Halloween 2021: October 21st

Army of the Dead (2021)

I don't think there's any filmmaker I'm more tired of talking about than Zack Snyder. In the beginning, he was just a flashy director who made dumb movies that thought they were smart. From the moment he took over Warner Brothers' superhero department, a never-ending debate about the merits and sins of his work would begin burning. Much of this insufferable bullshit can be blamed on a fanbase of toxic dude-bros that never shut the fuck up about him. They even shouted loud enough to convince WB to spent several million on allowing Snyder to complete his laborious, punishingly long, barely coherent director's cut of a team-up movie nobody actually liked in the first place. The last movie he made that I was able to enjoy with few qualms was his “Dawn of the Dead” remake, seventeen years ago. Snyder returned to zombies this year, with “Army of the Dead” – a project he's been developing since his last zombie movie came out – and I had some dim hope this would be a return to form for him. Which is why I'm being part of the problem and talking about this guy I'm very sick of talking about.

A military transport hulling a zombie out of Area 51 crashes outside Las Vegas. It doesn't take long for the infection to spread. Soon enough, the entire city is overtaken by undead flesh-eaters. The U.S. government walls the metropolis off. Six years later, it decides to nuke the entire city. Scott Ward – a mercenary and former Vegas resident – is given a tantalizing offer: A Japanese businessman will give him the resources needed to sneak into the city and steal 200 million from a casino vault. If they make it out, Scott and his team can split half the cash among themselves. As the team head into the city of the dead, they discover that the zombies have evolved in frightening ways. And that not everything about their mission is what it seems.

By this point, it's apparent to me that there's something about Snyder's work that I find philosophically repugnant. His movies have the mentality of an edgy teenage boy but take themselves utterly seriously, convinced they are telling myths of world-shaking importance. His heroes are brutally violent and often unstoppable, in a way that's completely joyless. Even though Dave Bautista is playing ostensibly a regular human here, he's still able to do shit like toss a blackjack table across a room with one arm, creaming several zombies. There's a macho nihilism to Snyder's work that is exhausting. This is certainly on display in “Army of the Dead,” where women are often cruelly killed, usually in service of giving the story's men reasons to be vengeful. This is even true of the movie's zombie bad guy! At one point, the film brutally kills a female character seconds after admitting she loved the protagonist. Who else in 2021 is doing blatant “fridging” shit like this without an once of self-awareness?

But self-awareness is something Snyder rarely does well. “Army of the Dead” is supposed to be one of the director's “fun” movies. (As if talking owls and billionaires dressed as bats are deathly serious topics.) “Army of the Dead” has jokes in it. A zombie is used as a guinea pig for a vault's defense system. There's the outrageous image of a zombified tiger. The aggressively German vault breaker often cracks one-liners. There's a running gag about Scott starting a trendy food truck with his plundered cash. Yet even Snyder's “funny” movies has mentions of sexual assault and an aborted fetus. Characters randomly pause to have painfully maudlin conversations about grief, dead parents, and missed opportunities. It looks and feels incredibly drab. About the only thing genuinely funny about the film is Tig Notaro's supporting role as the smart-ass helicopter pilot but that's probably because Tig Notaro is hilarious.

If humorlessness is one trademark of Snyder's, so is a painfully dragging pace. “Army of the Dead” is two hours and twenty-eight minutes long and it feels exactly that long too. You'd think, with an extended run time like that, the movie would have plenty of time to expand on its extensive cast of characters. Instead, they are all indistinct sketches. Half of Scott's team is never defined outside their functions to the plot. Who is the big guy with the buzzsaw? What's the story of the zombie sharpshooter from YouTube? Or the female sidekick who dies like Vasquez? (Which is not the only time the movie rips off "Aliens" either.) We never learn much but the smallest details about these characters, their personalities, their histories. This means the action and horror scenes, no matter how well choreographed they may be, have zero tension to them. We might as well be watching a video game playthrough, of generic tough guys blowing through wave after wave of zombies until they finally get eaten. 

About the only thing that's interesting about "Army of the Dead" is the zombies themselves. The film puts its own twist on the undead. These flesh-munchers can be broken into two subcategories: Shamblers and Alphas. The Shamblers are your classical Romero zombies, who wander around and bite whoever they run into. They detect by heat and dry out in the sun, the virus inside them really being the only thing that motivates them. The Alphas, meanwhile, are intelligent, super strong, hard to kill, and even have complex social systems. It's an evolution of the fast-moving zombies of Snyder's "Dawn" remake... Yet even this bugs me because, at a certain point, the Alphas really stop being zombies. When zombie antagonist Zeus rides a horse and wears a helmet like King Leonidas, he's indistinct from the supervillains of Snyder's DC movies. Also, the director continues his weird fixation on zombie babies, an idea that will never be anything but ridiculous to me.

Everything you need to know about "Army of the Dead" — and, indeed, Snyder's entire ethos as a storyteller — can be summed up by two decisions. Despite being one of his "fun" movies, nearly every character in this film dies or is infected, often in needlessly cruel ways. Considering none of them have any depth anyway, and nobody earns anything for their sacrifices, it just feels like the director enjoys murdering things. Yet despite all its nihilism, the movie is also very dumb. This is clarified in its decision to play "Zombie," the Cranberries' mournful ode to the victims of violence, at the end. Presumably because Snyder thought it was funny to play "Zombie" in a zombie movie. What a fucking rube. Netflix is going all in on this guy, producing sequels and prequels and spin-offs to this one as well as his "Star Wars" fanfiction. But I think I've had my fill. [4/10]

The Brainiac (1962)

El barón del terror

After watching “Face of the Screaming Werewolf” earlier in the season, I'm more curious than ever about Mexican horror movies. My exposure to the genre doesn't extend far beyond the films of Guillermo del Toro and “El vampiro.” If I wanted to dig further into macabre stories from our brothers south of the border, there's plenty of places I could start. The films of Carlos Enrique Taboada, like “Poison for the Fairies” or “Even the Wind is Afraid,” are critically acclaimed. And I've always been curious about the various monster mash films starring Santo and other lucha libre wrestlers. Yet one title has always stuck in my memory. I recall reading a review of “The Brainiac,” whose Spanish title translates as “The Baron of Terror,” in Fangoria years ago. I was excited to see the movie was streaming for free on Tubi but, unfortunately, only in an unsubtitled form. I was able to dig up a dubbed version in less legitimate corners of the internet, so my plans were not interrupted. 

Three hundred years ago, the Baron Vitelius d'Estera is on trial by the Inquisition. His acts include witchcraft and necromancy. Seemingly immune to torture, he is burned at the stake. As fire consumes him, he looks up at the white comet in the sky and promises to return when it does, taking revenge on the descendants of the judges that doomed him. The comet returns in 1961, as observed by an astrologist and the young couple that are his students. As prophesized, the Baron is reborn. With the ability to transform into a hideous monster, he goes about hypnotizing and sucking the brains – via a proboscis-like tongue – of the judge's decedents. Will anyone be able to stop his reign of terror?

The first thing everyone notices about “The Brainiac” is the utterly ridiculous monster at its center. For no particularly defined reason, the resurrected Baron can shape-shift into a shoddy monster with an oversized head. He has shaggy facial hair, big fangs, stubby horns, huge ears, and a giant crooked nose, recalling classical Satanic imagery. (And classical anti-Semitic imagery, though it's hard to say if that was intentional.) Of course, there's that goofy forked tongue and suction-cup fingers, all of which assist the Baron in his quest to suck out people's brains. No explanation is provided for his brain eating ways either. While the effects are unquestionably dopey – I suspect some paper-mache might've been utilized – they are also incredibly charming. I can't look at this guy and do anything but smile. And he's just grotesque enough to be a creditable movie monster too. If you encounter this on a darkened stretch of road, there's about a 50/50 split over whether you'd be creeped out or explode into giggles.

From my admittedly limited experience, it seems like a lot of classic Mexican horror of the fifties and sixties sought to emulate the monster movies of Hollywood's Golden Age. “The Brainiac” does this as well but with its own twist. Much like Dracula, the Baron can hypnotize his victims with only a stare. The effect used to convey this – a light flashing on actor Abel Salazar's eyes – is another amusingly crude attempt to replicate Bela Lugosi's vampire count. The movie is full of charming touches like that. Such as the Baron gaining new powers as the story requires it, the paper cut-out effects used to bring the comet to life, or the faces of the Inquisition judges appearing over their descendants so we know they're important. There's also a pair the bumbling police detectives, fixated on the idea that someone with an electric drill is sucking brains in Mexico City. They do nothing useful throughout the entire film before showing up with comically large flamethrowers to save the day. 

Holding this campy goofiness together is something a little deeper too. Among the warlock activity that got the Baron burned alive, it's also noted that he seduced a number of married women. One of the first things he does upon arriving in the present is pick up a girl in a bar. She's strangely attracted to him, despite the fact that all he does is sit there and stare at her. Later on, a random woman on the streets – read into that what you wish – picks him up and they start making out on the spot, before he sucks her brains too. All this wanton, lusty activity seems to stand in contrast to the film's heroes, a pair of chaste college students who plan to marriage each other but won't even hold hands. Naturally, the brain-slurping baron threatens the girl in the final film. It's good to know that the moralistic streak of American horror films extended into Mexico as well. It might even be more pronounced. This obviously says a lot of things about Mexican culture as well as our own.

“The Brainiac” is amusingly silly throughout. The acting is quite silly. There's more than one lengthy sequence where people stare in wide-eyed confusion as the Baron attempts to hypnotize them or turns into a hairy monster. At one point, a guy just stands there as the Brainiac drains his female friend's cranium. I'm sure this stilted awkwardness is exacerbated by the English dub, which is obviously pretty stilted and awkward in its own right. Yet all of these factors add up to make “The Brainaic” absolutely charming and fun. It feels home-made, is never boring, and chugs along at a frantic pace. This is the kind of B-movie tomfoolery I love to discover. I'm sure aficionados of Mexican cinema probably don't want a movie like this representing their country's collective contribution to the art of film. But I am happy to embrace entertaining nonsense like this. [7/10]

Room 104: Ralphie

For several years, anthology series “Room 104” was allowed to run on HBO largely under the radar, without much advertising or award season praise. That's because it was created by the Duplass Brothers, the mumblecore wunderkinds able to produce programs for extremely low budgets. Each episode is set in the same hotel room, different events happening there every week. The show crossed genres every week – including such outliers as science fiction, documentary, musicals, interpretive dance and animation – but frequently touched on horror. As in the series premiere, “Ralphie,” directed by Sarah Adina Smith and written by Mark Duplass. 

“Ralphie” follows Meg, who has been hired to babysit a little boy named Ralph while his dad is on a date. Ralph claims that “Ralphie,” a violent boy, is locked up in the bathroom. At first, the night is nothing unusual but Ralph asks Meg's unnerving questions. Later, “Ralphie” – who looks identical to Ralph – is let out of the bathroom, the boy attacking Meg and wrecking the room. Soon, the babysitter has to question whether her ward is crazy or if something truly unusual is happening here. 

“Ralphie” keeps the tension slowly boiling throughout. From the moment the idea of a destructive boy locked in the bathroom is introduced, the viewer starts to become uneasy. When Ralph asks Meg's questions about sex, or tells a story about his mother committing suicide, you are properly unnerved. Should a child be telling a stranger these things? Ralphie just looks looks like Ralph in his underwear with an improvised cape yet his homicidal shouts, and ability to tear the room apart, definitely catch you off-guard. This half-hour TV episode really gets at the potent idea at the center of the “creepy kid” genre. That children are unpredictable and sometimes unwilling sponges for the adult world around them. 

As he proved with the “Creep” films, Mark Duplass is extremely good at mining the discomfort of awkward social interactions for horror. But those films sometimes faltered when going for more conventional horror movie thrills. “Ralphie” actually handles that part pretty well, as it explodes towards a nicely disorientating and distressing climax. It builds towards a twist ending that certainly hits like a brick wall but I wonder how emotionally honest it is. If it functions with the themes of an episode that, up to that point, was about the uncomfortable middle ground between children and adults. Or if it's just a sucker punch, a “gotcha!” ending to send viewers out on. Either way, “Ralphie” is a pretty damn good half-hour of television, compelling and disturbing. [8/10]

The Forbidden (1978)

A few years after making “Salome,” Clive Barker and friends would re-team again for another aggressively odd, silent, black-and-white short film. “The Forbidden” – which is unrelated to the Barker story of the same name, which of course inspired “Candyman” – is even more vague and artsy than “Salome” was. The 32-minute long film has been described as a take on the “Faust” legend, though that's not always very apparent. It depicts a bearded man assembling tiles into some sort of symbol. He summons a demon of some sort. He is then shown having a sexual encounter with a woman and also laying on a floor, writhing in agony. There's an extended sequence of a naked man with an erection – played by Barker himself – dancing erratically. Finally, the protagonist is skinned alive before getting up and walking away.

“The Forbidden” isn't just difficult to decipher because it's seemingly a series of mostly unrelated, transgressive images. The presentation also takes some getting around: The entire film is shot in inverted black-and-white, the negative left unexposed. The sets and costumes were painted in reverse white-and-black to help achieve this effect. Much like “Salome,” the musical score is composed entirely of droning, pounding electronic music. While “Salome” told a clear narrative, if vaguely, it takes a while to realize how “The Forbidden's” series of images connect. And a lot of them – extreme close-ups of nails hammered into wood – still really don't fit in. “The Forbidden” is also twice the length of “Salome,” which really doesn't help it any. The long, drawn-out skinning that concludes the film is really when it starts to feel too long but things become stilted and tiring pretty much immediately.

Of course, I don't think a clear narrative was ever what Clive hoped to express here. In fact, I suspect “The Forbidden” was a deeply personal project for Mr. Barker. (And not just because he shows his penis in it.) Knowing what we do about Clive's sexuality, “The Forbidden” feels like an expression of a personal journey of self-realization and acceptance. Especially considering it ends with a character undergoing a massive transformation that is far more cathartic than it is traumatic. “The Forbidden” will probably be most interesting as a predecessor to “Hellraiser,” with its image of a skinless man and a demon being summon by solving a puzzle. Not to mention there are certain sadomasochistic elements to the imagery here as well. (Doug Bradley briefly appears as well.) I wish I got more out of the movie as there are some things to admire about it, but it just didn't work much for me. [5/10]