Movie: Tooth and Nail

If there's anything better than mutants, it's cannibal mutants. And even though the bad guys in Tooth and Nail aren't, technically speaking, mutants, they sure do derive from the Road Warrior school of fashion. When the clothes are little more than scraps of leather and metal studs, you know you're in a post-apocalyptic world. In particular (as the helpful voice-over informs us), the world has ended because... well, because we ran out of gas. Certainly, the explanation seems plausible enough if you don't think about it too much. And if you do, this movie probably isn't for you to begin with.

Needless to say, there are survivors, and there are predators. Our particular survivors (let's refer to them as the Munchies) are a scrappy lot, living off of Red Cross rations in an abandoned Philadelphia hospital. In a strange move, they've all adopted the names of cars: Ford, Dakota, Yukon, Nova, Viper etc., except for the leader, Darwin. The world has fallen apart; quick! everyone pick a nickname! Darwin has been designated the group's leader and brainiac, so he's not going to make it far; it probably doesn't help that he's played by Robert Carradine, best known for his role in Revenge of the Nerds. After all, horror movies tend to privilege men of action. Nerds, not so much. The predators (collectively known as Rovers) and they enjoying picking off their victims one at a time. That way, the meat stays fresh and doesn't get stringy. I guess in the future, curing meat has become a lost art. The Munchies take in a new member, the two groups meet, and dinner is served!

Tooth and Nail doesn't try to make the "guess the non-eaten" game difficult. The victim characters are sketched rather thinly; I doubt they'd make a substantial meal. Nonetheless, the roles of fodder are played convincingly enough. Pity poor Rider Strong, who in recent memory has been: infected with a flesh-eating virus; smacked around with a spiked club; and sacrificed to a Santeria cult (the last two just within the 2007 After Dark Horrorfest alone!). Rachel Miner, a Horrorfest alumna, puts in a sharp turn as the mysterious newcomer Neon, who reveals the big twist two-thirds of the way through the film. (It comes right on cue, following the scriptwriter's formula perfectly.)

Nicole DuPont plays the post-Darwinian leader, Dakota, rather impassively. I suppose DuPont was trying to convey her frail mental state, but the intensity of the Rovers (particularly the manic energy of Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones) demands an equal amount of intensity from their would-be victims. When she finally takes revenge (after using her noggin, pleasingly enough), the director seems to attempts to make her savage and cold and somewhat impractical. Don't waste those bullets! Don't squander those arrows! If the world is running out of resources, it would have made more sense to deliver the coup de grace with a rock. Who wants to dull their sharp blades on vertebrae and sternums?

Tooth and Nail, while it doesn't wow you with any spectacular set pieces or thoughtful commentary on the state of humanity, does at least provide a smooth thrill for its running time. The film uses the long, dark corridors of the hospital to great effect. We get shots of people running; we get shots of people hiding; however, without an idea of the layout of the hospital, the viewer is never quite sure of the distance between the chaser and chasee. Is everyone even on the same floor? Luckily, cannibal mutants can transcend spatial considerations. Must be something in their diet.

Movie: Nightmare Man

It's my own fault, I suppose, that I expected the films in the After Dark Horrorfest to have achieved some level of professionalism and polish. Part of the appeal of bad horror is its utter cheapness. So far, so good. But for that cheapness to get a theatrical release -- even as limited as Horrorfest was -- seems absurd. I mean, the opening credits seem as though they were programmed with a Commodore 64. The music was so generic that I'm surprised it didn't come from a brown paper bag. The movie reeked of straight-to-video.

And yet... at some point, I stopped being annoyed with the movie and let myself enjoy the utter cheesiness. That's not to say that I surrendered to its charms; rather, I said, Screw it. In the words of Bill, a Brazillian version of Bruch Campbell but without the self-deprecating charm, "This whole ordeal will be over before you know it." So, before three minutes of the movie have elapsed, we get a side boob shot. Before four minutes, we get complete nudity. This is a blessing in disguise, because since for the rest of the film, this actress varies between two lines: "No!" and "I need my pills!"

The story (such as it is) revolves around Bill and Ellen, a married couple who hope to spice up their romantic life with an African fertility mask. That's like having a Zuni fetish doll in your house. (This begs the question of why indigenous artifacts always bear some sort of evil curse. Damn you, colonialism!) Needless to say, Ellen becomes haunted in a most uncomfortable way and shakes herself into the dreaded it was all a dream" sequence. As it turns out, Ellen's now on her way to a sanitarium with Bill when their car mysteriously runs out of gas. As Bill goes off to find help, Ellen is terrorized by a mask-wearing fiend while huddled in the car -- echoes of Penny Dreadful from 2006's Horrorfest -- and she wisely chooses to abandon the vehicle and stumbles into a cabin full of young lovers playing "erotic truth-or-dare." If it sounds bad written out, just imagine Ellen's flight from a knife-wielding pursuer cross-cut with scenes of a black lingerie striptease. Don't even get me started on why someone would go into the dark woods wearing only a bra and panties and wielding a crossbow.

The movie seems to be a showcase for up-and-coming scream queen Tiffany Shepis -- Jamie Lee Curtis needn't get her guard up. Whereas Ms. Curtis chose roles in which she could be vulnerable, Ms. Shepis seems to prefer roles where she's a smart-ass or naked. Or both! Her pan-sexual portrayal of Mia means that Shepis gets to spit out choice one-liners with relative gusto and not an ounce of believeability. I can see how this is manna to a certain demographic -- but how about something for the rest of us?

Like I said, at some point, I just let myself enjoy the film -- but I could only do so up to a point. Nightmare Man never attempts to be scary and revels in its own campiness; it just wants to entertain. That's why I'm disturbed by the sexual violence. The demonic Nightmare Man enters into Ellen (and, later, Mia) by rape. And for a movie that's trying to be lighthearted, the subject of rape jars terribly with it. Indeed, as the teenagers discuss Ellen's sanity (or lack thereof), a kind, good-natured (and doomed) blonde girl raises rape trauma as a very real explanation for Ellen's behavior. So when Mia's clothes are ripped off by the demon (actually, a CGI effect that reminded me of a fireworks sparkler -- but an evil fireworks sparkler), it's meant to tittilate. But it comes off as exploitative, sleazy, and cheap in a way that has less to do with budget constraints and more to do with a lack of imagination.

Movie: Mulberry St.

Every so often, I gorge myself on horror movies. There's no rhyme or reason to it; it simply happens. The last time this occurred was coincidentally during the theatrical release of the After Dark Horrorfest, wherein I watched three films, one good, the other two not as good. So much like any other monster movie sequel, I'm back for the survivors.

I really had meant to see Mulberry St. in the theater—the premise sounded like an novel twist on regular zombie gutmunching lore. Instead of undeath-spread-by-bite, you have the zombies instead becoming rat-human hybrids. Or, essentially, actors with extra patches of hair and pointy mouth prosthetics. And while it sounds somewhat ridiculous—and, let's face it, it is—Mulberry St. turns out to be actually good. The contagious, anthrophagous, rat-people are the donné; the strength of the movie lies in its characters.

No, I actually said characters. Instead of the usual cardboard cut-out post-adolescents who live to die, Mulberry St. takes the time to craft down-to-earth characters; instead of focusing on the rich and beautiful, the tenants of the apartment building on the titular Mulberry St. have unglamourous jobs (bartender! pensioner! handyman!), have scars and flaws, and have conflicting desires. Worse, they seem to be well into their thirties if not older! Indeed, two of the characters are elderly and slightly debilitated; one is attached to an oxygen tank and mentions that he used to be a munitions expert. Gee, you think that'll play a role later? And even though some of the characters seem to play towards a certain type (Coco, for instance, is a black drag queen, which means his survivability rating is near nil), the actors bring life and nuance to them. Thus, when people start becoming rat chow, their deaths have an emotional impact.

Undoubtedly, the film strives for populist appeal. Yuppies and gentrifiers (embodied by the good-looking spokesmodel of the Crome Development company) are as much villians as the rat-people. After all, Crome has condemned the apartment building using eminent domain and plans to raze it in favor of higher-rent properties. Sounds like Manhattan, all right. (My friend Sam has written an essay about gentrification and horror which could shed some light on this subject.) But, fear not, the yuppies get their comeuppance. As the rat-people begin to multiply, they find bar-going yuppies particularly easy prey: soft and too loaded down with their own self-worth to run properly. Indeed, even as Manhattan is quarantined and panic overtakes the street, a yuppie couple runs with their baby from the Mulberry St. building, causing one of the aforementioned pensioners to yell after them, "Go back to Connecticut!"

The spectres of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina also weighs into the film. One of the characters, a wounded Iraqi war veteran with unsightly scars on her face has is berated when she leaves her bag unattended, but is also thanked for her service. (On the train, a cell-phone yapping commuter sits across from her, making her self-reflexively try to hide her scars beneath her hair: yuppie scum!) The mayor of New York City—who looks suspiciously like Bernard Kerik—gives live statements from the safety of Bermuda, while the city's emergency response breaks down. The final scene with biohazard-suited paramilitaries storming the city building by building seems reminiscent of war footage. Needless to say, the film ends on a particularly downbeat note.

(Interesting sidenote: on the DVD extras, there's a deleted scene which brings these issues much more to the forefront, with one character explicitly comparing yuppies to rats and another talking about biological warfare. A bit on the nose, I think, and a smart excision.)

Finally, this review wouldn't be complete without a mention of the queer content. Sure, the movie doesn't make a big deal of Coco's sexuality—it's an implicit given—but his relationship to the main character, Clutch, seems particularly ambiguous. Coco is introduced via a series of pictures which shows him, Clutch, and Casey (Clutch's daughter, the war vet) together. This implies an intimacy which is never fully addressed. Clutch seems like a red-blooded male; his attraction to Kay, the Eastern European single mother upstairs, means that he rides to her rescue, and when Coco caresses Clutch's cheek, Clutch rebuffs him away definitively, but not maliciously. Also ambigious: at the end of the film, the rat-ified Kay pauses before her son, sniffing him, but not attacking. It's as if she recognizes him as family. Similarly, the rat-ified Coco does the same to Clutch. Does this imply a closer relationship than we're lead to believe? It's this sort of character-based complexity which helps Mulberry St. transcend its silly concept and become something not just horrifying, but stirring, as well.

Movie: Phone

Of the recent spate of derivative Korean horror movies, Phone stands head-and-shoulders above the rest, though it's not without its own faults. But where Phone succeeds, it succeeds with flair, particularly in its visual style. It also displays some real flashes of imagination and some disturbing connotations—though not so disturbing to turn off an audience. Unfortunately.

Phone centers around that Asian horror movie chestnut: cursed technology. In this case, a cell phone that rings at inopportune times. The caller doesn't as much say hello as she sort of screams something murderous that causes people to see strange visions, go mad, or generally get possessed. Think of it as extreme telemarketing. Ji-won has inherited the number of doom, and when a friend's daughter answers the call, Ji-won must solve the mystery before it's too late, or the no-call list will grow larger.

Director Ahn Byong Ki keeps a tight rein on his visuals: ghostly occurrences have a distinct blue tint, moments of violence lean towards red/orange tones, and Ji-won's friends, an outwardly "nuclear" family of three, appear almost exclusively in white. Does it matter that their underthings are black? You bet! After the daughter, Yeong-Ju, has answered the phone, she becomes possessed by a spirit that wants to do inappropriate things to Daddy and hurt Mommy. While pre-school seems a little early for the Electra complex, I guess they're more emotionally mature in Korea. After all, Ji-won's big break comes when she writes about an under-age sex scandal, little knowing that her best friends have a little scandal of their own.

Phone raises some interesting issues about motherhood, especially when it's revealed that Yeong-Ju is actually Ji-won's biological daughter (transported via petri dish into her friend Ho-Jeong's womb). Phone tries to make the argument of nature vs. nurture come down solidly on the nature side—but the issue isn't necessarily that simple. When the reason behind the haunting is finally revealed in a jarring POV switch that is supposed to estrange the audience from Ho-Jeong, it actually makes Ho-Jeong seem more reasonable. Also going against Phone is its penchant for cliche—as well as style substituting for actual scares (an elevator opens onto a stairwell: ooo, spooky). Still, compared to some of its compatriots, Phone has a eerie quality to it. It's a ringtone that's all too familiar, but still distorted enough to catch your attention.

Korean derivative cinema equation: Murder by Phone + The Exorcist + Ringu = Phone.