Ally's Review: [REC] 2

The modern film industry is so bereft of fresh ideas that whenever a movie brings something new and exciting to the table it inevitably has to be given a sequel… or a prequel… or (if it's foreign) a remake. Horror is probably the worst genre of them all for churning out sequels, squeezing everything it can out of a great original idea. In that sense, a sequel to the superb [REC] was a dead cert.

[REC] 2 decides to continue where the first movie left off. This time a group of policemen enter the cordoned off Barcelona townhouse. Immediately the film feels very familiar to those who saw the first one. As an audience member you do feel nervous, because you know from experience that you are going to deal with very tense and jumpy moments. It doesn't take long for the action to resume and from that point on you are on a 85 minute roller coaster…

Except the roller coaster's not quite as much fun the second time around. The difficulty that a sequel to [REC] faced was how to move the story on from the first one. Essentially Juame Balaguero and Paco Plaza decided to go through largely the same process as the first one - guys go in largely ignorant of how bad the situation is, lots of carnage ensues, and then we find out more about the cause of it all. One of the problems with creating a movie with such a similar narrative and style is that it loses its potency to shock, frighten and delight the audience.

I was left pretty cold as we left the cinema. The first film not only felt fresh and original, it also had a lot of humour and charm: the characters were pretty engaging. [REC] 2 unfortunately focuses too much on the action and unveiling a major twist on the story. The twist of what actually happened after the events of the first film is pretty divisive for the audience (well, it certainly was for the Horror Club audience). I think it's a potential deal breaker for the film, and what you think of it will decide how much you enjoy the movie. Fin absolutely hated it and wrote the movie off after it, Clarky didn't mind it and quite enjoyed the movie. Personally, I didn't hate it but I just thought it was a bit silly, and I pretty much lost interest. Once the jumps and tension had faded from memory there wasn't much left to take away from the film. You can see the disparity between the three of us reflected in where we rank it on our individual lists (Here, here and here). By way of comparison, all three of us were blown away by the way the first movie wrapped up.

Inevitably, [REC] 3 is in the works and I'm sure it will be worse than the second film. Although they've wisely decided to move the action to a new setting, so who knows? The fact that Balaguero isn't attached to it does make me think the worst though...

If you haven't seen the original you could watch this movie with little confusion and you'd probably really enjoy it, but because it's so similar to the first one comparisons are inevitable for the rest of us. The original is one of the best horror movies of the last 20 years, so it's always going to be tough for the second one to shine in its own right, especially when they decided to make it so similar. Still, I'm sure it made Balaguero and Plaza a lot of money, so fair play to them. It's definitely not the worst sequel ever made and I would probably rate the film higher if I hadn't seen the first film (although I'd still think the twist was mangled).

Fairly frightening, but forgettable fare

Clarky's Review: Paranormal Activity

The most hotly anticipated film in the history of Horror Club (with the exception of the upcoming The Innkeepers from Ti West) and one of the most hyped films of 2010 it was with great excitement and huge amounts of fear that we entered the cinema on a Sunday night last year. Would this produce the first bottle job of HC? It was a genuinely terrifying prospect for all of us after hearing the stories about the film and read the taglines. When Bloody Disgusting describes a film as "..one of the scariest movies of all time. You will be affected as it's hard to ignore the imprint it leaves on your psyche. Nightmares are guaranteed." then you stand up and take notice, especially as a new horror club in it's infancy.

Everyone seemed to be bringing out quotes like this and every advert on TV was filled with night vision shots of people screaming at the screen. I have to admit I was scared before I even got in the cinema. The tension pre screening, was palpable, with Ally, Fin and myself laughing nervously and making jokes about who would be the first to break and leave the cinema. Somewhat in jest, but also an attempt to lower our other members expectatins so that if we did leave there would be less shame.

In fact I was late to the cinema and Ally and Fin, fearing the worst, tried calling to ensure I was on the way. Unfortunately I was driving at the time and missed their call. For a while I'm sure they thought I had cracked under the pressure. But I eventually made it and we all settled down to watch "the greatest horror of all time".

Unfortunately we must have walked into the wrong cinema, because this is most certainly not what we got. Don't get me wrong this is not an awful film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not nearly as good as it was regarded by critics. I can see why the film did get its reputation however, unlike Trick R Treat which as Ally pointed out last week is also criminally overrated.

Made for a miniscule budget of $15,000 the film certainly looks a lot better than this. And at times this is its greatest strength. At the time I was certainly a lot more forgiving of the film as I knew that it was made on a shoe string budget by a first time filmmaker. However, this budget also appears to be limiting at times. The entire plot appears to be set up so that the film can be shot with one camera angle and one set. Which is an inventive piece of thinking to avoid the budgetary constraints. Unfortunately, an hour and a half of the same thing was beyond bearable by the end for me, and a number of the scares retread the same ground.

The first few scares are effective, and I liked the way the tension built up and your eyes were constantly scanning the screen in case there was some unknown movement that you missed. It was certainly eerie and effective at moments, but as I noted before there are only so many ways you can do (effectively) the same trick in a slightly different manner.

If I had gone into this film without hearing anything about it I have no doubt that I would be writing this review ranting and raving about it. This really was a film you wanted to get in on the ground floor on, like the similarly shot / styled The Blair Witch Project. I can imagine seeing it when it first came out with no prior knowledge and no expectations. I would be going buck wild to try and get my friends to see this "groundbreaking horror". Unfortunately, like every new years party I've ever been to, the final product could never live up to the hype.

Another sticking point was the awful taste left in my mouth by the ending. The earlier parts of the film had hinted at different reasons for the happenings and had hinted at exorcisms etc and had brought one of the most hated items of HC members - the ouija board. The signs were good and I would have loved for the film to carry down this path, however this was not the case and we're left with a rather disappointing ending that has Spielberg's grubby little fingerprints all over it, especially when you read about some of the other endings.

Indeed one of the most disappointing things is that after Oren Peli stood up to Dreamworks wanting to completely remake the film but then bowed to the pressure to change the ending. To avoid spoilers please see here for details of the other endings, the second of which I consider to be far superior to what we are actually left with. As well as the fact that the main scare at the end was shown in the trailer meaning I was waiting the entire film for something to happen decreasing the tension as the scare didn't come out of nowhere (this is actually one of my main hates of all horror film trailers, being that they show the scares beforehand and therefore leave you underwhelmed at the cinema).

Not only this but in this day and age of sequels and Saw 18 the film has already produced a prequel Paranormal Activity 2 for the US market, a sequel (a totally different Paranormal Activity 2 for the Japanese market!) and now Paranormal Activity 3 is in the works, which can never be a good thing!

I may one day go back to revisit this film now the hubbub has died down, but the initial viewing hasn't left me so disappointed since I went to see Indiana Jones and the magic nuclear resistant padded fridge freezer and Mr TheBeef swinging like a monkey and catching up with a moving vehicle with aliens!

Ally's Review: [REC]

Fin introduced me to this film before we started horror club and I was bowled over by it. I watched it with no hype or expectations, and I was scared witless. As Fin’s wife, Kirsty, can testify... I screamed like a little girl for the majority of this movie (fortunately Fin was screaming right alongside me to lessen my personal shame). When we watched the film in the first season it was to let Clarky see what we’d been raving about. I was surprised that it stood up so well to a second viewing. Not many films can scare you on second viewing, but this one certainly did. You can’t really endorse a horror film more than that.

The style of the film is one that I usually would scoff at as gimmicky. The whole shaky camera thing is a horror fad, in my opinion, and yet with this film it works superbly well. Probably because the film is paced so relentlessly you forget about it quite early on. Plus there are some absolutely superb set pieces that play to this style. Similarly, the genre of the film (a sort of zombie outbreak) has been done to death, and so it probably should feel a little too well trodden and familiar. Yet this film breathes new life into a previously tired format. It manages to take long standing traditions - and seemingly passing trends - and moulds them into something really unique...and damn scary.

This is Jaume Balagueró’s finest film so far. I enjoyed To Let and you can see how he developed his craft when making this. I’m not a huge fan of [REC] 2, mostly because it feels much the same as the first film - but not quite as good. It is solid but nothing spectacular. But that shouldn't detract from this film, it is almost inevitable that any half decent horror film gets a poor sequel - and [REC] is no exception. I’ll be interested to see where he goes with Sleep Tight, which he is soon releasing.

It is incredibly tough to rank this film when considering the best horror movies of the past decade. The House of the Devil and [REC] are certainly the two scariest films of past 10 years, for me. While House of the Devil revels in increasing tension, [REC] squeezes as many frights, jumps and chilling moments as it can into its lean 78 minute running time. If I was to recommend a modern, scary horror film to anyone this would be it.

The final scene in [REC] is absolutely unbearable. It also changes the tone of the film, in a brilliant way, as we learn about the source of the outbreak. The use of the shaky camera also makes this scene extra scary. Even just thinking about it now gives me the creeps!

The Spanish don’t muck about with horror these days, and for me this is my favourite foreign language horror of the past 10 years... maybe ever.

I can’t recommend this movie enough.


Clarky's Review: Don't Look Now

Ally brought Don't Look Now to the table at the tail end of the 2009/10 season, and whilst I was aware of the film, I had never seen it. Thankfully, I was better of because of this. Where my run in with another classic British horror, The Wicker Man, had faltered as it failed to live up to my expectations and the ending didn't quite have the same impact due to my familiarity with the subject, Don't Look Now confounded all my expectations. Although, looking back I'm not sure what those expectations were!

Often difficult to watch, although this was sometimes due to the graphic sex scene (never an easy watch at horror club - the setting just doesn't work!), but impossible to tear yourself away from Don't Look Now tells the story of a couple played by the breezy that is Julie Christie and a moustache ridden Donald Sutherland struggling to cope with the loss of their young daughter. Also thrown into the mix are two elderly sisters, one of whom is blind and claims to be psychic (I would be avoiding her like the plague!) and a serial killer that is on the loose.

Unsettling, unnerving and never pandering to its audience, this is a film that demands repeat viewings. The use of imagery and the motifs peppered throughout the film could have you puzzling over the film for years. Whilst this type of film may infuriate some, I was drawn in and wrapped up within the story. The use of editing, with flashforwards and flashbacks, is impeccable and gives a real sense of unease to the viewer. At times the film can seem disjointed yet at the climax everything falls into place, which just further underlines the brilliance of the film in my opinion.

Its interesting to note that one of the most memorable uses of this intercutting happened in an attempt to get the uncut sex scene past censors. It was expressly forbidden for "the rise and fall between the thighs" to be seen on screen, therefore Roeg intercut the scene with them post coitally getting ready and going out for dinner. Therefore, Roeg cut the post coital shots between "the rise and fall" in order that there was nothing untoward for the censors to object to. But clearly the viewer fills in these gaps for themselves. Thankfully, this trick to avoid the wrath of the censors has resulted in a phenomenal scene.

Essential viewing for any horror fan, but particularly so for a British horror fan. This may well be the best British horror ever made.

Clarky's Review: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Its been a while since we viewed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at Horror Club but the pain still seems so fresh.

Yes, pain. This film, more than any other film, really puts you through the ringer. It is a deeply uncomfortable watch and genuinely physically draining. By the end you are glad the film is over.

In fact, if it hadn't been chosen by Ally I genuinely don't think that I would have ever watched this film again, so disturbed was I after my first viewing. Such was the impact that the film had on me that, to a certain extent, the feeling after watching that initial viewing is actually fresher in my memory than the horror club viewing. Therefore my review will be in two parts, that first viewing and the horror club viewing.

The initial viewing was in a dark and dingy cinema in Clydebank in the west of Scotland. It was the re-release of the film for its 25th anniversary, and it was the only place it was on. Unfortunately I was only 16 at the time and unable to drive. Therefore I did the only thing I could, asked my mum to take me! Let me get this straight, my mum hates horror films, but being a loving mother she agreed to take me and sit through the following 83 minutes of horror (granted with her eyes closed for the entire time).

I wasn't really sure what to expect. For some unknown reason I assumed it wouldn't be that scary, but given it was a classic that I had heard so much, and being a massive film fan, I decided I wanted to see it to see what all the fuss was about. What a mistake.

Whilst in the cinema at the time I remember I didn't find the film that scary. At times I thought it was almost laughable, the constant chase and the lumbering villian Leatherface. However, on leaving the cinema something came over me. The past 83 minutes had seeped into my subconscious, and I was overcome with extreme naseau. And then I was sick.

I had never physically been sick because of a film, and at the time I thought I had food poisoning. However, I wasn't sick again that night except for the 5 minutes after I had left the cinema, and any time I thought about rewatching the film something inside me immediately veto'd the idea.

So it was with real dread that I sat down to watch it with Ally and Fin. And whilst the film is one of the most visceral film experiences I have ever seen, it is also a stunning piece of cinema. I was looking at the film through different eyes and I finally understood what all the fuss was about.

Whilst the premise of the film is simple, young teenagers in the middle of nowhere get chased and terrorised by an unknown monster, the execution is anything but. The sound design is something else in this film. Unsettling, discomforting, distressing, there are so many words to describe all the various tools and unatural sounds that Tobe Hooper uses to his advantage. But the most powerful are the lungs of Marilyn Burns who plays Sally.

Whilst watching the film its hard to believe what Tobe Hooper put her through. Her larynx must have been in tatters by the end of it, as she seems to scream for the entire film and by the end your nerves are shredded. It is an assault on the senses by the director, and by the end you are left reeling.

It was little technical details like this, the stunning cinematography, the incredible set design and some incredibly beautiful shots that I noticed on the second time of viewing (the first time the cacophonous noise and the endless terror make it hard to focus on anything else!) and which gave me an even greater respect for the film. Sure I knew it was terrifying, but I didn't know that it was also such an incredible "film", a true piece of cinema.

Whilst made on a shoe string budget, Tobe Hoopers raw talent is something to behold. He really knows how to unsettle the viewer by attacking them from every angle. The set design in Leatherface's house, the sheer cold blooded brutality of some of the deaths, and how naturalistic they are, the knowledge at the back of your mind that this is based on Ed Gein and the way some of the shots appear to be documenting what is happening really make you forget you are watching a fictional film.

Added to this you have the ongoing chase from Leatherface, a truly iconic horror villian, as well as the down right uncomfortableness of watching the rest of his family (especially the grandpa). There are lots of uncomfortable shots (such as the hitch hiker cutting his hand) and some tense moments as they walk around the deserted house. Every shot in the film is preceded with an air of unease, and you're never allowed to relax.

The film really doesn't let up, even at the harrowing denouement when Sally manages to escape she starts laughing uncontrollable. A horrible maniacal laugh and you know that this will define her life from now on. She will never get over this, and that really sticks with you once the film has finished.

Even though I was able to enjoy the skill behind the movie on second viewing, it still left me feeling battered and bruised by the end. All my muscles were aching from tensing up and I felt as if I had no nerves left. An incredible viewing experience which every horror fan should see at least once, but do not go into this half hearted.

Ally's Review: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

For the first of my retrospective reviews, I picked a film that we watched last season. I had seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre only once before, as I was incredibly reluctant to ever watch it again. On second viewing though I realised just how amazing a film it really was. Because I knew what was coming I was able to appreciate the film in a different way (i.e. I wasn’t covering my eyes for 70% of it). A while back we all listed our favourite films from Horror Club and my choice was obvious, this had to be number one.

There have been films that I have enjoyed watching more (Let the right one in, for example) and films that have just about scared me more (House of the Devil) but when thinking about which film was the best example of utilising all the aspects that make Horror such a unique genre, I found myself picking this classic.

Simply put, this film is a real assault on the eyes and ears. Nearly every shot and sound is used to further unsettle the viewer. It’s an incredibly uncomfortable watch. Many noises are unpleasant, the cast are ugly, grimy and sweaty, car headlights shine directly in your eyes. It may sound like a strange reason to think this film is superb – but this is what watching a horror movie is all about. A horror movie should terrify you, unsettle you, keep you on edge... that’s why we love/hate the experience. Texas Chainsaw Massacre does this better than any film before or since, in my book.

There are unbelievable scenes of tension that seem to last for hours. Scenes that will disgust and horrify you. Even the bliss of escape in the manic final moments will leave you feeling totally disturbed. Everything about this film is engineered to make the viewer feel uneasy and/or terrified from beginning to end.

This film has been imitated many times but none have come close to it. For the record, I don’t consider it a Slasher movie in the same way as, say, Halloween. This is a different sort of horror movie (I’m not really sure how it should be catogorised). It’s like these poor teenagers wandered into a hellish alternate world that seems to makes no sense (surely no family could be that evil?!), and yet it’s so gritty and relentless it feels as real as any movie out there.

A truly visceral experience, unlike any other. The crème de la crème of horror.

Fin's Review: Quatermass And The Pit

Quatermass And The Pit is a true Hammer classic and one of the best films to come out of the legendary British production company. This film was released in 1967 at a time when Hammer films dominated the world of horror. This was also a time when Hammer was making and releasing interesting and unique films, before the silly and self-parodying films they came to be known for in the the mid 70s.

Hammer cannot lay claim to all of the credit for Quartermass and the Pit, because the film is based upon the seminal 1950s TV serials produced by the BBC. However, it was Hammer who added their unique vision and technicolour flair to produce a  British Sci-Fi horror classic. I'm a huge fan of the 1950s and 60s alien invasion/radioactive monster sub-genre (such as Them, Invasion Of the Body Snatchers, Earth Versus The Flying Saucers, etc etc) and for me Quatermass and the Pit is every bit as good as these paranoid American classics. In many ways, it transcends them.

Nigel Keale's script is sublime and as a result a film that superficially sits alongside the other classics of the B-movie genre is actually more comparable with perhaps the ultimate sci-fi film of all time: Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey 2001, released the year after Quatermass and the Pit.

On first viewing this comparison may seem ridiculous, and indeed the film seems small compared to the impact, vision and craft encompassed in Kubrick's masterpiece. However, with a tiny fraction of the budget, Nigel Keale manages to craft a script which contends with ideas every bit as complex as Odyssey. In this age of Michael Bay and Transformers 97 it can be forgotten that sci-fi films used to be some of the most exciting and intellectually challenging of any genre and Quartermass can sit proudly with 2001 in demonstrating the full potential of the genre. Whereas Kubrick had the money and special effects talent to implement his vision, Keale had to rely almost entirely on the script and he does so masterfully.

Both films have surprisingly similar storylines concerning the impact of extraterrestrial life on human history; however, the impact of this influence is very different. In 2001, alien influence is seen to be interacting with our evolutionary story in a benevolent fashion, lifting us on to successivelly higher levels of consciousness. In Quatermass it is the complete opposite, with benign influences replace by pure evil.

Due to both the talent of Keale and the tiny budget, the story of this malign influence on human affairs is developed in a restrained and focused manner. Quatermass traces the impact of the alien parasite from the days of an Eden-like paradise, where humans lived in peace, through Roman times and ultimately to the Nazi extermination camps and it is from this chilling march of human degeneration that Keale draws the horror of the film.

If you have not seen this film it is well worth a watch, particularly if you are a sci-fi fan. If you can see past the primitive special effects you will enjoy a film of rare vision with a story that contains more ideas than Hollywood has dreamt up in twenty years. If nothing else this film is stylish as balls - I mean, who wouldn't want to be in The British Experimental Rocket Group.

Fin's Review: The House of the Devil

Almost nothing happens in this film and yet I think it is one of the best horror films of the last 30 years. It is rare that you see a modern film that instantly becomes one of your favourite movies, but this happened for me when I watched House Of The Devil for the first time and was totally blown away by it. Not since I first watched The Exorcist when I was a teenager had I had as terrifying and flat-out exhausting an experience watching a horror movie. By the time this film ends you feel like you have just completed a serious work out - the tension starts early and builds to an almost unbearable climax. House Of The Devil is completely immersed in the lore of the horror genre, yet by using so much of the 'established iconography of horror cinema' Ti West manages to create something totally new. In previous reviews on this blog two films have been mentioned that have sought to pay homage to 70's and 80's horror to differing levels of success (Scream and Hatchet); Ti West goes even further in seeking to mimic the classics, and in doing so creates a film and movie-watching experience that is superior to many of the benchmark films it is paying tribute to.

Ti West so brilliantly manages to emulate the look of 80s film that I think many people would not be able to tell this film was released in 2009 rather than 1989. His direction in this film is nothing short of genius. West dispenses with the depressing modern trend of graphic gore and lack of imagination and instead replaces it with shock horror, plot, character and suspense to create a slow-burning horror classic that can sit alongside any of the great horror films. For a horror fan, the way this film is rooted in 80s horror is so familiar you almost get a weird sense of comfort watching it (alongside the terror). The haircuts, huge walkman, our heroine being driven to a creepy apparently abandoned old house in the middle of the night, an elusive and mysterious man, a full moon, late night pizza delivery - we have been here before. The heroine's dance through the house listening to her walkman is such a throwback you can't help but smile. Despite the familiarity, the director is so confident with it that something new and exciting is created.

None of this would matter if Jocelin Donahue, the heroine of the piece, did not give an excellent performance. She is the only character for large sections of the film and its success rests on her shoulders. Donahue plays the role to perfection as the wide eyed and innocent lead, babysitting so that she can afford the rent for her dream student flat. Left alone in the aforementioned creepy mansion she drifts from one room to the next watching TV, ordering pizza and listening to her walkman. Little White Lies said that watching her approach her fate is like watching a 'moth trying to seduce a flame' and it is this impending fate, unclear but inevitable, that creates an atmosphere of high dread.

The other major character that deserves discussion is the mansion itself. From the moment you see it, you know things are going to go badly. The house is dark and foreboding and is the exact type of house that neighbourhood children make up stories about and that you avoid on your bike as a kid. I have not seen as effective a setting since Danvers State Mental Asylum in Session 9. However unlike the asylum in Session 9 it is the familiarity of the house which makes it really scary - we have all grown up with stories about creepy houses and the people that live in them, which grounds the horror of House Of the Devil in reality. West eschews the rotting, fleshy horror of say Leatherface's house in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and instead creates a stifling, airless, dusty Gothic home. The house appears normal, if dated, but is permeated by a chilling, lifeless quality. There are pictures of cowboys on the wall in one of the bedrooms, but where are the children? In this empty, staid, lifeless environment it is hard not to imagine the loneliness, repression and abuse that lies at the heart of the house. Yes, this is how you make a scary film.



Clarky's Review: Thirst

As has previously been mentioned on this blog my opening 3 picks were my grand opus and I never seem to be able to live up to them. With this in mind towards the end of the first season I decided to return to my foreign horror roots.

Thirst was a film that I had heard a lot about. Directed by Chan-wook Park, who had first come into my world with the incredible Oldboy, the film had the neat idea of having the main character being a priest who becomes infected and turns into a vampire.

This was film was Park's labour of love and he had been working away at it for 10 years before finally getting to make this film. Unfortunately some areas of the film feel like they have been worked on for 10 years, whilst other aspects appear to have been an afterthought. There are a lot of interesting ideas here, but after watching it I got the feeling that this was a missed opportunity.

A number of the points appear laboured and overthought, whilst some neat little flourishes here and there seem to be introduced and then forgotten about. The third of the film is turgid and bloated, whilst the end is almost non-sensical if you stand back and really think about it.

By far the most interesting scenes were watching the priest slip into vampirism as his body transforms after the blood transfusion. His rapid recovery, and subsequent return to poor health if he doesn't continue to feed his desires, being one of the best ideas in the movie. Especially as everything comes to a head towards the end of the movie with the members of the monastery believing his recovery to be a miracle and worshipping him. In the end knowing what he has done he attempts to rape a girl in order that the "believers" no longer idolise him. This should have been the climax of the film with the priest coming full circle and sacrificing himself for the better of everyone else around him Unfortunately a number of scenes, and this scene in particular is tragically mishandled by the usually excellent Park and it is very muddled on screen.

There are also some lovely shots - such as the "x-ray" vision he possesses of the human body and veinous system, some creepy shots of the watery ghost of his former friend who haunts his imagination and some skin crawling, muscle tension inducing shots of the mothers fingernails as she tries to write a message in her paralysed state.

This is a film brimming with ideas and some excellent shots and writing about it here I feel quite enthusiastic about it. Unfortunately at the time of viewing I was left wanting as it does not add up to the sum of its parts and feels like a missed opportunity. The main problem is that it struggles to keep the viewer engaged in the middle portion and at times is just too damn weird. The sex scenes with the corpse between them is genuinely creepy and weird, but comes from nowhere and is such a shift tonally that it feels out of place when watching the film.

I would certainly go back and revisit this film, as I think a lot of the issues I had was that in the middle of the film it gets very muddled and its not always clear which character is doing what. Now I have a clearer idea of each characters through line I think it may well be more rewarding, however this doesn't excuse the film for not producing this on the first viewing.

A solid film which is worth a watch, but if you only see one vampire film make it Let the Right One In, which more expertly balances the vampire horror and love story angle than Thirst and is genuinely moving and thought provoking, staying with you for days, weeks even months after viewing.

Fin's Review: 30 Days of Night

I decided to do a review of 30 Days Of Night for a few reasons. Mainly because I think it is a really good film, and one that is seriously underrated, but also because - as anyone who reads my posts will know - I'm usually pretty critical of modern Hollywood films, so I thought I should highlight a film that shows quality films can still escape the ocean of mediocrity that is mainstream Hollywood in the early 21st century. I have to admit I avoided this film like the plague when it was first released. I really enjoyed the dark and gritty story as it appeared in the original comic and worried that it would be butchered when turned into a film. The outlook was not improved by the casting of Josh Hartnett as Sheriff Eben Olesen. I finally watched it at my brother's house on a day when not much was happening and, almost despite myself, I really enjoyed it. Then later, when Clarky brought it round for Horror Club, I realised that actually this film is really good.

The comic book series 30 Days Of Night was released in 2007 and writer Steve Niles and illustrator Ben Templesmith created a story that was beautifully drawn, with a fully-realised and unique setting and a creepy and grim story arc to boot. In some ways this gave director David Slade a head start and provided him with a great basis to produce a really solid movie. However, capturing the melancholic nature of the story would still be a real challenge. Luckily Slade pulls it off and to my money makes the best vampire movies since Near Dark in 1987.

Part of the success of the film is due to the concept: it is so simple it's perfect. The action takes place in Barrow, Alaska, the most northerly town in Alaska. It is dark for 30 days in midwinter and is completely cut off. One of the most effective ways to create a creepy atmosphere for a film is to craft a 'no escape' setting - think The Thing - and this tiny Alaskan town is an amazing example. Surviving a massed vampire attack is hard enough, but what if you had to survive for a month with no chance of dawn when it is 30 below outside? This simplicity of plot coupled with the ferocity with which David Slade approaches the story creates a gritty, fun survival horror that takes no prisoners.

The comic book is very dark both in tone and in colour and is drawn in black and white, brightened only by copious amounts of blood red. Slade makes the great decision to use this technique in the film and most scenes are darkly lit and dominated by black shadows and blinding white snow. Slade often goes even further than this and many of the scenes in the film are shot with the exact same framing as the comic. This approach is used to great effect, creating the claustrophobic and isolated environment of Barrow. As already noted above, it is hard not to think of Jon Carpenter's film The Thing when watching this film, but despite the very similar frozen setting Carpenter's tale deals with internal fear and paranoia whereas 30 Days Of Night is a much more straightforward action setup.

Our hero is Sheriff Eben Olsen, a gruff spoken, quiet and lonely man in the tradition of western heroes and a lot of the success of the film depends on how much we believe and care about this character. Needless to say, seeing Josh Hartnett cast in this role did not inspire confidence, but it must be said he is really good - more The Virgin Suicides than Pearl Harbour - and brings a raw believable charisma to the role.

The other aspect of the film that demands a comment are the vampires. These are not the traditional vampires of Bram Stoker and Warner Brothers in the 1930s, and are instead a terrifying hybrid of vampires and zombies. The vampires are truly animalistic in their search for blood and are properly balls out; no neat little bite marks on the neck for these creatures of the night.

All in all a really great addition to the vampire canon and a great example of how Hollywood should approach well-loved and respected source material when translating it into film.

Clarky's Review: Halloween

Let me put this out there before I start, Halloween is my favourite horror film of all time and I've seen it more times than I care to mention. Therefore I won't be reviewing the viewing that we had at horror club, but reviewing my love for the film itself.

I think the main reason that I love Halloween, much as Fin loves The Exorcist and Ally loves The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (love may possibly be the wrong adjective when describing your feelings about these films however), is that it was one of the first horror films I saw. Certainly if it wasn't the first, it was the first one that made me sit up and take notice of the horror genre. Therefore how could I not feel anything but eternally grateful to a film which as a result has introduced me to some of my favourite films of all time (although at the same time it did result in me going to see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with my mother which, if you've read my review, did not end up well!).

My first viewing of Halloween is one of the few films that I remember where I was when I watched it. I was watching one of Mark Cousins documentaries that he used to have on the BBC and as it was Halloween this was the choice of film that followed. I was 15 or 16 and was watching it by myself, with all the lights out, in my room in my parents house (a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, where my room was the furthest away from everything else). It's fair to say that by the end of the film I almost didn't get up to go to the toilet as the walk from my room down the dark corridor was almost unbearable. Wetting myself genuinely seemed like a viable alternative at the time!

I can't really put my finger on why I liked Halloween so much that first time. Watching it now I'm not particularly scared to it anymore, having seen it so often I know exactly whats coming, although the score does still send shivers down my spine. Its simplicity, minimilism, yet its effectiveness still impresses me today. This is also what I like about the plot. Mad stalker / bogeyman on the loose kills babysitters. Job done, you know what you're getting.

This is movie started a whole new sub-genre of horror - the slasher. It has never been bettered in my opinion but has often been imitated and sequalised and remade (in most cases very poorly). It has an iconic anti-hero / bad guy in Michael Myers, the mute psychopath who seems to track you down no matter where you are even though he's moving at a snails pace. the costume design is so simple yet, as with much of the film, so effective (even with his inside out William Shatner Star Trek mask!). You also get som 70's breezies and the obligatory moral message (which is very black and white - those who drink, take drugs and have sex are offed one by one but the pure virgin survives). The film itself is gorgeously shot, with the night shots effectively dark (like you don't see in horror movies these days where everything is so glossy), and it has some genuinely scary and tense moments.

John Carpenter, who wrote, directed and scored the film, was a hungry 29 year old director just beginning to hit is stride. God knows whats happened to him in the intervening years. I would give anything for a John Carpenter movie like this, or The Thing, these days.

In Halloween the film is efficiently shot and edited with scarcely a minute of the time on screen wasted. It is brilliantly shot and, in hindsight, was a groundbreaking piece of horror cinema. he also uses some stunning techniques to unnerve the viewer, with the stunning opening point of view shot, the use of "the shape" to appear just at the corner of the screen so that the viewer thinks they see something but often are unable to detect what it is increasing their feeling of unease (something that is lost if the film is not viewed in widescreen) and the brilliant score that I mentioned previously.

It's clear that John Carpenter took a lot of inspiration from Psycho when making this film (in fact it could be argued that Psycho was the first slasher film, but Halloween really kicked off the craze with the Friday the 13th films and many others following hot on its heels). Not only did he hire Jamie Lee Curtis (a nod to Hitchcocks hiring of her mother Janet Leight for Marion Crane) but he also directly "takes" one of the characters names - Sam Loomis.

Dr Sam Loomis is played by Donald Pleasance, and whilst his shooting schedule only lasted 5 days and he is only on screen for 18 minutes, he leaves a lasting impression. His over the top theatricality that he brings to the role works when it really shouldn't. Having said that I think all the performances are suitably over the top in this film and won't hear a bad word said about it!

There's not much more to say than that. It's my favourite horror film and essential viewing for any horror film.