops up to nearly take us into a completely different movie.

It's frustrating because despite a good twenty minutes spent watching with my head in full confused head tilt, I still loved this movie. Director/co-writer David Hebrero starts things with a bang and keeps the energy up in ways that are stylish, spooky, funny, and fun. At its core, Everyone Will Burn takes a basic apocalypse and lets us see it from the point of view of one small town dripping in hypocritical Catholicism that might indeed deserve its satanic end. The cast is sharp, the score is grand, and there are acts of violence executed in ways I've never quite seen. I wish I understood the actual story more comfortably, but I can forgive a lot when I'm this entertained.

High Points

Everyone Will Burn probably works despite itself due to the incredibly dynamic performance of Macarena Gómez. With soap opera experience, it's not surprising that she's such a master of her own face. Maria Jose is an interesting character on the page, but in Gómez's hands, she's positively riveting

 

Low Points

I'm kind of smart. I paid close attention. And I still have no idea what actually happened in the last twenty minutes of this film

Lessons Learned

Ginger on a fried tomato is magic

When covering up a murder, never forget the crepes

No matter how classy and high-end your life becomes, you never really grow out of wanting to have sex on the chest freezer in your basement

Rent/Bury/Buy

Everyone Will Burn is obviously far from a perfect film, but I had a fantastic time with it. Find it on Kanopy with the full understanding that it doesn't actually come together...and that's okay. 

I Axe the Questions Around Here

 

How is it possible that in 2022, a horror diehard who grew up a mile away from one of the country's best independent video stores with the largest horror selection in the state of New York can STILL discover '80s slashers for the first time? 

Humanity is an endless well of wonder. 

Quick Plot: A promising opening murder follows an ill-fated cigarette puffing nurse through a deadly car wash, where an Uncle Fester-ish masked killer chops her up before the credits can roll. We're off to a neat start!

And now, our movie. 

Meet our hero(?) Gerald, an early internet adapter and all-around jerk. Gerald lives with his grandfather? Uncle? Random old man he likes to harass? It's unclear, but we know this much: Gerald is obsessed with computers and is only mildly less horrible than his best friend Richard, an exterminator who despises his much older, much wealthier wife.

Is there anything less pleasant than hearing someone talk about how much they hate their spouse? Yes, I can think of one: watching said jerk publicly seduce a much younger woman who has no reason to be charmed by a man she knows to be married (and a jerk). 

Anyhoo, Gerald and Richard begin dating Lillian and Susan (a pair of local sisters with incredibly low standards) while our axe murderer continues his reign of terror across town. The sheriff is reluctant to take any action, hoping he can pass each death off as an accident or suicide, but by the time six female bodies have piled up in pieces, the jig is up. 

Could it be Gerald, whose prescient computer obsession and gross sandwiches screams "the boy ain't right?" Lillian's mysterious institution-confined cousin with a childhood swingset head injury? Her shifty father? The shiftier town priest? MAYBE THE INTERNET CAN HELP!

Maybe, and I won't spoil the reveal, but it's 100% the best thing about this oddball of a movie. 

Directed by José Ramón Larraz as a co-production between the US and Spain (and filmed in both countries), Edge of the Axe is, in a word, a hoot. There's a mix of decent and laughable acting (though some of that may have been equally hilarious dubbing) that makes the amateur quality kind of charming, and the recycling of sets from one home to another is something that low budget fans have no choice but to salute.

High Points

I don't know that any of it really adds up, but the big reveal is pretty grand, especially for its time. Bonus points for a killer freeze frame final shot

Low Points

Look, I know we had lower standards for our leads in '80s slashers, but there's nothing redeeming about the ones we have here: Gerald is awful, and Lillian's immediate infatuation with him makes us question her sanity well before the film does

Lessons Learned

Nothing offers the promise of a serious relationship more effectively than wearing a gray-on-gray sweatsuit on your first date

The beauty of country music ballads is that they don't have to rhyme

You know it's true love when you start dressing like your new sweetheart just a week into your courtship

Rent/Bury/Buy

Edge of the Axe is occasionally a good slasher, occasionally a pile of garbage, and entirely something that deserves any '80s horror fan's eyeballs. Have at it on Amazon Prime. 

Snake Eyes

We don’t think of the early 2000s as being any major movement in the horror genre. Following the glossy late ‘90s trend of attractive WB Network stars posed in V-shapes, segueing into the post-millennium boom of J-horror’s American takeover, it was only a matter of time before horror tapped into a meaner, grislier bone (or used a rusty saw blade to grind it off). Torture porn moved mainstream horror cinema into a different direction, which helped to shape the straight-to-video fare like today’s Open Graves.

Filmed in 2006, dropped on the SyFy channel in 2009, and pooped out on DVD by Lionsgate another year later, Open Graves is one of those perfectly ridiculous movies that combines wonky CGI with hot young people in a gloriously terrible way.

Also, it’s basically Jumanji with an occasional boob.

Quick Plot: A pre-credits sequence piles on a messy montage of random torture during the Spanish Inquisition, where Mamba the witch is put to death with her body being turned into a board game (we could only wish to be so lucky). Note that the level of quick-cut violence and nudity collaged together is never really seen again the rest of the film’s running time, leading overthinking horror fans like me to wonder if this sequence was added in post to better fit the style of its time.

A couple of centuries later, a group of hot young twentysomethings are wandering the streets of Spain when Jason (Grind’s Mike Vogel, and sure, he’s done other movies that aren’t Grind, but more importantly, he did Grind) ends up in a mysterious antiques shop. The legless proprietor gives him a familiar looking board game free of charge, which is exactly how you want to spend your drunken nights on the Spanish coast.

Jason, hot and smart surfer Erica (Eliza Dushku, aka Faith the Vampire Slayer), ladies’ man Tomas, and Tomas’s hot girl calendar crew begin the game, which basically just involves rolling dice and reading sepia colored playing cards. The cards either let you roll again or knock you out of the game via ominous poetry. Naturally, said poems prove to be prophetic in early 21st century CGI-filled gore.

Eventually, Jason, Erica, and Tomas figure out that the game itself is haunted. Whoever makes it to the end may have the chance to undo the damage with a winning wish, but there are a lot of venomous snakes, advance age-stinging bees, man-eating crabs, and crazy obsessive Spanish detectives to deal with first. 

Directed by Alvaro de Arminan from a script by Roderick Taylor and Bruce Taylor, Open Graves is a goofy tale that takes itself extremely seriously, which is exactly what you want from a movie like this. Character development stops at “surfer,” “love triangle,” and “lives in a cool lighthouse.” The Spanish coast is a living postcard and everyone is attractive, at least until some outdated computer animation tears their body apart. This movie is no The Sand, but it scratches a similar itch.

High Points

Who can argue with the creativity of deaths on display? Crabbings, snakings, flayings, and intense advanced aging? I’ll take it

Low Points

I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s incredibly unsatisfying for everyone, including the evil deep demon voiced angel/demon apparition of Eliza Dushku who, I guess, has to go through this rather ridiculous process time and time again 

Lessons Learned

Crabs are honest creatures, which I guess makes CGI crabs some kind of hole in the universe?

Unlike their American male counterparts, female Spanish morticians trade sandwiches for shameless flirting

The English translation of “vae victis” is “losers weepers”

16th century Spanish priests had incredible foresight into the 20th century board game market, anticipating its American popularity and wisely printing its instructions and playing cards in English

Riddle Me This

I’ve seen Labyrinth enough times over the course of 30+ years that I can quote the entire screenplay backwards and forwards (it’s a great coping trick for surviving root canals) and yet I STILL do not understand the riddle of the two doors. Well, Open Graves, which focuses on some very dumb characters who prove to make constant dumb decisions throughout these 87 minutes, uses the SAME riddle and somehow, these pretty idiots nail it. Humbled, I am.

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you love a good dumb straight-to-DVD-when-that’s’-how-we-watched-dumb-horror-movies, you will indeed have a fun time with Open Graves. Not surprisingly, it’s streaming on Amazon Prime. Sometimes, this world is a balanced place after all.

Back In Action, Along With the Apocalypse

So I'm married!

It's exciting enough stuff to bring on a Spanish apocalypse!

It's always nice when you have something in common with someone, particularly when said someone is actually a pair of filmmaking brothers who like you, share a fascination with viral plagues and apocalypses. 

Hey, David and Alex Pastor...wanna meet up for nachos while we're at it?

Several years ago, I fell in love with a little film called Carriers. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it took the pretty popular world-in-peril trope and managed to successfully explore it from a different angle. The Last Days is the Pastor brothers' followup, also about a plague but of a very different tone and sort.

Plus, check out their adorable buddy shot

Quick Plot: Marc is a computer programmer struggling to keep his corporate job before an outside resources rep can ax him. At home, his girlfriend Julia longs to start a family, much to the total terror of Marc. His troubles get a little more complicated as the world succumbs to a mysterious disease that renders human into agoraphobes who can't breathe in open spaces. Within a few months, anyone who steps outside falls prey to a seizure-like condition that turns terminal in minutes.

Trapped inside his high rise office building, Marc longs to venture outside to be reunited with Julia, whom he last saw angry at him and on her way to work at a shopping mall. He soon discovers Enrique--the same corporate warrior who almost terminated him when the world had other concerns--has a GPS that might be the only way to navigate the city through underground subways and sewers. The pair reluctantly team up to venture deep into Barcelona, occasionally battling violent scavengers, warring survivors, and, well, bears.

You know how to make anything better? Add a bear.

Between Carriers and The Last Days, the Pastor brothers (who write and direct) demonstrate strong skills behind the camera. More importantly, the team seems to have a genuinely unique viewpoint and interest in exploring common tales (plagues, post-apocalyptic survival) from different perspectives. The plot of The Last Days isn’t that new, but the fact that the story is far more concerned with showing Marc’s progression from cubicle monkey with 21st century doubts to survivor helping to mold the next generation is what ultimately makes this such an involving film.

High Points

For a good stretch of The Last Days, I found myself annoyed at the lack of thematic foresight. Yes, the characters playfully discuss what might have caused the strain, but it almost felt as if 'agoraphobic plague' was simply a cool idea that wasn't going to be given any actual weight. It's really not until the final act that the film reveals what it's about, and I ultimately found that far more rewarding and powerful than if it had been hammered at us from the start

Low Points

There are a few leaps of logic and happy coincidences that might feel a little too sweet for what seems to start as a gritty tale of the apocalypse

Lessons Learned

As if we didn't already know this: it always pays to start stocking your apocalypse shelter, both at home and the office

Know your underground urban geography. Love your underground urban geography

Never forget: just when it all gets quiet and peaceful, BEARS

Rent/Bury/Buy

While I wasn't quite as impressed with The Last Days as I was with the out-of-nowhere Carriers, I still found this film to be quite good. The Pastor brothers clearly have excellent (and more importantly, interesting) instincts when it comes to filmmaking. Unlike Greg McLean's now-dull obsession with his Wolf Creek style, I'd be more than happy if David & Alex Pastor remained in the realm of the apocalypse, especially if they continued to explore it through different concepts and tones. 

The Bedbugs Aren't the Only Things Biting

Quick Plot: Cesar is works as the concierge at an expensive apartment building in Barcelona. While his days consist of opening doors and feeding the stomach-sensitive dogs of his tenants, his nights are little more sinister.

Cesar, you see, cannot be happy. Whereas some men would try therapy or overload on sugar, Cesar's solution to his intensely ambivalent life is to find whatever pleasure he can in the unhappiness of others. Especially if he's the one who causes it.

Enter Clara, a pretty and bubbly young tenant who exits the building every day with a smile and warm thank you. She's the kind of woman you're glad  to have as a neighbor, a genuinely nice soul with as sunny a disposition as you can find.

Naturally, Cesar plots to tear it all away.

What follows is a progressively sick little game of sadism. Every night, Cesar sneaks into Clara's bedroom and dopes her with chloroform, enjoying how she groggily wakes up later and later the following morning. He clogs her sink, planting a beloved family heirloom there just so he can rust it up with Drano. He sends anonymous love letters and text messages with a creepy, ominous slant and creates a fully armed cockroach invasion without batting an eye.

Cesar is a bad man.

And yet, we see everything through his point of view, meaning that as much as we want him to get caught, we're also hesitant since doing so would end the movie and our camera view. 

Written by Alberto Marini and directed by Jaume Balaguero (one half of REC and REC 2), Sleep Tight is a film that doesn't play nice. Cesar is a cruel man, one who enjoys tormenting the innocent Clara while also verbally unraveling a nice, lonely older woman who made the mistake of thinking he was her friend. A scene where he quietly tells that tenant that her life is empty, never raising his voice to do so, provides some of the most unsettling minutes I've ever spent with a film.

He's a monster, plain and true. But as he makes his midnight calls to a radio show on the roof of his building, flirting every evening with the possibility of suicide, it's clear to us that the only cure for Cesar's chronic misery is indeed making others feel the same way. It's sick and sad, especially since his target is a truly good person. But perhaps that's what makes the movie such an effective little slice of cruel.

High Points

A featurette on the DVD includes an interview where the screenwriter discusses some of the revision process, including the fact that several subplots were cut before filming. Excellent decision. Because Sleep Tight is seen entirely from Cesar's eyes, the film moves with incredibly tense momentum. It also prevents Cesar from becoming a typical villain, since we rely so much on his perspective to follow the story. Had the script bounced around with minor characters, Cesar might have been reduced to a simpler monster and not the fascinating character he ultimately is

Speaking of, as Cesar, Luis Tosar nails it

Low Points

Credit to the film for its ending, but OUCH

Lessons Learned

Nanny cams aren't just for nannies you know

Never pair a potato pancake with a French bulldog

Kids today are getting very crafty about their blackmail demands

Rent/Bury/Buy

I won't be eager to revisit Sleep Tight anytime soon, but some years down the line, I look forward to seeing how it plays upon repeat viewing. It's disturbing on a very unique level, sort of like a lighter version of Michael Haneke's Cache or a calmer version of The Vanishing. Except maybe not at all. Point is, Sleep Tight is well worth a watch, as is the making-of feature included on the DVD. Quiet horror at its best.