Evil has a Density

When musician/director Robert Bartleh Cummings (better known to you as Rob Zombie) announced that he was going to remake the granddaddy of slasher films, “Halloween,” the news was hardly embraced by horror enthusiasts.

Of all the films in the original director John Carpenter’s checkered filmography (from peaks such as “The Thing,” and “Escape from New York” to valleys which include “Vampires,” and “Ghosts of Mars”), “Halloween” is considered his zenith.

It was made for less than what most films spend today on getting their stars out of rehab, but on that shoestring budget, Carpenter managed to lace up a legend with Michael Myers, the child killer who grew into a masked embodiment of evil.

He would hack away at horny teens with cold indifference and lurk in the shadows of the sleepy Illinois suburbia known as Haddonfield.

But in the almost 30 years since his first appearance, the horror genre has been demystified, cannibalized, embellished, and, worst yet, mocked and parodied.

The franchise itself has been stretched further than Joan Rivers’ face, linking the Myers’ legend to everyone from the Druids to Busta Rhymes (I wish I was kidding about that sentence).
Zombie promised a fresh new take on the genre, and, to his credit, he has been developing as a filmmaker – from his hokey, hackneyed debut “Night of 1,000 Corpses” to his more nuanced, menacing “The Devil’s Rejects.”

His “re-imagining” of “Halloween” stops that filmmaking progression – pardon the pun – dead in its tracks.

Zombie’s only update to the cinematic lore is by taping on a sorry backstory so blatantly obvious and tonally shrill that it borders parody.

We meet chubby little Mikey (played by Daeg Fearch , resembling the overweight, dead-eyed brother of Dakota Fanning) as a stringy haired squalor squatter, sharing a dilapidated domicile with his stripper mom (played by Sherry Moon Zombie), his slutty big sis (played by Hannah Hall) and a vile, repugnant stepfather (overplayed by William Forsythe).

After spending just a few minutes with this crew, you almost wish Mikey would get a jumpstart on his latter-day career move so that he can rid the screen of this pestilent posse.

Zombie spends more than 40 minutes with his white-trash clan until Michael takes part in some unspeakable acts and is sent away to an asylum. The title card flashes on the screen to show us Myers 15 years later, still sequestered in the institution, where he has apparently been biding his time taking advantage of the loony bin’s arts and crafts club and its fitness facility. You see, Michael has whittled away the years plastering together paper mache masks and hitting the Bowflex, standing about 7.5 feet tall with shoulders the size of a covered bridge.

He escapes from a quartet of security guards that must have graduated from the “Police Academy” (not the actual academy, mind you, but by watching the Bubba Smith- Steve Guttenberg films) and heads to his old stalking grounds just in time for the holidays.
What follows is a near scene-for-scene do-over, with an ample amount of breasts and blood added.

In the original, even though it may have been for budgetary reasons, much of that was left to an antiquated device moviegoers brought to the theater with them called “imagination.” But, y’know, it’s like totally too hard to text your friend at the same time, so Zombie dutifully spells out every stab for us.

And even though the film, rather hypocritically, promises “No Sequel” at the end of the credits, the loud ring at the registers for the film during Labor Day weekend ($32 million – they like it, hey Mikey!) will undoubtedly bring Myers home yet again.

A 'Shining' Lite

For all their sunny, homey décor, hotels can be rather scary places.
Urban legends of lodging abound, from hidden videocameras and guests' toothbrushes crammed in the orifices from disgruntled staff, to unwilling kidney donations and bodies found in the mattresses (the latter of which is actually true).
My wife and I even encountered our own nightmare stay at a certain hotel in Seattle, on our way home from our honeymoon, where some spirits had apparently soiled our sheets, left a case of empty beer cans outside our window and an angry apparition scrambled the television, so that we could only watch fuzzy reruns of Oprah.
But taking a tip from Stephen King, director Mikael Hafstrom unleashes hotel hell upon a cynical writer by the name of Mike Enslin (played by John Cusak) in “1408,” a new thriller with an old-school scare vibe coursing through its veins.
Based on a short story written in his “Everything's Eventual” compilation of 14 short stories, King's tale of a creepy crib in New York City pulls out all the stops in its effort to jumpstart our jaded horror expectations at the box office.
Enslin is a slept-there, debunked-that nonfiction writer who compiles lists of scary stays across the U.S.A. His books are only mildly met by the public, as the author himself does not believe, even though his writing does not necessarily pass judgement on such locales. His past (which is detailed throughout the film) has left him without faith and marginal enthusiasm for his chosen profession.
But an anonymous postcard taunting him to stay at an upscale auberge piques his interest, and he quickly sets out to the posh accommodations of New York's infamous Dolphin Hotel, in which many a guest has committed acts of atrocity in the titular room.
Simply put by the hotel's manager, Mr. Olin (played by Samuel L. Jackson), “No one's lasted over an hour in there... It's an evil f***ing room.”
You said it, brother.
Almost before Enslin can unpack his luggage, the clock radio menacingly blares “We've Only Just Begun,” by the Carpenters, and the clock's time resets itself to a countdown, starting with 60 minutes.
The rest of the film is filled with demons (both of the hotel and of Enslin's past) as the room decides to take the writer down its wicked little rabbit hole.
And since it takes predominantly in a single room with one actor, “1408” would not be worth its ectoplasm were it not for the unquestionable talents of Cusak. We believe every note of his performance, as he walks in the room a skeptic, becomes mildly anxious and heads into full-tilt terror by the final minutes of his “stay.”
The actor possesses a built-in likability through his decades on screen that has us immediately on his side, rooting for his well-being. And when he arrives at the hotel, his verbal sparring with Jackson holds the same intensity as the famous DeNiro-Pacino diner sit-down in Michael Mann's “Heat.” For the Cusak devotee, there are also a few nods to his past films scattered throughout that are subtly amusing.
And while the film's allegorical underpinnings may not satisfactorily conclude its gradual buildup, the film's style and bag of tricks sate our expectations. It relies on the out-of-nowhere crashes and thumps, but it also slowly and effectively piles on the dread, thanks in large part to the director Hafstrom, who shows much more promise here than his limp Jennifer Aniston thriller “Derailed” a few years back.
“1408” should also be credited with its ability to legitimately creep out viewers without having to goose them with gore, which seems to be the current trend.
And while it may not by the Four Seasons of horror, viewers can get more amenities from their stay at this hotel than a “Hostel” any day.

Zombie Nation

There is a cinematic voice that has relegated to caricature until recently.

They have been typecast to roles marked by stereotypical behaviors that are simply unfounded, unwarranted and, quite frankly, downright bigoted.

It is only in the past few years that these individuals, no doubt fueled by some politically charged union lobbying in their favor, have seen roles for them flourish into more broader, richly textured characters that capture their subtler shades, their wit, their hopes, their dreams, and their pain.

I am speaking, of course, about the undead.

Carelessly branded “zombies” by a thoughtless, uncaring world, these legions of cinematic legacies have for years brought so much to our moviegoing experience, yet have typically asked for so little – perhaps just the brain of the living here or there.

“28 Days Later” broke the mold of typical undead parable, introducing us to a side of zombies seldom seen in motion pictures. Where before they were only viewed as slowly lumbering beasts, obsessed only with murder, decomposition and matters of the flesh, they were depicted (after being infected with the Rage Virus) in a different light – a more limber, agile entity and gave them a heretofore unseen breadth.

“28 Months Later” takes up the tale, well, 28 months later. The “rage virus” that mutated the masses throughout Britain in the first film has now apparently been contained.

America has sent its military might to contain the viral insurgency, establish a “green zone” of safety and restore democracy to the nation. All that was missing was a behemoth “Mission: Accomplished” banner hanging off ol’ Big Ben.

Of course, just like our current real-world occupation, things just aren’t that simple.

The virus has been living in a host who has shown a surprising immunity to its typical side effects (side effects of Rage Virus may include: blood-stained eyes, heightened sensitivity to just about everything, uncontrollable fits of fury, insatiable hunger for human destruction, vomiting blood and minor cramping. Please consult your doctor.).

The host (played by Catherine McCormack) is taken to the military hospital for observation. She will also be reunited with her husband (played by the weasel-featured Robert Carlyle of ‘Trainspotting”). Of course, the reunion may be bittersweet, as hubby high-tailed it out of the house when he thought his wife was being ripped apart by zombies (I’m pretty sure Hallmark has not invented a card line to apologize for that just yet).

Their two children (played by unfortunately named newcomers Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton) were on a school trip in Spain during the initial breakout and are not just being allowed back home to merry old England.

Meanwhile, even though the general public was being told that they were in the “last throes” of the virus, it seems to have struck again and this new strand is pretty pissed.

The kids, with the help of a an Army doctor (played by Rose Byrne) and a sympathetic sniper (played by Jeremy Renner), may just hold the key to stop the virus and therefore must make it out of the contained city before the military attempts a shock-and-awe bombing in an attempt to eradicate the diseased minions.

The 2002 original, “28 Days” was a nihilistic romp that played on fears of Ebola, AIDS, Mad Cow and other pandemics that threatened quality of life.

The sequel takes on the current U.S. occupation in Iraq as its target and gets more mileage out of metaphor than thought possible.
Danny Boyle, the talented writer/director of the original stepped aside to executive producer status, letting Juan Carols Fresnadillo take the wheel as both director and co-writer.

His taste as director may leave many with motion sickness (or just plain sickness, as appropriate for any film that focuses on a Rage Virus), and others with hearing loss.

But this is not a typical hyper-edited, wall-shaking bit of summer fluff. Fresnadillo was responsible for the intriguing oddity “Intacto” a few years ago, and he sharpens his sensibilities with “28 Weeks.”

The chaotic camerawork is purposeful (capturing the virus’ ferocity and the utter confusion it creates for those trying to establish order as it spreads) and is spliced with lucid moments of loss, betrayal, determination and primal fear.

Also, the film should be credited for its call to arms for the undead – to prove that they can be productive members of society. As we’ve seen in more recent zombie films, they are capable of love (“Braindead”) humor (“Shaun of the Dead”) and empathy (“Fido”).

Can it be too far off until we see some decaying corpse saunter up to a stage some awards night, hands trembling as he holds his statuette for his dramatic work, a tear running down his blood-stained cheek? That is, before he leaps into the audience and tears the flesh off a few other guests.

Tell me that would not be an Oscar Night ratings booster.