The Roost (2005) : Bats Always Get A Bad Rap

My biggest problem with Ti West's films are the character narratives. They are so. damn. boring.  This was definitely the case (to a lesser degree) with House of the Devil and most certainly with The Innkeepers. And I'd be lying if I said The Roost was any different. I think West tries to make his films too true to life, because let's face it -in life we ramble on and on about absolutely nothing most of the time. Meaningless conversations are the norm, if I'm being honest.  But that doesn't mean I want to sit and watch it for twenty minutes on film, waiting for something - ANYTHING - to start to happen!

Because of the insanely boring dialogue, it makes the characters seem impossibly inane and even harder to give a shit about.  What Ti West does have going for him is an uncanny ability to present thick and delicious atmosphere that very few directors can top. In the three above films I mentioned, atmosphere is the key ingredient.  Dark roads, forboding houses, fog rolling in, strange noises, and unexpected twists and turns...all while we patiently wait between dialogue for something to occur.  In The Roost, West's first feature-length directorial outing, we sure do wait. And wait.  I love a slow burn just like the next guy but man, this is ridiculous.

Before we even get to the "real" film, there is an extended little vignette that is in black and white and introduces us to a television horror host played by none other than Tom Noonan (yay!).  I'll admit, this prelude did add a bit to the film.  It was sort of a tamed down version of something Rob Zombie did two years prior in House of 1000 Corpses.  It is here where you can tell a director who has a serious love of the genre and the old thrillers that were played in the wee hours of the morning, hosted by various characters over the years.
Here, the horror host describes the upcoming film, almost poking fun at it before it begins.
It should be noted that though this is a low-budget outing, West does a good job evoking creepiness and impending doom. 

Four friends (well, I think they're friends- for a while it's hard to tell!) are driving to another friend's Halloween wedding, (which incidentally must be an uber-casual affair - from the way our quartet are dressed in jeans and sweatshirts) when they are driving through a covered bridge and a giant bat slams into their windshield, causing them to (of course) wreck the car, stranding themselves in the deep dark woods.  As is common horror movie tactics, the foursome treks off into the night to look for help.

 Meanwhile, an elderly couple are locking up their house and packing their truck for an apparent trip of some kind.  The little missus asks Gramps if he locked the barn and with a rolling of the eyes, he goes to check.  Unfortunately he has never noticed the giant fucking horde of huge-ass bats roosting there (it is his barn, isn't it?) and he meets an untimely (or timely, as the case may be - he IS quite old!) death, as does his wife when she comes to check on him.
Yep, them there bats are huge- like vampire bats, ya hear?

Naturally our lost kids (again, forgive me as I can't recall any of their names and am too lazy to look them up because quite frankly, I don't care) end up at said house and from there it's just death to all humans.  Weirdly though, West thought it wasn't enough to have giant vampire bats picking off his cast one by one.  Instead, he bizarrely has the victims turn into zombies when bitten by the bats (or by other zombies, natch).
Um, okay.  I was seriously okay with just the bats.  But I guess it wasn't gory enough. Zombies eating people is almost always bloodier than simple bat bites!

Interrupting the film with 'Tom Noonan The Horror Host' at key places within the film was a bit goofy as well. Much as I liked the beginning of the movie and its nostalgic throw back to the Chiller Theater days, it was a little bit disruptive to have it in the middle of the film.

Once again, I have to reiterate how un-enamored I was with the characters. We are not given any back story whatsoever on them and therefore tend not to have any sympathy going forward.  I could barely recall their names by the end  middle of the film.  (West's The Innkeepers was far superior in this, at least. We really got to know the two leads - even though again we are bored to damn tears by their mundane conversations. I think we are supposed to get a hipster feel from them, that they are cooler than they actually are).   

The Roost does do one thing right. It doesn't drag the film out too long. If this would've been a two hour film I think I'd have possibly hung myself from my ceiling fan. Thankfully, it only runs an abbreviated 80 minutes long.

All in all, I can't say I loved The Roost. Far from it. But I didn't hate it and it does have some decent action and gratifying gore, and like I said, atmosphere is key here.  And lets not forget how damn cool it is to watch people get attacked by giant  vampire bats, that always rates high in my book! You could do a lot worse.  But even Ti can do better. And does.  Somehow though, this movie ranked as one of the Top 10 Movies of 2005 by Bloody-Disgusting.  Was 2005 really that bad of a year for horror?

* By all means though, stick around for the extras, which include Ti West's student film: Prey, as well as an interesting little piece on bats that debunks them as creatures of horror and helps to educate on what an important and valuable asset they are!  Bat conservation rocks! www.batcon.org

V/H/S (2012): The Anthology Lives!

Review by Marie Robinson

Greetings, darlings! I have been immensely excited for this film since I first heard about it several months ago. I discovered it by looking up director Ti West’s (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) filmography, eager to see what he was going to come up with next. At the time his next project was an anthology-style film called V/H/S, which sounded awesome, and had a bad-ass trailer. In fact, I believe I mentioned it at the end of my review of The Innkeepers. It became my most anticipated film of the year.

You may know that the film was released On Demand this past week, and although I really wanted to see it on the silver screen when it came to St. Louis in October, I could not pass up the opportunity.

The frame story is about a group of assholes that make money off of videos in the “up-skirt” fashion. One of them (we’ll call him Mustache) says that a guy tipped him off about a video that will cash in for a ridiculous amount of money; all they have to do is steal it from a guy’s house.

When the group arrives at the house and break in they find the owner of the house, an elderly man, dead in his armchair in front of several sets of staticky televisions. Whoever tipped off Mustache told him that they are looking for one specific tape; this man happens to have stacks of them, all unlabeled. The only way they can find “the one” is to watch them.

Each tape was done by a separate director; a list that consists of David Bruckner, Glen McQuaid (I Sell the Dead, Stake Land), Joe Swanberg, Adam Wingard, a group of directors called Radio Silence, and of course, Ti West.

I was SO excited for this movie that I was actually terrified that it was going to disappoint me horribly. Lucky, it was AWESOME!

Seriously, I’m not exaggerating. There are things that could lead you to believe that it is unoriginal. For example, it is a found footage piece and it is the anthology-style, there are dozens of each. However, this film is different from any other film you have experienced. The frame story and each individual “tape” are each completely original and refreshing. Oh, did I mention that this film is fucking scary? Hands down, the most terrifying film I’ve seen all year. I might also add that it is not for the faint of heart; it has gore that “goes there”.

It is stylish, it is clever, and it deserves applause from the horror community. These directors give us hope for the future of the genre, which we need with so many stupid films making money in the mainstream box office (The Apparition and The Possession are two good examples).

Speaking of horror anthologies, I caught wind of another one coming up next month. Called The ABCs of Death, it is a collection of 26 short films, each by a different director, and each film corresponds with a letter in the alphabet.
Obviously each word will be somehow related to horror, what the word may be was left up to the directors, themselves. Ti West is also on board with this one, as well as Adam Wingard, Ben Weatley (director of Kill List), and a directorial debut by beloved genre actress Angela Bettis (favorite of director Lucky McKee).

There is a short trailer/promo thing for it on IMDB, so check that out if you are interested.
It is scheduled to release on September 15th in Canada, October 4th in Russia, and November 2nd in the US (limited).

Let Sleeping Ghosts Lie: The Innkeepers (2011)

Greetings again from me, Marie! What you are quickly learning about me is that I am a sucker for a ghost story. In fact, they are my favorite kind of story!

I’ve been lucky enough to find two deliciously chilling stories of specters from the very same year! 2011 has been kind enough to give us The Awakening (the film I reviewed in my last post), and The Innkeepers.

The latter comes to us from fledgling horror director Ti West, who is best known for his 2009 picture House of the Devil. If you have not seen House of the Devil, you simply must! But that is a topic that would stem an article of its own (go watch it, it’s on Netflix!).

Now we all know that hotels are creepy as hell, we can thank Stephen King for that (thanks, Steve), and the Yankee Pedlar Inn is no exception. And nothing is creepier than an empty hotel, and this particular one is pretty near hollow—most of the rooms stripped of all furniture—for it is the hotel’s final weekend open.

As the film starts out, the building is occupied by only a few souls. There are the two young staff members—the adorable and quirky Claire (played by Sara Paxton, who has acted in such cinematic achievements as Shark Night and the Last House on the Left remake), and the snarky and dorky Luke (Pat Healy). And there are the three occupants—a mother and her child (who Luke affectionately refers to as “that bitch and her kid”) and an aging actress past her prime in town for a convention (Kelly McGillis).

Luke just so happens to run a website on the Yankee Pedlar, which provides a history of the building and accounts of encounters with its alleged ghostly occupants. Even though Luke is the only person who has had actual experiences, Claire is eager to have one of her own and thinks that since the hotel is nearly empty, they have a good chance of making “contact”.

The ghost in question is that of Madeline O’Malley, who was once a guest at the inn and believed to have hung herself there, her body then stowed in the basement by the original owners to avoid bad press.

As night descends Claire is left alone after Luke goes to seek some shut-eye in one of the empty rooms.
Out of boredom and curiosity Claire picks up the EVP recorder (for those of you who aren’t ghost nerds like me, that stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena) that Luke has left for his ghost hunting and makes her way from room to room, trying to pick up the disembodied voice of Madeline O’Malley. The darkness and the silence of the hotel causes Claire to become tense and alert to every small sound, but little actually happens except for some mysterious knocks and rattles and the gentle tinkering of a piano.

As she becomes overwhelmed by her experiences, she receives some unexpected help from Lee Rease-Jones, the retired actress who is residing in the hotel. Lee reveals that the convention she is in town for is a gathering of psychics and healers, and that she herself is a medium. She says that she can help Claire come in contact with Madeline O’Malley through means of her pendulum, her psychic tool of choice.
She does indeed get the ghost on the line, and manages to provide Claire with one important piece of advice—don’t go in the basement.

The next morning, a final guest checks in; a strange old man who insists that he have room 353, even if he has to sleep in it without any furniture, for that room has already been stripped in preparation for the hotel’s closing.

Later on the staff prepares for another long night of boredom by cracking open some beers and going on another EVP hunt. Silly drunk Claire suggests that they investigate the basement (you know, the place where she isn’t supposed to go), and as things get downright spooky, Luke becomes overcome with fear and flees the hotel, leaving Claire alone with the two remaining guests, and whatever ghosts are present as well.

Here’s what I can tell you: Luke isn’t the paranormal expert he claims to be, Lee knows something that she isn’t telling anyone, the man in room 353 has picked his room for a very specific purpose, and Claire is in some serious trouble.

Now, I will admit the first hour of the movie is pretty slow-paced—okay, very slow-paced—and I can’t guarantee it will be able to hold you (I almost gave up on it myself), but I certainly hope it does because the ending is well worth it. The final moments are packed with some serious creepy action and I am just crazy about the ending.

I must say, though, I am really into this Ti West guy. House of the Devil was crazy amazing and that movie and this one show how stylish and clever of a director he is. He loves to start off with a steady-paced story and then—BOOM! Lay the scares on you all at once. It does have a good effect—that is, if you’re into having heart attacks—and I think his ideas are very original.

The characters in The Innkeepers all have a very natural feel to them, particularly Claire and Luke. Their close friendship and sarcastic sense of humor make them very realistic and believable, and they generally seem like fun people to pass the hours with. Okay, maybe not Luke, he’s kind of a prick. But I would definitely be down to hang out with the creepy old man in room 353 or Madeline O’Malley.

I’m ceasing to make sense now, but you should give this film a chance, it may not have enough action to keep your interest sparked, but one thing I must ask is that you keep an eye out for Ti West. He seems to be a very promising young horror director with good ideas and great style, and hopefully he will keep pumping out films that are worthy of the genre. It seems we should see more of him around Halloween this year—I believe he is contributing to a horror anthology film called V/H/S. Sounds interesting enough.

Anyway, here is the moral of the story: let restless ghosts haunt.
~MR