Change Your Image
Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Amber Alert (2012)
A good Found Footage Thriller
AMBER ALERT gives a vicarious experience for something that could realistically happen to any of us:
you sight a car matching an Amber Alert; what would you do?
Would you just call the police and leave it at that, or would you try to do more?
Most people would probably just alert the authorities and then go their own way, but if the protagonists did that, there would obviously be no movie.
There are several things I liked about this film: the originality and realism of the setup; how initially small decision like tailing the suspect from the distance lead to bigger decisions down the road, so that before long, the protagonists end up doing something they would have never agreed to doing at the outset; the prolonged sense of mystery, keeping alternate possibilities requiring drastically different decisions alive as long as possible; finally, a lesson about the consequences of one's actions.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws, too: a significant portion of the dialogue is yelled, which suggests to me that the dialogue was improvised, there could have been a dose of humor, and the protagonists were not as likable as they should have been, straddling the border of being annoying. Without these flaws, this would have been a great found footage movie.
I enjoy Found footage movies most when they manage to help me immerse myself in the movie's world and vicariously explore a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This film did that.
AMBER ALERT is not for people who let difficult characters ruin their viewing experience, or for those who hate found footage movies, but others will find this probably to be interesting and enjoyable.
Stranger (2006)
Harshly underrated wordless short
I just finished watching ENCOUNTER (2021) and found it to be a pretty good drama-thriller. Since I had not heard of its director, Michael Pearce, I checked on some of his other works on IMDb. I noticed that he has several short movies which are rated under 2, an unusually low rating on this site. This made me curious enough to watch one of them.
In STRANGER, a young man and woman are frolicking outside by a meadow, passed by a stranger. Soon it becomes apparent that the woman is actually blind, and an unexpected tragedy befalls them...
There is not a single word spoken in this short, and the ending is somewhat open. Perhaps people thought that this was too pretentious, but I did not. The moment of the life-altering event is actually delivered quite effectively using the audio, and contributes to a growing sense of unease.
I do not understand how anyone could give this such low ratings. It has an original idea, it achieves what it sets out to do, and while it may not be among the very best that short film has to offer, it is not bad. The IMDb rating of 1.7 at this time is entirely unreasonable.
Cosmos (2019)
A treat for sci-fi fans who understand and appreciate how real-world science works
COSMOS joins a small but eclectic group of excellent movies which give an emphatically realistic account of how a first encounter with an extraterrestrial lifeform might play out. These include CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), CONTACT (1996), ARRIVAL (2016), and if we include a story set in the future, EUROPA REPORT (2013).
All of these are well worth watching, but what makes COSMOS stand out is that whereas the others all had sizeable budgets, this one was made with no financial backing while seemingly sacrificing no production quality. To accomplish this, the brother duo of film-makers, Elliot and Zander Weaver, either used pre-owned equipment, borrowed it or rigged creative solutions to achieve the desired result. They also employed a small cast, took on virtually all crew tasks except for composing, got Mom to help and used basically a single location.
It did take 5 years to make it, and there are no spectacular CGI effects, but the cinematography and production values are every bit as good as with a movie with a seven- or even eight-digit budget. It is truly an impressive achievement.
But even setting the no-budget considerations aside, this is an excellent hard science fiction movie.
As a physicist, I appreciated how well it captured how real-world science works: there are long periods where nothing truly exciting happens but during which one must still pay just as much attention to everything and work just as hard as any other time, enlivened only by the camaraderie with one's peers.
Very occasionally, something exciting happens, and if it is confirmed that one has made a genuine discovery, that one is the very first person in the history of all of humankind to find out that particular thing, then it more than makes up for the mundane proceedings at other times.
The first hour or so captures the mundaneness of regular science, enlivened by a sense of camaraderie. Notably, the movie does not dumb down what the scientists are doing. Because of this and the slow pace, I can imagine that some people might be turned off, especially if they don't have a good idea of how science is carried out in real life. But those who persist will be rewarded in the second half.
During the second hour, as it becomes increasingly clear that a small team of scientists might have made a major discovery, the film kicks into high gear and adds a heavy dose of suspense. The suspense is not generated by entirely realistic means, but it is easy to forgive this in light of the movie's overall realism.
The cinematography is simply a pleasure to behold, full of atmospheric shots, and the plot injects a good dose of humanity into what could have easily become an emotionally sterile story.
Most impressively, the movie truly manages to capture the sense of excitement such a discovery might produce, not only for the discoverers, but for all of us. This is an inspired work of film-making.
Ghost Webcam (2023)
Starts off with an intriguing premise, becomes totally implausible
GHOST WEBCAM is a horror movie in which all the action plays out on a computer screen, as people communicate with each other via video calls.
A young man under house arrest chats with a young woman via a dating app. She directs him to the eponymous website, and before long she seems to fall victim to a ghost right on his screen.
There are by now a number of horror movies in this format, and some of them are quite good to excellent: THE DEN (2013), UNFRIENDED (2014), HOST (2020) and this year's THE INVITED (2024), for example. Each of these starts with a unique premise and develops the story in a direction that is not only unexpected but builds on what came before to present an overall coherent story in an entertaining and especially a gripping way.
In this movie, we have a unique and even intriguing premise, but the direction the story takes is neither particularly coherent nor particularly gripping.
I want to be clear that while it is obvious that this is an extreme low-budget film, I am not holding that against it. Rather, I see the main problem with the screenplay. A few more rewrites could have for example made a more coherent connection between events from 30 years before and the present, reduced the "dead time" moments in the film while cranking up the intensity in the latter parts of the film, and made the motivations of the ghost as it relates to the bystanders more plausible (for instance, via surprising plot twists or unexpected connections) while taking the story in surprising directions.
The implausibility that struck me the most was that a ghost with the powers shown in the final scenes would have no need to contact people the way it does.
Since the film is at about an hour pretty short, it may still entertain fans of the genre without overstaying its welcome, but to me it represents a missed opportunity because its biggest problem is not a a lack of money but a lack of ideas.
The Invocation of Enver Simaku (2018)
Works better as an introduction to aspects of Albanian culture and history than as a drama
THE INVOCATION OF ENVER SIMAKU documents the effort of a man who tries to find out what exactly happened during a particular night in 1997 when his wife and dozens of local Albanian villagers were murdered by a seeming madman, and a period of upheaval began in the entire country.
This is a slow-burn story which takes its time to follow various leads and in the meanwhile introduces us to various topics of Albanian culture, geography and history. For a movie that is not a real documentary, it contains quite a lot of such information, and I found this aspect the most interesting. Now I know, for example, that Albania during Communist times was declared the world's first atheist country, prohibiting the exercise of religion altogether until the regime's downfall in 1990; that superstition and belief in folk myths such as the kukuth, a demon-like creature that is supposed to make people do horrible things, began to occupy the vacuum of belief in at least in some people; and that the fall of the Albanian right-wing government in 1997 was catalyzed by the failure of Ponzi schemes and subsequent losses in which the overwhelming majority of the population had invested based on the irresponsible endorsement by their government.
When it comes to the story itself, it doesn't generate too much excitement, save for a couple of unsettling scenes, of which the seeming slow emergence of a kukuth from behind a couch (or was it just the imagination?) is probably the most notable. The ending, which recapitulates the beginning, seems to have been conceived as poetic but ends up being anticlimactic.
The film is at pains to say that it is based on true events. Whether it really is or not I can't tell, but all the background info I checked turned out correct. So, this is probably most suited for people who like to learn more about other cultures in general and Albania in particular.
Spookies (1986)
Pitiful at everything except the special effects
Coming across this title in an article that called it a "cult classic" and having never heard of it but hoping that it might be something like other enjoyable mid-80s horror comedy fare like GREMLINS (1984), THE GOONIES (1985) or even CRITTERS (1986), I decided to give it a try.
Wow, it just has to be seen to be believed how utterly bad this is at everything except the special effects: a non-plot with pointless dead-end plot lines, aggressively stupid characters who are so flat that only their stupidity makes them character-like, lack of continuity and non-sensical event progressions, atrocious acting, all rounded out by intrusive synth sounds. Also, this is one unfunny "comedy".
The special effects are the star here, and for 80s movies they are not bad. The monster creature designs are not the very best that this era produced (see, for example THE THING (1980) or AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981) ) but they are passable and there is a copious number of them.
This movie could have still gotten by as a monster effects showcase if it weren't so aggressively stupid and annoying. As it was, despite the fact that I do enjoy even hokey 80s special effects, I could not wait for this to be over.
Invisible Enemies (1997)
Clunky Christian propaganda horror short
A teenager finds an old-fashioned pair of glasses with a Latin inscription by the wayside and discovers that when he puts them on, he can suddenly perceive demons and, moreover, this effect only occurs when he puts on the glasses, not when anybody else does.
What sounds like a potentially intriguing premise for a supernatural horror film is utterly ruined by insisting on making this film a vehicle for heavy-handed Christian propaganda.
The problems already start with the overall structure, where the story is framed as a reminiscence of youth of the now-older protagonist to his teenage son, a structure which serves no discernable dramatic purpose. Presumably, this was meant to lend the story and its lesson (to accept Jesus into your heart) an air of authority, but that is undermined by the sometimes inane exchange between father and son.
Then we have the protagonist not just being able to see the demons when he puts on the glasses, but hearing and possibly feeling them, too! How is that for religious logic!
Early on, the film argues that even from a science standpoint, there are things which we may not be able to see, such as microorganisms and atoms, but which nonetheless exist. This is true, as far as it goes, but if we want to draw an analogy between these and demons to lend the authority of science to the idea that the latter exist, we cannot just stop half-way: microbes and atoms are not the kind of things which can be perceived by only one person under the same conditions. In fact, the more reasonable conclusion is that if only one person sees things that others fail to perceive under the same condition, then that person is probably hallucinating.
While early on the film drops hints that this is "Christian Horror", the proselytizing gets ever more blatant and cringy. The production quality is okay for the 90s, but the script is hilariously inept, even if we set the religious stuff aside. The constant interruption of the flashbacks by the superfluous father-son exchange breaks the flow, the characters are cardboards, and the emotional climax involves an absurdly contrived situation.
The people who rated this drivel highly did not do it because of its quality but because they agree with its religious message.
A.M.I. (2019)
Alice in Motherland
A high school girl with mental illness who suffers from overwhelming feelings of guilt due to having accidentally caused her mother's death comes across a phone loaded with an artificial intelligence app which, by adopting her mother's persona und using Lewis Carroll's famous story to frame the girl's experiences, manipulates and guides her into killing people.
On paper, this sounds like a great premise for a psycho thriller/horror movie, but the execution leaves much to be desired. To be sure, the film is a notch or two higher than your basement bargain grade Z dreck, but this is not saying all that much.
The actors seem obviously too old for high school, the cinematography is uninspired, and somehow an air of low budget permeates the whole film. Finally, there are plausibility issues, with respect to the connection the AI makes between its central mission of protecting the girl and leading her to kill, with respect to how quickly the girl morphs into a psychopath, and with respect to how the murders are failed to be tracked back to her, given how much evidence she left behind.
There are some nice touches, like the running commentary of the AI during the murders, and the deliciously black ending, but overall, while watching, I kept on thinking how much more potential this film left unfulfilled.
Zombi 2 (1979)
Possibly the greatest Zombie film of the 70s
I saw Zombie/Zombie 2 (same movie, yes, it's confusing, you can thank then-common practices of adding unauthorized sequels by unscrupulous film-makers outside the US) when I was about 9 years old, if I recall correctly, and it did have an effect on me: for several weeks after, I would wonder-not without trepidation-whether Zombies would suddenly jump out in my neighborhood.
Nowadays we are used to quite a bit more gore in horror and even other genre movies than audiences were back then, but since a lot of it is CGI, it might not seem as disturbing. But apart from that, even today ZOMBIE is definitely not a movie for the kiddos, as it contains several scenes of extreme gore, such as a graphic depiction of an eyeball being pierced.
But apart from my personal history with this movie, I think it is still special in a more general sense in that it combines an interesting storyline, an exotic locale, iconic scenes, well-executed practical effects, and, what is for me absolutely essential in horror, superb atmosphere, into one movie where everything comes together just right.
I recently rewatched it and was surprised at just how atmospheric the movie is. The only other Zombie horror movie that I find comparable in atmosphere is CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980)(I concede this could be partly nostalgia for that era). In my view, the best classic horror combines great atmosphere with shocking moments, and ZOMBIE offers plenty of those, from the shocking opening scene to the shocking finale (though that kind of ending has been used so often by now that it has lost some of its edge).
Zombie movies were still relatively rare in the 1970s, so there is not a lot of competition for title of " best" Zombie movie of that era, but some other possible contenders I have seen are TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (1972), LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (1974), SHIVERS (1975), SHOCK WAVES (1977) and DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978). While all of these are good to very good zombie films, ZOMBIE is still my favorite. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Exhume (2017)
Starts off promising, then becomes nonsensical
An archeologist husband and a forensic anthropologist wife take on the job of searching for and exhuming the contested body of a boy on the grounds of a Christian camp for troubled teenaged males. They bring along their teenaged daughter, who has a history of mental illness, to help them. As they search for the body, she experiences ever more intense visions of the camp through the eyes of the boy until eventually things come to a head and the camp's horrific secret is revealed.
EXHUME starts off fairly well, and the first act, which sets up the story while literally providing flashbacks through the eyes of the hapless camp residents, is very effective. Unfortunately, after that, events become increasingly implausible.
I don't want to give away too much, but both the parents' actions seem less and less like what real parents would do in their situation, and the abilities of a girl who is, shall we say, not right in her mind, become more and more far-fetched. For example, toward the end, there is a car explosion without any obvious detonator, and a person is magically able to outrun undetected another person who is running back and forth.
There is an epilogue which suggests a possible sequel, but that would be a very different kind of movie because of how this one ends.
At any rate, the movie is well-shot and well-acted (though I feel the camp could have been given a bit more "personality") and probably quite entertaining if one does not think too hard about the later events.
Finally, I have a criticism which I cannot mention without a spoiler, so you have been warned.
SPOILER
I find it offensive that the movie implicitly seems to justify the evil of torturing and killing dozens of boys through the evil of a single psychopathic boy. I am actually a fan of movies with moral gray zones, and in principle, the idea of setting up competing evils is quite good. The problem here specifically is that by means of the "trial by fire" plot device this movie seems to suggest that a far greater evil is somehow justified when it is inflicted upon purported psychopaths.
Amanuda (2021)
Overlong Found Footage Movie that is mediocre at best
AMANUDA (which according to Google Translate means "human" in Tamil) recounts the story of a couple of parapsychology students who interview various locals of a village near a forest that is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of an evil dutchman residing in his castle inside that forest. Eventually, they come across the survivor of a previous expedition who shows them his footage that forms the bulk of the film.
This is billed as the first Tamil-language found footage movie, and I have to say, the idea of a haunted castle in a southwest Indian forest has a very strong appeal to me. Sadly, the movie does very little with it: apart from the opening drone shots, the forest is underemphatized, and we see even less of the castle, as by that point, most of the movie is set in darkness.
I can't help but compare this to VAZHIYE (2021), billed as the first Malayalam found footage movie, which overall wasn't much better (see my review) but did have as one of its greatest strengths that it made a south Indian forest more part of the story and thereby provided a much better vicarious experience.
AMANUDA has several additional flaws: it is extremely slow-burn, but whereas slow FF movies tend to wear out their welcome by minute 80 or so at the most, the movie goes on for another 25 minutes. There was definitely room for trimming.
Of the six characters in the original group, only three are sketched at all, the three others contribute so little to the story that they might as well have been left off. Also, I felt the myth of the "Antichrist" Dutchman was insufficiently fleshed out. The movie squandered a lot of opportunities for building atmosphere that were provided by the location, plot and myth-building.
Some of the choices of the characters did not make sense to me. For example, they find a heavy box (due to, in part, being filled with dirt) and decide to take the whole box instead of the much lighter-weight relevant contents. Also, ten minutes away from the castle at full daylight, they decide to visit it only when it is already fully dark.
The idea of making the threat more ominous by relying mainly on sound only succeeds in part because the constant sounds of the ghost/monster running to and fro are bound to confuse the audience. There is a twist at the end, but it is rather predictable and poorly executed.
I really wanted to like this film, especially since the poster makes it seem much more exciting than it is. Alas, there is no scene in the movie that corresponds to that depicted in the poster, and the feeling of having been presented with something that falls far short of what was promised permeates the entire film.
Dachra (2018)
Atmospheric Horror hampered by Stupid Character Syndrome
I have seen thousands of horror films, but I do not recall a single one which begins, in quite a matter-of-fact-way, with the decapitation of a child (not explicitly shown, fortunately). That really got my attention.
A group of three film students visit a mental hospital in order to film a patient who is considered a witch, and based on a clue she provides seek out a remote hamlet. Once there, they find it to be inhabited by very strange residents and end up facing a horror far beyond anything they imagined...
It turns out that DACHRA, evidently Tunisia's first horror film, is very good at amplifying horror by presenting it in a mundane way, yet at the same time it oozes with atmosphere. Judging by the scarcity of horror movies which are successful in their attempts to do that, this is a credit to the film.
Also, I loved the feistiness of the female leader of the group during the interview with the hospital director. Unfortunately, by the end of the movie, her character has undergone an arc for the worse. In fact, the development of the characters and the poor choices they make are the weakest aspects of the movie. They fail to provide critical information to each other, they seem unreasonably unconcerned with the increasingly unsettling events they witness until there is no room left for ambiguity, and shortly before the end there is a twist which seems too implausible because it was not set up properly (for example, the twist contradicts the seeming surprise of one of the characters when he discovers they have been filmed while sleeping).
These flaws do not completely mitigate the strengths of the movie, they just reduce what could have been a great horror film to merely a good one. On a final note, DACHRA feels strongly like a found footage (FF) film without being one. As a FF fan, I appreciated the ambience.
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
A superhero movie that tries to be different
When the prequel to this film, WONDER WOMAN (2017) came out, it was near-universally lauded for introducing feminist aspects into the often very macho Superhero genre in an effective and entertaining manner. Yet it still followed some of the basic conventions of this type of movie that one would associate with films intended for mainly male audiences: the movie is suffused with a Manichean Worldview (i.e. A worldview in which good and bad are taken to be as distinct as black and white, and which allows little or no moral nuance), most obviously by personifying war; lots of people get killed (some gruesomely); and there is the virtually obligatory epic final boss fight.
I attribute this to writer/director Patty Jenkins probably not having been given free rein by the studio to make the kind of superhero movie she really wanted to make, if WW 1984 is an indication of her real preferences.
In a way, the sequel is a logical advancement along the path the first film opened in terms of bringing feminine elements into superhero movies. For example, this time no people are explicitly shown to be killed (though it still features implicit deaths), there is noticeably more light sitcom-like dialogue, and the villains have a curiously benign vibe as they bring about the end of humankind.
Given that there are by now a lot of these kinds of movies, I suspect they have set certain audience expectations which the first film met but this film does not, and that may be in large part why it got many negative reviews.
However, if this is true, then it is regrettable because it means that it is a lot harder to make superhero movies which take risks to be different from the superhero cookie cutter template.
In principle, I laud efforts to break out of a mold, but in practice, such efforts can be disappointing, such as HANCOCK (2008) which was marketed as a spoof of the genre only to devolve about midway into one of its most typical yet dumbest examples.
But still, being different just for the sake of being different is in my opinion also a recipe for failure if it ignores that in this particular medium, there are, at minimum, audience expectations to be entertained, if nothing else.
I did find WW 1984 entertaining, even if a bit overlong. It has some nice action sequences (though the little girl being a serious challenge to the grown women in the opening race was not convincing to me), it has a neat twist on the villain concept by turning him into a personified Monkey's Paw, and it actually also appeals to ethos and logos in addition to pathos, which most superhero movies do not really do much.
Actually, let me just briefly divert into my general view of superhero movies: I believe that they are among the worst kinds of escapism because by their very nature they tend to be packaged in a disempowering philosophical message:
some problems we cannot solve on our own, but if we wait, wish and hope, maybe someone else, namely a "superhero", will come along and solve it for us and save us.
I used quotation marks because in real life, there are obviously no such people endowed with unphysical superpowers. However, there are plenty of people who are adored and even worshipped in a comparable way by large groups of people: Jobs, Musk, Obama, Trump, Thunberg etc.
In fact, I take the current dominance of the superhero genre directly as one sign of a failing health of societies which must deal with increasingly intractable problems, such as climate change, income and wealth disparity, health costs, migration etc. Adopting the attitude that some select people with personal, financial, or political superpowers will leap in to save us only takes us further away from the real solutions, in my view.
To be sure, I see no problem with watching a superhero movie now and then, but the near-ubiquity of these movies in contemporary cinema in my opinion may have a definite impact on our attitudes toward how to solve our collective problems in the real world.
That does not even take into account that many superhero movies are filled with a corporatist message (e.g. Via product placements) which tells us that the only real action beside hoping and wishing that a superhero will make our problems go away is to consume. Lastly, superhero movies tend to be extremely expensive, and may drain money that could be used to fund a much wider (and in my opininlon healthier) range of movies.
But back to WW 1984. I admire the director's courage in trying to make a movie that attempts to transcend the template set by the superhero movies before it. It appears that many people did not appreciate this. Though this is no really fault of the movie, it does not mean that the movie is flawless. As mentioned, it could have been shorter, the villains could have been darker, and going to the other extreme of showing nobody getting killed itself reeks of a kind of censorship.
But still, standing on its own, this is a well-produced, unusually nuanced yet still entertaining if not perfectly executed film that probably fell victim to audience expectations set by the existing superhero lore.
The Cave (2005)
The Cave is like a main character in this movie
THE CAVE tells the story of a group of cave divers who go on an expedition exploring a large system in Romania. Little do they know that the cave harbors a deadly secret.
Though this movie does not feature extremely well-known actors, the science behind the story is dodgy, and the movie is kind of like "ALIEN in Underground Caves", this is an entertaining film that is as close to action-adventure as it is to horror, especially when compared to THE DESCENT (2005), a true horror film which came out the same year and to which it is thematically very similar.
The best parts are the stunning underwater cave sequences and the beautiful atmospheric sets. I found the eye candy sets to be such an integral part of the movie that they felt effectively like a main character. Undoubtedly that was the director's intention.
The monster special effects were not bad, though they could have been better. The movie significantly picks up the pace in the second half and does not let up until the end. Overall, this is a fun popcorn film.
Nosferatu.com (2020)
Found footage fans will probably like it, others not so much
NOSFERATU. COM is a found footage film which tells the story of Jeremy, the owner of the eponymous website, who is sent a video by a woman whose husband, a member of his site, is attacked by something in an abandoned factory while trying to protect himself with a crucifix. Suspecting at least the possibility of vampires, he sets out with 5 friends to investigate in that factory and ends up finding more than he bargained for.
The set up is by now a kind of cliché in this subgenre, and it does not help that the movie also uses many tropes, like a "fake-out joke" early in the film. Also, the group is goes vampire hunting completely unprepared. Even if they did not really believe enough to bring stakes, crucifixes, or holy water, someone getting attacked in that factory should have prompted them to bring some kind of defense weapons. When the undead inevitably show up, the movie treats their strengths in wildly inconsistent ways. Lastly, the movie is too short for proper character development. So I thought this was going to be a subpar FF horror movie.
However, what lifts this movie at least partially up is that the action starts within about 20 minutes, that there is an unusual middle segment involving a dating show and that in the finale, the film-makers really tried to ramp up the action (in that last respect, it reminded me a little of the ending of EVIDENCE (2012). Unfortunately, the action in the finale felt at arm's length and was therefore not as involving as it should have been.
Overall, I think people who dislike FF should probably stay away from this, people who want to try FF out would be better served with better-made movies with similar plots, like GRAVE ENCOUNTERS (2011) or GONJIAM ASYLUM (2018), and FF fans would find the barely over one hour runtime a worthwhile investment.
Shadow Island (2023)
Somewhat Unsatisfying Swedish Thriller
SHADOW ISLAND tells the story of a Swedish meteorologist who barely remembers his father due to apparent suicide who, based on instinct and newly discovered evidence, decides to investigate what his dad was doing on a small secluded island on his last assignment. Once there, he finds a lot more than expected.
There was enough material here to turn this into a top notch thriller. The movie had genuinely unexpected twists and turns, and ultimately an interesting plot, but somehow it all added up to less than than the sum of its parts.
Early scenes in which a background radio mentions the accession of Sweden to NATO due to Russian aggression against Ukraine foreshadow that eventually the story will take on a geopolitical dimension, but even that ultimately serves just as background for a tale of unexpected family connections.
The criticism at the shortsightedness of each generation of people who do the dirty work for their governments, and thereby burden the next generation with painful memories and guilt is right on point.
So the film does a lot of things right. However, the dreamy filming style with flashbacks, flash forwards and dream sequences does not really mesh well with the plot as it sucks out most of the tension and suspense. Also, there is a slightly confusing point on whether the story alleges that the Swedish government or just a Swedish rogue group was secretly cooperating with Russia to spy on NATO. Finally, the assassination scene at the end leaves the movie on a weak note, since it is not entirely clear whether it succeeded and the assassin was unexpectedly clumsy, apparently.
All in all, a thriller that fell short of its potential.
The Field Guide to Evil (2018)
The title reflects that this is the closest thing to "anthropology horror"
THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL is based on a reallly neat concept: present an anthology of mythologies and folklores around the world which lend themselves to a horror treatment.
Of course, there is already such a thing as folklore horror, and it turns out that even some unexpected horror subgenres, such as the Italian Cannibal movies from the 70s and 80s had their content origin in (or better: were originally inspired by) anthropological field reports, though these are commonly regarded as outgrowths of the Mondo films, a wave of anthropological mockumentaries started by the (in)famous MONDO CANE(1962).
FIELD GUIDE's global orientation takes it as close as a professed fiction movie can get to a "anthropological" treatment of horror. If you are familiar with folk horror, you know that best movies in the genre, such as THE WITCH (2015), THE RITUAL (2017) and THE HALLOW (2015) have atmosphere in spades, a slow to modest pace, and they refuse to spell out every last detail for the audience.
I suspect that the latter two aspects are not really well-appreciated by wider audiences, and that makes folk horror a little bit of an acquired taste. Most of the segments of FIELD GUIDE are open-ended in one way or another, and probably because there was not as much time to establish the story and characters as in a full-length feature, this may contribute to several of the segments feeling incomplete.
On the flip side, both the introduction and almost all the segments are very strong on atmosphere, sometimes using daring film-making techniques to achieve it. Plus, I for one appreciate learning about folk legends and myths.
I have read other reviews which say that watching the movie can feel like a drudge after a while, and admittedly, this criticism has something to it. I think there are two reasons for this: first, folk horror being generally slow and open-ended, tends to demand more from the viewer than your average horror movie, and second, most of these legends are going to be unfamiliar to most viewers, making it hard to fit them in a broader context. A hypothetical anthology of, say, vampire or zombie shorts would likely not face this issue.
For this reason, I think the most fulfilling and ultimately enjoyable way to watch this film is to watch a segment, then peruse wikipedia or some such source to learn more about the myth in order to contextualize what was just seen, reflect on it, and then go on to the segment. That means instead of treating the experience as watching a single movie, the probably most rewarding way is to treat it as eight shorts.
In that light, a brief discussion of each segment is warranted:
1. "Die Trud" (the Trud) tells the story of a woman haunted by the eponymous incubus-like demon in Austrian Folklore. The strength of this short is that it sheds light on the decidedly natural (as opposed to supernatural) origin of many a folk myth, especially in relation to behaviors which may have been considered deviant by past societal norms.
2."Al Karisi"(which means "the Scarlet woman") tells the story of a pregnant woman and caregiver of her invalid mother who is haunted by the eponymous birth-giving demon in Turkish folklore. What this short does especially well is suffuse itself with a continual atmosphere of dread and foreboding.
3."The Kindler and the Virgin", based on Polish folklore, features strong atmosphere and a good concept but an open ending that is likely to frustrate many viewers.
4."Beware the Melon Heads", based on a Midwest US folklore involving eponymous creatures, is the weakest segment of the movie.
5. "The Palace of Horrors", shot in black and white and one of the most atmospheric segments in tbe anthology, tells a story involving a Bengali folk myth about a crumbling palace in the Sundarban tropical forest. The palace is visited by two visitors looking for human oddities for none other than P. T. Barnum, and find more than they expected. This segment (for those who appreciate such matters) is also the most Lovecraftian, even making a direct reference in one fleeting shot.
6."Whatever happened to Panagas the Pagan?", featuring the malevolent folk legend Kallikantzaros, has some of the nicest visuals and atmosphere in the anthology, but unfortunately with a lack of context, it is hard to make sense of the conclusion
7."A nocturnal Breath", both thematically and geographically somewhat similar to "Die Trud", features a demon in Bavarian folklore associated with pestilence which haunts a brother and sister. It is one of the strongest segments in the anthology.
8."The Cobbler's Lot", based on a Hungarian folk tale involving two brothers who become rival suitors for a princess, makes some of the most daring stylistic choices in the anthology. It is likely to be one of those films one either loves or hates.
For what it's worth, the 4 segments I personally liked the best were "A Nocturnal Breath", "The Palace of Horrors", "Die Trud" and "Al Karisi".
Finally, it is interesting that this movie was crowdfunded. I wonder whether it was able to recoup its investment. From a cultural perspective, movies like this are in my opinion definitely worth investing in.
Invited (2024)
Intense On-Screen Found Footage Movie
INVITED is a movie which plays out entirely on a computer screen, most of it showing a zoom meeting. For those not familiar with this format, movies like THE DEN (2013), UNFRIENDED (2014) and THE HOST (2020), which also used it, demonstrated how impressively far it can be taken to tell a horror story effectively.
In a clever prologue, we learn about the protagonist that she is a recovering alcoholic who has lost both her nursing and driver's licenses, having caused a car accident which left a lasting injury to her son and her relationship with her children, parents and ex-husband in tatters. She logs on to attend together with them an on-line elopement of her estranged daughter, but soon things take a horrific turn...
Although the film starts out quietly, this is one of the more intense works in the found footage genre (a term I use to refer to any movie which extensively uses formats such as purported footage being played, fake documentaries being presented, a computer screen showing events, and even everything being shown from a first-person view perspective). The intensity picks up gradually until in the last half hour or so, everything is in a frenzy.
I enjoy high intensity found footage movies, so this was welcome to me. Another positive was that there is a definite message here about how a weakening of the bonds in a family can lead to some of its members seeking those elsewhere, to the great detriment of everybody involved. There are also a few reasonablyvstaged graphic scenes, and the end credits provide the real-life historical basis for the events shown, accompanied by beautiful dreamy music.
On the negative side, some of the hostility against the mother by family members, especially her own father, seemed a little too contrived; stupid character syndrome reared its ugly head here multiple times; there was definitely a need for make-up for tears and sweat, and inexplicably, in a few scenes, the perspective abruptly changed to a different camera, taking me right out of the movie. A more skillful director would have led the change in perspective required to show us what is going on in a continuous fashion. Also, the movie is sort of open-ended, which some people may not like.
Still, I think most fans of found footage horror films will like this. I know of several other found footage movies which feature cults, but only one them serves as an explicit warning about them, namely THE SACRAMENT (2018), which I liked a tad better than this, but that is not to say that I would not recommend it.
We're Not Safe Here (2022)
Turns "Stupid Character Syndrome" on its head
WE'RE NOT SAFE HERE follows three friends on a camping trip. At a camp fire, one of them tells the story of "La Mimica" a man-eating monster that can perfectly mimic human voices and other sounds. Later at night, two friends inside the tent are not sure whether what is outside the tent is the third friend or La Mimica.
Early on, the film pokes fun at a common bane of horror stories, what I call "stupid character syndrome", where characters behave in unrealistically stupid ways in order to advance the horror plot. It then proceeds to turn the trope on its head.
The conversation to ascertain who is outside the tent proceeds in a very naturalistic way. The characters are not stupid, and the way things progress is very believable. Everything happens as it might happen in real life, up to the last shot...
By rights, WE'RE NOT SAFE HERE should start a whole subgenre, namely what I would call "Intelligent monster movies". The malevolent entity uses cleverness to take deception in horror film to a whole new level.
I have a minor quibble in that an entity that can tear apart grown men in seconds should be able to penetrate a closed tent with no problems, but it does not change the fact that the central concept makes this horror short truly stand out.
I hope other horror film makers will be inspired by this to make their own intelligent monster movies.
The Cat with Hands (2001)
Very atmospheric, very effective
The CAT WITH HANDS is hands down (pardon the pun!) one of the most disturbing stop motion films I have ever seen, and I am quite familiar with the opus of Jan Svankmaier and Cyriak(though the latter's works are not technically stop-motion but a kind of video editing strongly reminiscent of it). And I mean this in a good way!
The movie delivers unmatched atmosphere which gives the horror an unforgettable edge. And though the story recalls old folk tales which were meant to scare the bejesus out of children, it appears to be original, too. The central concept reminded me a little of that of THE THING (1982), my favorite horror film.
I would have loved to see a full-feature version of this fairy tale. Still, for atmospheric horror fans, this short is a can't miss.
The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow (2008)
Explanation of film: very original concept, good execution
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF MISTER HOLLOW is a creepy horror short that takes an altogether novel approach to storytelling. After a brief scan of what appears to be a desk, which, among other things, reveals an article that states that child abductions have soared recently, the camera focuses on a photograph of what turns out to be a key moment in a crime scene. Lingering over different parts of it, it progressively reveals more aspects of what is happening in that scene.
It is a little like a puzzle, and for those who did not quite follow, here is the spoiler: followers of the cult of the ancient Greek death spirits Keres (marked by their wrist tattoos) are in the process of abducting yet another baby from her mother. The father was shot in the car, the kneeling accomplice is preparing an unholy fire (recall the cross in the firewood) and what we are witnessing is an impending child sacrifice ritual. A man in the bushes in the background with a shotgun is about to attempt to stop it, and the priest beside him is trying to protect him. The child sacrifice is for the devil, shown in the very last shot.
The idea is executed well, and I loved the idea of being able to "go into the picture" to glean more details. My only criticisms are that details of the picture change over time, as for example the expression of the mother and the fingernails of the man having his arm around her, and that the film has a little too much of a "video game look".
To me, the first point amounts to deceiving the audience, which in my mind cheapens the horror. Why not have the same details in there from the beginning, but underemphasize them, either by passing over them very quickly or showing them in an unfocused or blurry manner?
At any rate, this is still a highly original and well-executed piece of horror in the short film format well worth a watch.
Them (2021)
Explanation of movie: a failed attempt at philosophical science fiction
It turns out the title of the movie THEM has a double meaning, depending on who uses it: from the view of a superior alien race with God-like powers, it refers to humans, whom the aliens control by putting them into a dreamlike state, ostensibly in order to protect them from harming themselves or other humans. From the perspective of humans, it refers, of course, to said aliens.
One day, the brother of the lead alieness decides to wake up a human because, he says, that is what their father would have wanted, the father later on revealed to have died long ago.
Having woken up and effectively attained free will, the human, Daniel, sets into motion a series of events, as he pursues what he really wants (to be back together with his wife before he went into the dream state), which ends up at a great cost to others who are also woken up.
Okay, so the philosophical lesson I take away from this movie is that free will entails at least the possibility that our pursuit of happiness will lead to deep unhappiness. Even if we find happiness, it may come at the expense of the happiness of others, in which case free will leads to the possibility of self-harm or harm to others.
The film compares this, it seems, unfavorably, to a scenario that is utilitarian in the sense that the maximum social good is attained not by maximizing each individual's happiness but by finding a medium in which nobody is truly unhappy, even if that means they are not even aware what they are missing and are essentially deprived of free will.
I cannot help but notice some biblical allegorical undertones here: the "waking up" is very reminiscent of eating from the fruit of knowledge, the brother and sister reminiscent of archangels on opposite sides, and the father may be an allusion to the notion of God itself.
From that angle, the position the movie seems to take can be better understood: humans, born in sin, are liable to destroy themselves if it ever happens that God forsakes them (=the father dies). Better, then, to keep them perpetually in the ignorant but blissful state in which they were before they ate the fruit of knowledge.
I strongly disagree with this authoritarian and patronizing philosophical stance, but that is not why I gave the film a low rating.
As a motion picture, this should not just communicate but entertain. On the latter front, it fails completely: the glacial pace, the halting delivery of lines, occasionally with weird cadences, and the choppy proceedings turn this movie into one hell of a boring experience. I was tempted several times to stop watching, and had to fast forward some self-indulgently lingering static scenes.
Even on the communication front, the movie did not seem to really succeed, judging by so many reviews that profess not to understand what it is about. This matter is not helped by incoherent aspects in the story itself. For example: the aliens arrived on earth, yet they were once humans? The aliens were there for generations running humanity, yet Daniel went into the dream state only as an adult?
The only thing the movie has going for it is nice cinematography, and that is why I did not rate it lower.
For an example of a philosophical science fiction movie with a similar theme but which succeeds spectacularly, see INFINITY CHAMBER (2016). Also, see my explanation/Review of it if the ending is not clear.
Silo (2019)
A vicarious experience of one of the dangers of rural life
SILO is a well-executed high concept thriller in which a teenage helping hand gets entrapped in a silo full of corn due to an accident and must be rescued as soon as possible, otherwise he will be crushed and suffocate to death.
As a city dweller, I must admit I did not know that grain entrapment was a thing, yet evidently nearly a thousand people have died of it already. So, this movie broadens our horizon by bringing attention to a danger you might not have known about, unless you are familiar with farm life.
But the movie doesn't just stop there: it also broadens our horizon by providing a window into how these small town folk think, talk and act. This is accomplished by means of several tangential plot lines which bring out the characters involved.
The cinematography is beautiful, and the movie is willing to ask deep questions, of which the deepest one turns out to be version of the problem of evil. I liked how the movie gently suggested a possible response without trying to impose it on us.
This is a worthwhile film which especially those will enjoy who know aspects of rural America or are open to learning more about it.
Pas De Restes (2012)
Gives you something to think about
PAS DE RESTES (my rusty French tells me that the grammatically correct form is "Pas des Restes", which means "no remainders") has a premise that lends itself well to comedy: what if there were a gourmet restaurant that served meals with the understanding that they had to be finished at the table? An arrogant xenophobic American family is about to find out, as the patriarch orders far more food than he can eat in one sitting.
Unfortunately, the great premise generates only mild humor. I feel that a lot more could have been done with it. It almost feels as if the script, which is clearly satirical, was too timid to go further out in exploring the topic.
I still rate this as a good film because it is competent in its technical aspects, the acting is good, and it does give you something to think about.
Evidence (2012)
Takes a left turn in the last half hour
EVIDENCE, not to be confused with EVIDENCE (2013), another found footage horror film, starts off like a million other found footage films: a group of young people go camping, and one of them decides to document their trip. Eventually they see or, rather, hear strange noises which should tip them off to impending danger, but they don't act in time to avoid it.
So, this was gearing up to be you typical FF in the Woods movie, but then, during the last half hour, the story takes a big left turn. Some characters we might not have expected to die (at least so soon) are killed off and then the story itself goes in a totally unexpected direction, which, however, in retrospect, supplies the explanation for the events we witnessed.
I love this kind of abrupt change in story direction, and if you do, too, then this FF horror movie is for you. There could have been a tad more explanation about the chaotic proceedings of the last 20 minutes, and the integration of the end credits into the footage did not really go very smoothly, but overall I still rate this as a good found footage horror film.