A Fortnight of Terror Guest Post: James Wan… Boo!
The first guest post for this week comes from Jon Fisher, a very good friend of mine. Here he turns his focus onto the fantastic young Australian horror director James Wan.
Horror has always enjoyed a love/hate relationship with movie audiences. Because of their cost-effectiveness and inbuilt audience (hardcore fans and teenagers), in any given year there’s guaranteed to be a dozen or more horror titles. Most of them are made on autopilot, with plots and characters cobbled together from any number of clichés. Some are more memorable, tapping into humans’ natural trepidation with things that fall into the Uncanny Valley – events or beings that confuse our brain as to whether or not danger is present or not. The most enjoyable and interesting horror films try to present the supernatural as living exclusively in the Uncanny Valley. Inanimate objects that appear to move of their own accord, malevolent demons that come from somewhere… else, with dubious motivations; bumps in the night, in short, spook the hell out of us.
In the era before movies (and certainly before the era of modern Western hyper-rationality), ghost stories were widely believed, and even specific locations avoided by communities because of the supernatural mischief-makers supposedly lurking within. (I once stayed in a country town in which seemingly all of the town’s 3,000-strong population would change their route to avoid walking past an old mansion in which they swear any entrant would receive what they called a ‘ghost-massage’).
Rationality, of course, ruins the fun. Every time any thinking person hears a so-called ‘expert’ in a horror movie babble on about the occult as if there was a body of empirical evidence to back up what they’re saying, the illusion is busted. Think of the ghost hunter in Paranormal Activity (2007), who floats in and out of the haunted house with the air of a prize-winning economist. The challenge of making a really good horror movie is to present material that is, innately, completely irrational, and yet still manage to convince audiences that it’s creepy.
The films of James Wan are informed by all of this – a deep familiarity with the Uncanny Valley, an appreciation for the schlock and inherent silliness of the horror genre, as well as an understanding that such subject material, if treated the right way, can engage audiences as well as creep them out. And that is, truly, what Wan’s films try to do – give us the creeps. It’s regrettable that his breakthrough hit Saw (2004) is seen as the film that ushered in the filthy torture-porn renaissance of the middle of last decade, because Saw relied far more on manipulation of the human psyche than on explicit torture.
After a dodgy middle period (including Dead Silence (2007) which bordered on self-parody), James Wan has been active again over the last two years, with Insidious (2011) and The Conjuring (2013) arriving in relatively quick succession. The films act as sort of companion pieces to each other. Both are about a young family moving into a classic haunted house, full of high-ceilinged bedrooms, secret passageways, ominous basements and an endless supply of nooks and crannies. Both movies linger ever-so-slightly on the ‘technical’ gibberish that surrounds ghost whispering and paranormal investigation (the sombre lectures given by Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjurer, the humorous squirting machine methodically employed by Leigh Whanell’s character in Insidious). The Conjuring even discloses to us, in the pre-credits, that it is ‘based on the true story’, although it’s not clear if it means that in a Coen Brothers Fargo sense or a Texas Chainsaw Massacre sense.
I’m not aware of whether James Wan believes in ghosts or if he just believes in ghost movies. Regardless, he approaches the material with a plethora of enthusiasm and verve. His manipulation of the Uncanny Valley is first-rate – the weird prologue of The Conjuring about a possessed doll; a game of ‘hide-and-clap’ in which a poltergeist decides to mess with the homeowner.
Occasionally Wan’s work is amusingly derivative (i.e. the toothless crone waiting on top of a dresser), other times it is outstandingly stylish – the final shot of The Conjuring, for instance, is tense, suspenseful, and beautifully timed. Much of the set-up of Insidious is artfully crafted. Sometimes, though, Wan almost ratchets the tension up too high; so high that the scene can’t be resolved satisfactorily. Take, for instance, the slow-burning scene in The Conjuring in which a child wakes up his sibling, insisting that something is standing next to the door. The scene builds and builds beautifully, but how does it end? With nothing more than the slam of a door.
Which highlights another issue with Wan’s films; the repetition. Maybe there just isn’t enough meat on the bones of his screenplays to warrant a two-hour feature. Wan injects both Insidious and The Conjurer with at least the semblance of an emotional arc, but usually the relationships between the characters are suggested rather than explored. We understand the sentiment in The Conjurer when Ed tells Lorraine he can’t let her join him in an exorcism because of the danger posed, but only in an abstract sense. Ditto the pain that Josh Lambert feels in Insidious about his family’s crumbling dynamics, so much so to the point he returns late at night just to avoid them.
In the midst of all that, there are sequences in Insidious and The Conjuring that work on their own terms so well. Are such moments worth the price of admission? Do our expectations of how much movies can achieve emotionally automatically lower simply because they belong to the genre of horror?
Viewers probably know if they are likely to enjoy a James Wan movie. Those who won’t find anything to enjoy in his work are probably the sort of person who hates any sort of horror film. But for those that are willing to suspend some disbelief, to give the material a chance and who have a relatively firm constitution, movies like Insidious and The Conjuring are a breath of fresh air compared to the dreck of horror movies normally shoved down the general public’s collective throat. All else aside, it is fair to state that if you are a squeamish person, James Wan makes movies that are likely to make you squeam.
Jon formerly wrote The Film Brief website and hosted a podcast of the same name (with me as his co-host). You can now find Jon’s latest work at Wide Angle Iris, a site he runs with the talented Rollie Schott. Be sure to check out their stuff over at that site.
Also don’t forget that over this fortnight, you have the chance to win an as yet unconfirmed (but definitely choice) prize courtesy of Madman Entertainment, so be sure to get liking and commenting to go into the draw. Check out all the details here.
Insidious
Given the presence of director James Wan, I am claiming this review of Insidious (2010) as part of my focus on Australian film. Wan and creative partner Leigh Whannell famously had to head abroad in order to get the necessary financing for their film Saw (2004). It has worked well for them too, with both of them carving out nice little careers in America.
I have been enjoying horror films more over the last year or two, after realising that whilst atmospheric and at their best highly tense to watch, they were not going to leave me all that scared, unable to sleep for days like I feared. Whilst it didn’t keep me up for days, Insidious is one of the scarier horror flicks I have seen. The first half is a near perfect Haunted House jaunt that is seriously tense and creepy. It sees a married couple, played by Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson, have their son fall into a coma. Soon after, numerous creepy happenings start taking place. One of the best aspects of this section of the film was that it felt like a pretty realistic presentation of how a couple would react to such an intense situation, as fractures begin to emerge in their relationship. The second half, whilst perhaps not purely as successful as the first, successfully takes the story into some interesting and delightfully creepy places. It also leads to a conclusion of the film that is satisfying, and I for one loved the setup for the sequel at the end.
Watching this film got me thinking how little respect or even attention Wan gets here in Australia. His films get decent releases, but there is not the same focus on him as ‘one of our own’ and how well he is doing in comparison to other actors and directors. Perhaps most of that is due to the fact that he is working in the horror genre which does not get the respect it deserves. Hopefully this will change eventually, because on the evidence of Insidious, Wan is one of our very best directors. The film looks incredible under Wan’s stewardship. Even in the scenes of relative normalcy, Wan is very good at using the camera to create tension in a really disconcerting way. He achieves this generally in a very simplistic, old school manner, by really thinking of the best place to place the camera in each scene. A level of thought that is seemingly not bothered with in so many films. I am not for a second suggesting Wan is the next Hitchcock (he isn’t), but the way he thought out his scenes and took the care to think about the spot that placing his camera would bring the most to each scene, reminded me a lot of the great Brit’s work.
The Aussie flavour to the film leaks over to the cast as well. Rose Byrne, as the female lead, gives the best performance in the film. She is able to give a real sense of her character and the troubles that have plagued her life. Whannell partners up with Angus Sampson to fill a comedic relief slot. I liked the performances of those too, but was not so fond of the characters. Tonally the comedic stylings were just a little too light and not integrated with everything else that was going on. All the performances in Insidious were at the very least decent. Patrick Wilson, whilst in the shadow of his onscreen wife Byrne, is quite good. Lin Shaye as the employer of Whannell and Sampson, does really well to balance her role as part old kook who cannot be trusted, and the only hope for those involved. I also really liked the use of sound in Insidious. One of the major gripes I have with sound in many contemporary horror films is the fact that it is used cheaply to trick people into scares. In Insidious the sound is used to build atmosphere, but more importantly to boost the effect of scares that are already happening on screen.
I’m shamefully behind on catching up with Wan’s films (this is the first I have seen). But Insidious impressed the hell out of me, so I will be getting on to the others. A clever update on the classic haunted house flick that is genuinely scary, I can definitely recommend this film to anyone with the slightest interest in the genre. Or just if you want to see the work of one of the better young directors working today.
Verdict: Pint of Kilkenny
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100 Bloody Acres
Recently released in Aussie cinemas, and elsewhere around the world on VOD platforms is the helluva fun comedy-horror flick 100 Bloody Acres (2012). Hopefully this film can gain a decent audience around the parts, because it really deserves it. Plus it would be great to see those behind the film, such as the brotherly directorial team of Colin and Cameron Cairnes, get more chances to show off their stuff.
Set in rural Australia, the film follows the Morgan brothers, small business owners with a massive fertiliser contract to fill. Only trouble is that the phenomenal batch of fertilizer they previously supplied happened to contain a secret ingredient… human bodies. An ingredient in short supply. At the beginning of the film, the younger of the siblings Reg finds a body in the wreckage of a car accident. So he snaffles it and heads back to the farm. On his way there, he stumbles across three festival goers, hitchhiking their way to the gig. Reg, eager to impress his big brother, picks them up with a view to turning them into fertiliser. Only, the Morgans aren’t murderers. At least not yet. All the other bodies they included in their product were just found in car crashes.
Back at the Morgan Brothers farm is where the ‘fun’ really starts. It is also where the older brother Lindsay, played by Angus Sampson, makes his first appearance. Sampson will be known to overseas readers from his work in James Wan’s Insidious (2011) and to Aussie readers from a bunch of (predominately comedic) things. Including a bunch of star turns in the Aussie show Thank God You’re Here such as this one:
Whilst the entire cast is good, Sampson is definitely the star here. He plays somewhat against type, being really quite menacing and overbearing and also strikes up a really good chemistry with Damon Herriman who plays his onscreen younger brother. Speaking of Herriman, he provides a well-meaning, if a little dopey foil to Sampson’s unhinged menace. The plot of the film is a clever inversion of the paranoia around hitchhikers in the Aussie outback. All three of the actors who play the hitchhikers are really good, especially so is Anna McGahan as Sophie. She does really well in a role that had it been poorly brought to life could have cruelled the film and made some of the bolder moments in the film feel utterly absurd. Also, this film features by far the best John Jarrett cameo of the past 12 months. Take that Tarantino.
Whilst the mixing of comedy and horror has been done really well by quite a number of films, plenty more have failed miserably in trying to pull it off. Some forget to put any menace or suspense into the horror elements. Whilst others are just miserably unfunny and embarrassing in their attempts to do so. 100 Bloody Acres hits the spot. After a gentle, wry start, the gore picks up quite a lot and whilst the ending is perhaps never in doubt, there is still a decent amount of suspense around exactly how things are going to go down. As for the comedy, it is a definite success, with the laughs ranging from the subtle to the hilarious character of Reg and his interactions with Sophie and ‘Bex’. The other thing aside from humour that the script does really well is that it actually makes you care about the characters. So often in horror/slasher type films the attitude seems to be, we are going to kill them anyway, so why bother making these people interesting? 100 Bloody Acres, while not dwelling over minutely detailed back stories, gives enough interesting tidbits for each character and especially the relationships between them to make you invested in what happens to them. Whether you are cheering for them to end up ground to a bloody fertiliser pulp, or hoping they can avoid that fate altogether. The film also looks really sharp, the cinematography makes the rural settings pop and also picks up every last little bit of grime and gore.
It is really good to see an Aussie comedy-horror film such as 100 Bloody Acres getting a relatively wide release. Even without the comedic elements, this film would be a serviceable little horror flick. But the fact that the humour is well executed and the performances all round hit the spot, make this right up there with my favourite Aussie flicks of the year so far. Go check it out.
Verdict: Pint of Kilkenny
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Sanctum
One of the first films that James Cameron turned his attention to after Avatar (2009), was the Aussie genre film Sanctum (2011) which Cameron produced. That fact, as well as the fact it was (I believe) the first Australian film to utilise 3D, got the film a relatively large amount of hype, at least here.
Whilst the film was relatively panned by critics and did not go so well at the box office, I think it deserves a bit of a reappraisal. Definitely imperfect, Sanctum is an atmospheric and refreshingly dark thriller. You know what is good for creating atmosphere? Frickin caves. You know what the only thing scarier than caves is? Frickin cave diving. Sanctum makes the best of these indisputable facts as it traps an eclectic bunch of divers deep within a cave system in Papua New Guinea. With their path to the surface blocked, their only option is to journey through the previously unexplored cave system to find the ocean. The film is beautifully shot. Some of the establishing shots of the PNG countryside are jaw-dropping and the budget clearly extended to some really excellent aerial photography. Without overdoing things, the photography also ramps up the suffocating claustrophobia that cave diving brings. The kind of claustrophobia that can, and does, seriously affect one’s mental state. The narrative is a little silly. It reminded me of that terrible film Vertical Limit (2000) where a whole bunch of people die in a mountain rescue, but you still feel happy because the right one lives. But as an exercise in tension, it works pretty well, managing to overcome dafter moments such as a base jump into the cave. This was my second viewing of the film and I did notice this time that it is quite a difficult watch. There is a brutal edge to many of the proceedings and it is rather harrowing to sit through things right til the end. Sitting through it will reward though, because there is heaps to like about the film.
The performances in Sanctum are a bit of a mixed bag. Richard Roxburgh is the most effective as the grizzled veteran diver Frank McGuire who has never been able to build much of a relationship with his son, preferring instead to focus on his career as a cave diver. As his son Josh, Rhys Wakefield is serviceable and makes you believe in the angsty relationship that he shares with his old man. I thought Ioan Gruffudd was a better actor than this though. He is utterly abysmal in this film. Much of this is due to the accent he attempts to put on. I think it is meant to be American, but it is truly hideous and really distracting. It definitely takes a certain breed of person to invest your life in caving and especially cave diving. Not exactly my cup of tea. But the film brings to life this misfit gang and taps into some of the psychology behind why they choose to spend their time deep underground in scuba gear, living on the precipice of death. You can definitely get a sense of the attraction of being able to see something that no human being has ever been privileged enough to see before.
Sanctum looks incredible – both above and below ground this is a really well shot film. As a coherent well-acted narrative the returns are a little variable, but as far as tense, claustrophobic thrillers go, you can do a whole lot worse.
Verdict: Stubby of Reschs
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Road Train
I always try and be as respectful as possible when reviewing any film, and even though I try to be as unbiased as possible, this is especially true when reviewing Australian films. However I think that the greatest disrespect to an Australian film on my part would be to give it an easy ride when sharing my thoughts with you all.
It is from this perspective that I have to say Road Train (2010) is one of the most abysmal films I have ever endured. The film was just so disappointing because I thought the premise had a whole lot of potential, even if it did seem to be a little derivative of Spielberg’s Duel (1971). The film sees two young couples on an outback camping trip harassed by and eventually forced off the road by a rogue road train. And then something or other happens. It is not exactly clear what. And it is not at all enjoyable to watch. In fact it is simultaneously mind numbingly boring and mind blowingly rubbish. A quick diversion into Australian terminology here, as I believe Road Train was released under a different title in different markets. A road train is simply a massive truck that drives freight throughout outback Australia. They are literally trains on the road, some of them many carriages long. I think they are unique to Australia, utilised because of the sheer size and remoteness of much of the country. So they are a seriously imposing piece of machinery. That could be put to some seriously wicked use in a thriller/horror film. Needless to say the idea deserves better than this effort which actually feels sort of like a film made by teenagers on a weekend, but you know, with a really expensive camera.
This is not even a film that wastes a lot of really great components. It is a film that basically fails on every level, with all it has going for it a fantastic premise and the beautiful scenery in which it is shot. Aside from that it is inexplicably bad. Worst of all (probably) is the horribly obscure plot. A little intrigue is nice, even integral to a good thriller or horror flick. But you have to at least hint at the malevolence that is at play to get people in. You cannot just leave it entirely obscured. Especially given that it is not as if there is some awesome M. Night twist to blow your feeble little minds towards the end. It is gradually revealed that the truck sends people kinda mad… and there is a mincer where you can put human bodies in one of the trailers. Or some shit like that. I didn’t care and you won’t either. The script of the film is clunky, cringeworthy and terrible, which is not helped by the four young leads who deliver it being decidedly average. The sole exception is Sophie Lowe of Beautiful Kate (2009) fame, but even she can only rise to ok levels, basically down to the material she is given to work with. There are a couple of action sequences that should be really incredible, especially one early on where the road train runs our heroes’ car off the road. But even that cannot raise the collective heart beat of those watching.
It is strange actually, every time that you think Road Train cannot get any worse, it actually does. Tis like some cruel joke and the 86 minute running time drags and feels a whole lot worse than that. No film can overcome a script and acting this terrible. Especially this one with zero scares, zero atmosphere and just zero semi-interesting elements.
Verdict: Schooner of Tooheys New
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