From Victorian nightmares to modern terrors, which of these chilling horror films would you like to haunt your thoughts this Halloween?
“The Wolfman”
Rating: ✯✯✯
Oscar winner for Best Visual Effects (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”), director Joe Johnston (“Hidalgo,” “Jumanji”) collaborates with writers Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self to bring “The Wolfman” to the big screen.
After an overdose of vampire flicks, bringing back the old-world gore of the werewolf is a definite change of pace. Far from the frequent romanticizing of vampire stories, Johnston doesn’t skimp on the gore. He doesn’t go overboard with the special effects, too, as he delivers the horror and frights that come with exploring the monster.
What Johnston brings to the screen is a Hallmark-worthy tale of Lawrence Talbot, played by Oscar Best Supporting Actor winner Benicio Del Toro (“Traffic”), who was exiled to America as a child by his father Sir John, played by Oscar Best Actor winner Anthony Hopkins (“Silence of the Lambs,” “Amistad”). Lawrence returns to his native England upon the request of his brother’s distraught fiancée Gwen Conliffe, played by Golden Globe winner Emily Blunt (“Gideon’s Daughter,” “The Devil Wears Prada”). He embarks on a quest to help find meaning in the gruesome murder of his brother Ben, but in his investigation, Lawrence is bitten and unwittingly turns into a werewolf.
The trailer pretty much already tells the familiar tale, nothing new is really added to the lore behind the creature, and so what is curious is how such a film attracted three A-list stars. It was a good old Victorian chiller, so it didn’t make any misleading promises. An honest-to-goodness, well-made fright-fest.
“Teeth”
Rating: ✯✯
Graphic and gross; super slow and ridiculous! “Teeth” could’ve been executed so much better given its propensity for amazing shock value, but its mythological roots were married a bit too clumsily with modern-day black humor. Writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein should’ve learned a thing or two from someone who has perfected this combo, Joss Whedon.
Dawn (Jess Weixler) is an abstinence advocate who is privately torn with battling her awakening teenage desires. It doesn’t help that her home situation is crazy: Despite having the quintessential loving parents, her stepbrother Brad (John Hensley from “Nip/Tuck”) is the complete opposite. And, yes, she discovers that her vagina has teeth.
The exposition is slow, the plot thin. It was painful to watch, but my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to believe it could redeem itself, but “Teeth” tanked early on. The super creepy old guy in the last scene is particularly disturbing.
“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
Rating: ✯✯✯
Based on Stephen Sondheim’s hit Broadway musical, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” is a classic revenge story ala Zorro or Count of Monte Cristo (dirty old man steals humble hunk’s wife and child) but told in bloodthirsty glory.
Wrongfully accused barber Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) returns to London with vendetta on his mind as Sweeney Todd, barber extraordinaire. Somehow, the townspeople don’t seem to find his and fellow tenant Mrs. Lovett’s (Helena Bonham Carter) ghoulish looks any stranger than her meat pies. Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) is the insidious old geezer who steals Barker’s wife (Laura Michelle Kelly) and now has evil designs on his daughter.
The rest of the supporting cast gave memorable performances. Sacha Baron Cohen adds a fun albeit short stint as Todd’s competitor, Signor Adolfo Pirelli. Timothy Spall (who once more plays the villain’s sidekick as in “Enchanted”) is the judge’s disgustingly evil lackey Beadle Bamford. Ed Sanders as the poor orphan boy Toby is an incredibly bright and talented surprise. Jamie Campbell Bower as the lovestruck sailor Anthony Hope appears in the first scene with Depp. As the film unravels, his tenor voice and effeminate looks have the audience wrestling with his gender. He looks a lot like Claire Danes or Hanson’s lead singer, especially when he does the trademark Danes facial expression of the furrowed forehead. Jayne Wisener plays the 15-year-old Johanna, Barker’s daughter all grown up. Despite her satisfactory acting chops, she is shockingly blond with an annoying soprano voice that it’s hard to see her as the beauty she is supposed to be.
Even with Hollywood’s character-role fave Depp as the star and one of my fave directors Tim Burton at the helm, musicals even in film form are still unsavory for me. But Burton succeeds in sneaking Sweeney Todd into my thoughts long after seeing it. Despite gory images being the staple in each scene, violence was not glorified in this film.
“1408”
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
“Stay scared.” That is what famed horror novelist Mike Enslin (John Cusack) would tell his fans during book signing, and that’s exactly what you feel for the better part of the movie. In this chilling short story by Stephen King directed by Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström, you will scream despite yourself.
I saw this alone and endured the creepy buildup leading to skeptical Enslin’s fateful entry into Room 1408 of the haunted Dolphin Hotel. I liked the motivated use of extreme close-ups to add to the claustrophobia and the bird’s-eye-view shots that feel like someone is watching over everything. The unsettling cinematography and fragmented visuals made me feel uneasy.
Cusack makes 1408 work. His almost one-man act makes a good case for cynicism at the beginning. When he says: “sarcophagal chambers; hotel rooms are naturally creepy places” you just keep waiting to be defied. I will never hear The Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” the same way again or look at radio clocks as innocent harbingers of time. You keep expecting the worst. You share his panic and frustration. For your self-preservation, you want to believe him when he tries to talk sense to his tape recorder to calm himself. The “power of suggestion” is strong indeed; the score and sound effects are effective and thoughtful, with enough moments and good pacing for you to sober up till the next.
The momentum is destroyed, however, when the specters are shown. It gets silly (check out what gets faxed to him), then melodramatic in the exposition of his own personal ghosts that he is helplessly exorcising. He is forced to just ride it out like the aftermath of a hallucination gone awry.
Then it becomes even more fantastic and ridiculous, getting harder to accept as even stranger things happen in the “Kafkaesque hotel.” But Cusack is just such an excellent actor that I remained emotionally tied to him despite the circumstances and shared his despair at getting yanked back and forth into alternate realities. Reliving the horror of loss with him was cruel, rude and shocking, but the cheesy dialogue punctuated with the wry humor only he could truthfully deliver was quite a help. —CONTRIBUTED
