The cinema of India is fairly accessible in the west now. Most movie fans have at least a vague idea of what a Bollywood movie is like, thanks to cultural osmosis. Streaming has made many international titles available to anyone with an Internet connection. Slowly, Bollywood flicks are breaking into the American mainstream. Being the massive industry it is, there are lots of Hindi horror movies for me to choose for my Horror Around the World project. Last year, instead of choosing a movie rooted totally in Indian culture for my Halloween visit to Calcutta, I picked the Bollywood rip-off of "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Because I could not resist the lure of possibly seeing a Freddy Krueger knock-off sing and dance. He did not, much to my dismay. Surely, this year I will be more open-minded and watch a purely original Indian production? No, I'm watching the Bollywood rip-off of "Scream." Because I can not resist the lure of possibly seeing a Ghostface knock-off sing and dance. I'll do better next time but, for now, let's get into 2003's "Sssshhh..."
One night, Malini and her boyfriend are murdered by a knife-wielding, mask assailant at their college recreation center. A year later, her younger sister Mahek begins to receive threatening phone calls from someone claiming to be the killer. At her school, the same masked man murders one of her teachers. A bloody foot print is left behind at the scene and the police suspect Suraj, Mahek's new crush, might be a match. A friend of Mahek, Rocky, obviously has feelings for her and is jealous of Suraj. After being attacked in her home, she notices Suraj wearing the same watch as the masked man. He is arrested but Mahek is attacked again shortly awards. Suraj arrives to rescue her, alongside the police, who seemingly fatally wound the attacker. Feeling stressed, Mahek and her friends – including Suraj and Rocky – decide to take a vacation to Indonesia. After arriving at a secluded island, the killings begin again. It becomes apparent that the murderer is among them.
While watching “Mahakaal” last year, I got the impression that the directors were much more interested in the nails-on-a-chalkboard comic relief, schmaltzy romance, and extremely culturally specific pop culture parodies than they were in making a scary horror movie. “Sssshhh...” provides almost the opposite feeling. Even when taken apart from its Hollywood inspiration, “Sssshhh...” functions as a decent slasher flick in its own right. Switching the opening to a rec center with a game room and swimming pool allows for a unique setting to create suspense. The color palette is bright and varied, almost giallo-esque at times. There's an intentional sense of exaggerated reality in many scenes. Such as an underwater attack in the second half, that feels otherworldly in its artificiality. A sequence set on a waterway in the foggy mountains or the first attack in Mahek's home do manage to generate some intensity and atmosphere. While the gore is mild compared to “Scream,” it's still there. A knife to an eye through a pair of glasses or blood splattered on a paint canvas suggests some thought went into making these kill scenes artistically delivered.
From my admittedly limited exposure, the feeling arises that South-East Asian audiences go to the movies looking more for a full meal, a sampling of many different types of cinematic treats, than a more concentrated dose of one specific thing or another. What these crowds don't seem to want is any particularly deep character drama, at least from the little bit I've seen. The characters in “Sssshhh...” are simple, to the point of archetypal. Most of Mahek's friends are interchangeable. Her hang-ups – an absentee father, the death of her sister, choosing between two guys – are treated at maximum volume. At the same time, the conflicts are simple. It's all about wanting to be noticed by the girl you love or trying to atone for the past. The performances are similarly larger than life. Despite its 168 minute runtime, nobody outside of Mahek and her immediate suitors get much development. Most of the characters never emerge as especially defined, making some of the death scenes later on much less effective.
“Witchboard” was given a limited theatrical release on the very last day of 1986. The film did well enough at the box office that its distributor expanded the release by the following spring. Ultimately, the movie made over seven million, a good return on a low budget flick but hardly a blockbuster. Still, this was the eighties, horror was big business, and the video market was expanding. It took four years but “Witchboard” would finally spawn a sequel in 1992, fulfilling the promise of every semi-successful eighties horror film and becoming a franchise. (Despite it taking until the nineties for that to come to pass.) Kevin S. Tenney would return to both write and direct, now a far more experienced filmmaker with four more features – including another cult classic, “Night of the Demons” – under his belt. Sometimes subtitled “The Devil's Doorway,” “Witchboard 2” doesn't seem to have a fraction of the fans as the original but I've never caught up with the rest of the "Witchboard" movies, so this October is the time.
Paige has recently broken up with her boyfriend, a cop named Mitch. She has rented a studio apartment and decided to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. While moving in, with some help from the landlord with a wandering eye and his extremely eccentric wife, Paige stumbles upon a ouija board. Without thinking much of it, she begins to mess with the occultic item. A spirit referring to itself as “Susan” begins to contact her. It inspires Paige's artwork and helps her out at her accounting day job. At the same time, this “Susan” drops hints of her own past, claiming to be the spirit of a murdered woman. Paige befriends Russell, a photographer who also lives in the apartment, and he claims Susan was a woman who lived upstairs. And that she's still alive. He also warns her to stop using the board. Paige persists and three things become clear: Susan was very much murdered. Her ghostly spirit is beginning to possess Paige, making the innocent girl act more scandalously. And this same supernatural force is seeking bloody revenge on the other tenets of the building.
"Witchboard 2" is one of those sequels without any direct connection to the original. So much for Malfeitor seemingly being set up as the Freddy or Jason of this series. Instead, it is linked by more-or-less the same thing happening to a totally different set of people. Much like part one's Linda, Paige begins using the ouija board by herself, unaware of the danger inherent in the act. She slowly falls into "progressive entrapment" from a malevolent spirit, while poltergeist activity claims the lives of those around her in apparent accident. There's a mystery around the identity of the spectre and nightmares in which the female lead wanders around in a slinky nightgown. However, "The Devil's Doorway" does shake things up by centering the woman being possessed in the story. Paige is our main character and we experience the benefits and changes evident in a ghost inhabiting your body. Unlike the strictly evil entity in the original "Witchboard," Paige relates to Susan as a victim of violence. It almost creates a feminist subtext, in that the clingy asshole cop ex-boyfriend, the handsy "nice guy" photographer upstairs, and the pervy landlord all have their eye on Paige. All of them wish to "possess" her too. Of course, that is undermined considerably by an ending that makes ghostly Susan into a full-on villain, removes Paige from the narrative, and turns Mitch into a rescuing hero. (The planchette does not spell out ACAB, it would seem.) Not to mention Ami Dolenz being constantly leered at by the camera in a succession of revealing outfits, an apparent compromise between the production company wanting the female lead to get naked and Dolenz' unwillingness to do nudity. Still, it is interesting.
You can tell watching “The Evil Dead” must have been a eureka moment for Kevin Tenney. He imitated the point-of-view shots from a nebulous evil force in the first “Witchboard” and “Night of the Demons.” It returns here, the camera assuming the perspective of some unseen spirit as it whooshes around the apartment building. In general, there's a certain Raimi-esque wackiness to the visual direction here. The build-up to a car crash includes a genuinely impressive shot of the camera passing through the back of the vehicle and back out through the front. When the crash happens, the chaos is ramped way the fuck up. All the death scenes in “Witchboard 2” have that nicely over-the-top quality to them. When someone gets taken out by a rogue wrecking ball, not unlike something in one of the shittier “Omen” sequels, the resulting explosion is bigger – and way funnier – than I was expecting. If nothing else, Tenney certainly understood the principal about sequels needing to be bigger than the original. The final act involves a dive through a window, a stuntman dangling off a swinging fire escape, some clever use of shadows, and a visual quote from “The Shining.” All signs that the director was having fun making this one.
Another element the sequel happily expands on from the first movie is a supporting cast full of bizarre characters. Last time, we had a juggling detective and a goofball medium. This time, we get a hippy lady so burnt out that she seems genuinely unaware that the sixties are over and also misheard the lyrics to 70s A.M. pop songs. She's paired with an overly gregarious, slightly creepy husband. There's also a single scene appearance from an extremely Jewish occult expert, a moment of blatant exposition made much more entertaining and memorable by that choice. I don't know if “The Devil's Doorway” has anything as memorable as the homoerotic tension between Jim and Brandon in the last one. However, Ami Dolanz does make for a compelling lead. She made this film between “Ticks” and “Pumpkinhead II,” making her the Scream Queen Supreme of early nineties direct-to-video schlock-horror that punches way above their weight class. She nicely balances being both a girl-next-door sweet heart who seems naive and overly trusting about the ways of the world, while also projecting an evident sexiness that makes you understand why every guy in the film is after her. She's a likable enough lead that you find yourself caring about her otherwise routine work place drama that occupies a few moments.
“Witchboard 2” naturally lacks some of the freshness of the original. While the first film was able to turn a simple board game and a wooden planchette into ominous symbol, the sequel can't invest the title object with that much dread. It also doesn't have the moody locations too, generally feeling a lot smaller scale in terms of scope. Nevertheless, this is easily an above average bit of comfort horror junk food. It's a lot smarter, funnier, more creative, and better acted than a four years later sequel to “Witchboard,” during the doldrum days of the nineties, needed to be. These kind of medium budget sequels to medium proof eighties cult classics, essentially made for the video store audience, were not well respected in their day, were not respected during their day. In our age of streaming slop, follow-ups like this, “Night of the Demons 2,” the “Sleepaway Camp” sequels, and another flick I'll be reviewing in a few days seem positively charming. They no doubt succeed because of lowered expectations but “Witchboard 2” proves that creativity could still be on-display in venues such as these. [7/10]
Paige has recently broken up with her boyfriend, a cop named Mitch. She has rented a studio apartment and decided to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. While moving in, with some help from the landlord with a wandering eye and his extremely eccentric wife, Paige stumbles upon a ouija board. Without thinking much of it, she begins to mess with the occultic item. A spirit referring to itself as “Susan” begins to contact her. It inspires Paige's artwork and helps her out at her accounting day job. At the same time, this “Susan” drops hints of her own past, claiming to be the spirit of a murdered woman. Paige befriends Russell, a photographer who also lives in the apartment, and he claims Susan was a woman who lived upstairs. And that she's still alive. He also warns her to stop using the board. Paige persists and three things become clear: Susan was very much murdered. Her ghostly spirit is beginning to possess Paige, making the innocent girl act more scandalously. And this same supernatural force is seeking bloody revenge on the other tenets of the building.
You can tell watching “The Evil Dead” must have been a eureka moment for Kevin Tenney. He imitated the point-of-view shots from a nebulous evil force in the first “Witchboard” and “Night of the Demons.” It returns here, the camera assuming the perspective of some unseen spirit as it whooshes around the apartment building. In general, there's a certain Raimi-esque wackiness to the visual direction here. The build-up to a car crash includes a genuinely impressive shot of the camera passing through the back of the vehicle and back out through the front. When the crash happens, the chaos is ramped way the fuck up. All the death scenes in “Witchboard 2” have that nicely over-the-top quality to them. When someone gets taken out by a rogue wrecking ball, not unlike something in one of the shittier “Omen” sequels, the resulting explosion is bigger – and way funnier – than I was expecting. If nothing else, Tenney certainly understood the principal about sequels needing to be bigger than the original. The final act involves a dive through a window, a stuntman dangling off a swinging fire escape, some clever use of shadows, and a visual quote from “The Shining.” All signs that the director was having fun making this one.
“Witchboard 2” naturally lacks some of the freshness of the original. While the first film was able to turn a simple board game and a wooden planchette into ominous symbol, the sequel can't invest the title object with that much dread. It also doesn't have the moody locations too, generally feeling a lot smaller scale in terms of scope. Nevertheless, this is easily an above average bit of comfort horror junk food. It's a lot smarter, funnier, more creative, and better acted than a four years later sequel to “Witchboard,” during the doldrum days of the nineties, needed to be. These kind of medium budget sequels to medium proof eighties cult classics, essentially made for the video store audience, were not well respected in their day, were not respected during their day. In our age of streaming slop, follow-ups like this, “Night of the Demons 2,” the “Sleepaway Camp” sequels, and another flick I'll be reviewing in a few days seem positively charming. They no doubt succeed because of lowered expectations but “Witchboard 2” proves that creativity could still be on-display in venues such as these. [7/10]
The second episode of “Alien: Earth” presents one of my primary problems with serialized storytelling in television and especially during the streaming era. Every body wants to make movies that are eight hours long and broken into parts, instead of letting the television format do the things that it is good at. “Mr. October” sees “Alien: Earth” splitting time between several subplots, which is all too often the fate of programs like this. Wendy and her unit of hybrid cyborg children have been deployed to New Siam. She quickly lets it slip that her brother, Joe, is the medic of the team sent inside the crashed building. That same set of Prodigy corporation paid soldiers soon encounter the alien life form responsible for these events. Wendy eventually gets reunited with her brother, who quickly learns who she is. The android who was aboard the crashed ship is still attempting to contain the Xenomorph. The other members of the “Lost Boys” uncover some unrelated alien life forms, which they capture for their trillionaire corporate overlord. Meanwhile, he bickers with the owner of the Yutani organization over ownership of the extraterrestrial prize within the ship.
If it wasn't apparent, I hate plotting like this. It doesn't allow the storytelling to grow organically or progress in a smoothly paced manner. Instead, it creates this herky-jerky back-and-forth as we jump between various plot threads, all of which are happening simultaneously. “Mr. October” focuses a lot of attention on developing Wendy and her relationship to Joe. The climatic moment of the episode, when the two are reunited and any doubt in his mind is removed that this robot girl truly is his resurrected little sister, is sweet. Some sense of actual emotion is invested in that scene. Sydney Chandler and Alex Lawther have some decent chemistry in that moment. However, these scenes have to occur as the characters make their way through a ruined building infested with hostile alien life forms. (Which continues the same sinking feeling I got from “Alien: Romulus,” that video games are influencing this franchise too much these days.) The episode ends on a big dramatic cliffhanger, that stops the emotional momentum of the story until it can be picked up again. Momentum that was already being interrupted as we cut between all the other collections of characters doing stuff in this episode.
“Alien: Earth” also seems committed to bringing the series' conception of the near future into something more akin to what we think of “cyberpunk.” This has always been an element of “Alien,” massive corporations putting technological gain above basic human rights. The planet and solar system being chopped between mega-corps or cold and totally automated systems making decisions about human life in a hyper-industrial future are logical extensions of what “Alien” presented. “Mr. October” takes it a bit further, by having a digital billboard for vapid, consumerist pleasures play on repeated in the background of all the urban destruction. The scenes devoted to the boy genius trillionaire leader of Prodigy, who is literally named “Boy Kavalier,” make it clear that he's a super-rich and utterly ego-driven idiot that believes himself superior to 99.9% of all human life. Another moment has a group of rich partiers, dressed up like French libertines, continuing to revel, completely unaware of the disaster playing out around them. Yes, I agree that billionaires are immoral, capitalism is evil, and that the glorification of wealth and those who have it is a denigration of the human soul. Also, it might be getting to the point that simply portraying these ideas can't count as meaningful insight anymore. Especially not in a franchise that's owned by an actual mega-corps, that utilizes I.P. from their library as reference points within the story.
The last few episodes of “Monsters,” the horror focused follow-up to “Tales from the Darkside,” that I've watched have been quite good. That trend continues with “A Bond of Silk.” It follows Nash and Portia, a pair of newly-weds from the sticks. They have arrived in the big city for their honeymoon, spending the night in a hotel room recommended at a bargain by one of Nash's friends. Upon arriving, Portia immediately notices something odd. The closest already has clothes in it. Nash, undeterred, looks into the bedroom to see an enormous spider-web in place of a bed. He assumes it to be some kind of kinky role play at first until he becomes stuck to the threads. The couple begin to suspect that they've been lured into a trap and are now prey for an enormous spider. Nash dismisses this at crazy talk but his new bride is right. A giant-sized, eight-legged man-eater crawls into the room soon enough.
“A Bond of Silk” is a potent little slice of nightmare logic with a simple moral and an execution befitting an eighties horror flick. The how and why of this scenario is unimportant. We don't know why there's a giant spider in this hotel. Nor do we know how some hayseed's friends are connected to it. The important part is the premise itself. Through nefarious means, some unsuspecting individuals have arrived in a massive spider's web. That part works in favor of a television show's budget, limiting the entire episode to two sets. It also plays out like a bad dream, seemingly ordinary events quickly growing bizarre and unsettling.
Through it all, an easily understood message to reiterate: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. That reflects on the couple's marriage as well. Nash's desire for a cheap honeymoon is what got him and Portia in this disturbing scenario in the first place. He leaps into the web like an idiot and then panics. She operates with a calm head throughout, logically considering what might be happening. In other words, these two were never going to work out. Their approaches to life were totally antithetical to each other. Marc McClure is a pitch-perfect yokel while Lydia Cornell displays an immediate intelligence and strength as Portia. The direction is a bit flat and the lighting is overly dark. From what we see of the stop-motion spider, it looks cool as hell. Clearly, the shadowy visuals were probably a deliberate move to cover-up any seams in the special effects. “A Bond of Silk” shows “Monsters” operating at a brutally effective pace. [8/10]
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