The Bay (2012)

by Craig Thomas

Horror film The Bay is, you’ve guessed it, a found footage movie. “Oh no,” I hear you cry, “not another one!” Yes, another one. “Really?” Yes. “Really?!” Yes, now please stop asking.

The Bay tells the story of a quiet town by the sea which has untold horrors thrust upon them from beneath the water.

The story is told by a former journalist, Donna (played by Kether Donohue) who just happened to be there with her cameraman covering a fluff piece about some festival or another. We are informed, via a webcam interview, that this (and all associated footage) was covered up by the US government. We then learn this footage was stolen and leaked by a Wikileaks type hacking group (mmm, topical). Our journalist has now spliced together the footage to create a documentary to “expose” the cover-up and the tragedy of what happened on that July 4th weekend. This is how the film continues throughout, with voiceovers and subtitles to provide context for what we’re seeing.

Somewhat surprisingly this idea actually works. By setting it at a carnival it gives an excuse for a lot of people to be recording the initial proceedings and making the protagonist a journalist allows the filming to continue throughout. Even the hospital scenes are well done with people recording the full waiting rooms for one reason or another, but more important here is the role of Doctor Michaels (played by Kenny Alfonso). Struggling to work out what is going on, he videochats with the Centre for Disease Control, which in turns allows us to see how the outside world is reacting to the outbreak. At times however, it does fall back onto the old “why are you filming this?” question which inevitably pops up in such films, but for the most part it seems a perfectly reasonable setup.

For a low budget film, both the acting (from as cast of relative unknowns) and the script (from single IMDB credit Michael Wallach) are pretty decent. There are a couple of slightly clunky moments, but for the most part it is solid. There also aren’t any lulls. Every scene has almost by default, a sense of peril because we know what is going on even when the characters don’t. Part of the credit goes to the script, part goes to director Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning, Vietnam, Sleepers). He does a good job balancing what the audience needs to see with maintaining an authentic amateur documentary feel to the project.

By making the monster essentially invisible it intends to scare on a base level, as well as saving on special effects in a much more efficient manner than the deeply disappointing Chernobyl Diaries. The shots of sores and blisters and partially digested flesh are unpleasant and are used rather sparingly to increase the impact and, one suspects, to hide their relative cheapness. Whilst a lot of films scrimp and save on effects (and as a by-product, scares) for a big though often unimpressive finale, The Bay sidesteps that trap. However, the ending is not entirely satisfactory and I suspect it will split viewer’s opinions

This is very much an eco-horror movie with a strong “pollution is bad” moral to it. At its heart it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Bad stuff is put into the water, sea creatures mutate into unstoppable killing machines, chaos ensues. This isn’t Jaws in that the terror is confined to the waters, nor is it something like The Host where a big creature is running amok in the city. This is a small scale-story told through the inter-connecting tales of a number of different characters. To that extent, it works quite well. There is a constant sense of unease about the place as people react to a series of seemingly unconnected incidents through their own world view. It is only when the size of the problem is too great to deal with that people realize what is happening.

Whilst this is not the greatest film in the world, or indeed the scariest, it does convey a constant sense of unease throughout which puts it head and shoulders above a lot horror these days. The ending is somewhat of a letdown and will surely divide people who see this, but it is worth seeing just to see that a good idea, well executed can mean a found footage film needn’t be stupid and/or a waste of potential.

Grade: C-

Halloween Guest Feature: Five Films That Scare… Raymond Esposito

by Raymond Esposito

Echoes in a Quiet Room

When Steve asked me to write an article for Anti-Film School, I was honored. When he said, the topic was “my” top five horror movies I thought, “Perfect. Two things that I love…horror and my opinion. I can write that in about ten minutes.” It took me almost five weeks…not to write the article but to choose the movies. For a horror fan and dark fiction author, asking me to pick my five favorites is like asking me to eat a single potato chip…I can do it, but it’s really difficult. There are, after all, so many great horror scenes spread out across so many movies. The challenge loomed even larger when I considered all those scenes that filled me with dread, but didn’t actually belong to a horror film. Take for example, Saving Private Ryan. It’s a war movie true, but there is one scene in that film that disturbs me more than most horror scenes I’ve watched. Near the end of the film an American soldier fights a Nazi. The Nazi gets the upper hand, pins the American’s arm and so begins the short struggle with a very large knife. The American soldier pleads while the Nazi slowly impales him all the while softly whispering. I always skip it. I’ve watched hundreds of other knife scenes that had no effect on me, but this one is different. Perhaps because there is nothing more frightening than watching another human plead for their life – not in screams of horror, but in the soft voice of reality.

So that was my dilemma. How does one decide the “best” or the “scariest”? Is it based on how many times one jumps in fear? Do you have to spend the entire film cowering in your seat? Does it matter if you were five or forty-five years old when you watched it? Can a movie from the seventies scare anyone these days? These were all difficult questions I needed to consider. I mean I can’t just “rank” things without a proper criteria – that’s anarchy. I spent a number of weeks contemplating these and many other questions. It was a quest not for my five scariest movies, but for the criteria to reduce a list of at least twenty five choices. (Steve said be creative, but I was certain he didn’t mean go ahead and make up my own rules.) Five. I needed just five.

Resonance. That was my final criteria. I decided it did not matter when the movie was made, how old I was when I saw it, or even if it was the overall scariest movie. It had to be a film that resonated long after I watched it. And resonate in a “bad way.” By that I mean I had to find myself in situations where I remembered the movie and maybe ran a little faster up the stairs, or closed the door a little quicker…and locked it, or actually decided not to do something because I remembered “that scene.” Now that level of fear may seem a little extreme for a forty six year old guy who writes horror stories. All I can say, in my own defense, is that an active imagination is both a gift and a curse. I feel sorry for people who are so pragmatic that a horror film could never scare them or those who can dismiss the darkness as just the world without light…people with imaginations understand that the darkness is so much more than just daytime’s counterpart. Those pragmatic souls may lead a braver life than me, but I don’t think they’re having as much fun. When it comes to horror, well I’m still ten years old.

Resonance. Like that scene from Saving Private Ryan. That helped. It brought my list down to eight films. Did I want to cheat? Hope that Steve would overlook my three “extra” films? Maybe he just threw out a number and didn’t really care about the actual count. I considered it. I realized however that not all eight films ranked the same in their resonance. I mean, The Strangers left me as enraged over the characters’ stupidity as I was filled with dread. That single line from the darkened doorstep, “Is Tamara here?” was creepy but it’s not like it made me pause each time the doorbell rang (well maybe for a couple of weeks.) The randomness of why the killers choose that couple, “Because you were home,” certainly confirmed my belief that the world can be dangerously random, but hey, that’s why I have a gun and a 135 pound dog. So The Strangers didn’t feel like top five material. So seven it was. And while I’ll admit I was a big fan of keeping the lights on after that opening scene of Darkness Falls, today it is hard to recall why I found it so frightening…it no longer resonates in emotion or in memory…so I was down to six.

I turned to the three films competing from my long spent youth. One was a keeper because it changed me so fundamentally that it had to be number one. The other two presented a real problem. The first film stayed with me for years and I can still recall that fear. Forty years later the “idea” still resonates. The other by and far was the scarier film and if I wanted to be popular, this would be the choice. The Exorcist should be on anyone’s list of scary films, but for me it would be number six because as crazy as it sounds, The Omega Man gave me more nightmares than the young Linda Blair and her friend Captain Howdy. It resonated longer and broader too. The hooded “white” people. Those crazy eyes. Jumping from windows onto Heston’s car and that primal requirement to “get inside before the sun set” were all the perfect fodder for my five year old imagination…and eight…and ten. Perhaps it was the combination of my age in 1971 (5), the fact that I saw it at a drive-in, and that my brother and I kept the scare alive by taking turns screaming… “Watch out for the white people,” while locking each other out of the house at sunset or in the dark basement. Today it can’t hold up to new films…but when I was five…oh boy!

So nine hundred and something words later I arrive at my top four. Number four is a little odd, for two reasons. The first is that once they cleaned up the film quality for DVD, the effects were sort of lost…I mean the gore looked fake.. The second, and bigger issue, is that following The Evil Dead were the Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness and both films turned the original into a sort of “horror-comedy trilogy.” This was not how I felt in my first viewing of The Evil Dead and I don’t believe Sam Raimi intended it as a comedy. Nonetheless, my seventeen-year-old self loved this movie and I still do, at least in memory. It stayed with me for a long time. Partly because of that “demon in the basement” scene…that is one of my primal fears…basements. But mostly because of the texture of the film and those cackling demons. Demons can talk, they can scream, hell I don’t care if they sing, but that damn giggling…that’s creepy and I want it to stop.

The film Paranormal Activity is more dividing than a presidential election. Audience opinion on Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 56%, which demonstrates that this film has only two camps…love it and hate it. The biggest criticism I hear from the haters is “it was stupid.” I’m not sure what that means, but perhaps they wanted more special effects. Maybe they needed to “see” the demon. Granted this low budget Indie only used a bag of flour and an old photo, but for me it comes in firmly in the number three position. It resonated. I jumped several times during the film and actually felt something I don’t often experience during horror films…fear. Sometimes it’s what we don’t see that frightens best. Years later I still worry that I may awake to find my wife standing over me in the darkness (I’m not worried that she’ll be dragged down the hall because I see that as my escape opportunity.) I thought about setting up a camera to assuage my fear but then thought, “wait I saw that movie…everybody dies.” We have an attic hatch in our laundry room. It’s a low ceiling attic, more like a crawl space and I’ve never been up there. I have no desire to come face to face with a spider in a place that I can’t run. (I have no facts to support that spiders live in our attic, but it’s prudent to err on the side of caution.) Sometimes at night when I pass that dark laundry room, I think about that hatch. I wonder if there is a photo of someone I know sitting amongst the installation. I often pick up my pace as I pass and try to keep my eyes forward, but at times…it’s just so difficult not to steal a glance.

Six months after I saw my number two film I was in a hotel traveling on business. Every now and again I get it in my head to take the stairs just to burn a few extra calories (I pretend twenty steps will offset that coffee cake muffin I ate). On this particular night, I took the two flights up to my room. It was a well-lit and well maintained stairway at the Hilton. Absolutely nothing to conjure thoughts of creepiness. Halfway up I remembered The Grudge and thought, “this is exactly why people die in horror films you idiot…now run!” I don’t often take my own advice, as my pragmatic self can be a real f-in kill-joy, but that night I did. Later… after I locked the door, turned on all the lights, checked under the bed and in the closet, and pulled back the bathtub curtain (don’t invite trouble leaving that closed) … I felt foolish for running up those stairs. The Grudge had so many great moments. Probably the “under the covers” scene was the worst, followed closely by “meow boy” and “whatever the hell that mouth noise was.” I still like to think about it from time to time. It doesn’t scare me as much today, but I can still remember how much it did frighten me. It still resonates at least in memory.

When a film touches a “primal” fear, when that film changes how you experience an activity, when it can transfer to any body of water…that is the ultimate definition of “resonates.” Before the summer of 1975 I was a water rat. We lived in Connecticut about thirty minutes from the beach and I loved the ocean. At the age of nine, I was certainly aware of sharks, but seldom thought about them beyond science class. After Jaws my love of the ocean was forever tainted. Besides being frightened of the sea, my nine year old self began to question the safety of ponds and lakes…and swimming pools. Several times I had a dream that my bed had been washed out to sea and the waves kept threatening to toss me into that dark green water where Jaws waited. I guess being in the ocean is like that attic crawl space…not much chance of escape. I live in Fort Myers Florida now and still go to the beach and I still swim in the warm gulf. Never though without consideration that perhaps at that very moment, a black-eyed death is charging silently towards me. And all these years later I still take a quick look at the deep end of my pool before I get in, I pretend I’m checking for snakes (they get in sometimes) and in part I am, but in truth I’m also looking for that fin. Jaws may not be a horror story in the classic sense, but its attack on primal fears, the way it forever changed my thoughts on the ocean, and for being an iconic symbol, it earns its place as number one on my list.

So those are my top five horror films…with some creative cheating to add the others…and it is what I love about the genre. It’s a personal experience – some things scare universally but most just individually. I don’t believe special effects cause fear. I’m not even certain it is the monsters on the screen. I believe the truly haunting moments, the terrifying things are just a reflection of the stuff we brought with us to that movie. The dark little thoughts our imaginations create and our rational minds work to hold at bay. And when every so often, if we’re lucky, a story stirs those fears, we hear the sounds like echoes in a quiet room, and they whisper to us… Yes, I understand.”

A little about Raymond:

American novelist, Raymond Esposito lives multiple lives. He is a husband, father of five, the executive vice president of an international professional services firm, proprietor of the website Nightmirrors.com, and when time allows, the voice of Graveyard Radio. His debut novel, “You and Me, Against the World,” is book one of his Creepers Trilogy and provides his own spin on the zombie apocalypse.

To purchase “You and Me, Against the World,” click here.

Halloween Guest Feature: Five Films That Scare… Rob Belote

by Rob Belote

I’m not the kind of guy who enjoys watching movies whose primary objective is to scare me. Some guys enjoy it, but I don’t. Some of the other lists you’ll see in this article series are going to have more of the traditional scary movies, but not from me. I won’t watch the Nightmare On Elm Street films or anything from the Friday The 13^th series. Exorcist? Out of the question. Does that make me less of a man? Perhaps, but I’m guessing the fact that I run GuysNation – which provides plenty of good sports, movies and hot women content somehow makes my avoidance of certain movies something you can overlook.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen some movies that scared me. Here’s a look at a few, leading up to my Top 5.

Castaway – can you imagine the horror of being a volleyball amidst all that sand… and there’s not enough people for a game? Talk about torture…

Three Amigos – not only were there Hollywood careers drawing to a close, but a small town in Mexico tricked them into fighting a warlord for them. Put yourself in their boots, throw in the insane singing bush, and the fact that they had to wear those outfits? I think you’re getting the picture here.

Basic Instinct – a smokin’ hot blonde wants you… but she just might be a serial killer, and you won’t find out until you have sex with her – during which she might stab you to death? Not to mention the lovely ex-girlfriend you have to see every day at work that still wants you, and it turns out she might have a killer streak in her as well. Where’s a guy supposed to get laid anymore?

In all seriousness….

Honorary Mentions:

Poltergeist – I can’t fully put this one on the list because I couldn’t watch all of it… and I don’t know which one of the films in the series I saw. What I can tell you is that when I was younger and I saw that creepy guy show up in the mirrors? I avoided looking into mirrors for like 2 weeks. Legit

Arachnophobia – Never saw it, never will. The commercials creeped me out more than anything you can understand unless you, like I, have arachnophobia. Just typing this out brings back terrible memories.

The Sixth Sense – after getting to the end of the film and knowing what’s going on, it’s not as scary, so it doesn’t actually make the list. The couple of times that things pop up and give the “jump” factor definitely catch me every time, and I find Mischa Barton to be scary in all of her roles.

Psycho – to this day, I don’t like showering if I can’t see past the curtain. On the plus side, that means when my wife showers…

#SilverLining

The Top 5 Films That Scared Me

 

5. Zodiac – the randomness of the killings, the scene in the basement where they were supposedly alone in the house, and the reality involved in the end of the film (which I won’t ruin for anyone) are just a bit too much for me.

4. Silence Of The Lambs – all in all, it wasn’t Hannibal Lector who scared me. Sure, there was a slight jumpiness involved in the ambulance scene with the dead skin mask, but that’s not what put this on the list. The final scene with Jodie Foster being followed around in the dark still haunts me a bit anytime the power suddenly goes out in my house and I’m walking around, searching for a flashlight.

3. Halloween – this was one of the films that cemented the idea for me that I shouldn’t watch this kind of movie. He’s a relentless killing machine who somehow has supernatural powers to be able to disappear? I can’t even hear the awesome theme song to this movie without getting seriously creeped out.

2. Scream – I have a love-hate with this film. It’s such an entertaining film that does a great job of including all of the common horror movie elements while overtly explaining them on screen. A few of the scenes are some of the most clever I’ve seen on film. And yet, the lack of supernatural element, the gore involved and the choice of killers that totally blew my mind? It just gives it a more REAL feel, which makes it feel like it could actually happen.

1. JAWS – for years after seeing this movie, I had trouble going into water. I’d stay in the shallow part of the ocean, and even sometimes in the swimming pool the theme song would hop into my head and I’d get to the side for an exit as quickly as possible.

Rob is the founder of GuysNation.com, which brings together writers from across the internet to provide content in areas that guys enjoy discussing: sports, women, movies, beer, women, television, wrestling, women, snacks, comic books, women, video games, women…  He’s also working on building an app to promote movie reviewers and predict which movies people will like based on common interests, and he’s currently looking for more people to be involved. You can follow GuysNation on Twitter (@GuysNation) and you can also like them on Facebook.

Piranha (2010)

by Steve Habrat

I really don’t know why I didn’t go see Alexandre Aja’s 3D remake of Joe Dante’s Piranha back in the summer of 2010 but I do kick myself now for never taking the time to go check it out. What a hearty dose of gruesome fun in the sun this Piranha out to be! Aja, who is responsible for the wickedly clever 2003 French horror film High Tension and the hair-raising 2006 redo of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, doesn’t shy away from giving us exactly what we would want to see in a film called Piranha. Yes, we see one of the hungry terrors actually burp out a penis, a girl get her blonde locks tangled in a boat engine propeller, and tons more assorted carnage for any horror fan to go bonkers over. Piranha also happens to be a mighty fine tribute to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws, even giving us one hell of a cameo from Richard Dreyfuss, donning the same wardrobe that he did while battling that iconic great white shark. While Joe Dante’s original film was basically Roger Corman’s quick cash in on the popularity of Jaws, Piranha fully gets that and it plays with it quite a bit. It also seems like Aja has it out for obnoxious spring break college kids who say “bro” too much, enjoy showing off their tribal tattoos, and hate anyone wearing a Pixies t-shirt. Oh boy, does Aja get them good.

Piranha begins with fisherman Matt Boyd (Played by Dreyfuss) fishing and enjoying a couple cold brews out in the middle of Lake Victoria, Arizona, one sunny afternoon. After accidentally causing a small earthquake that cracks the lake floor, Boyd’s boat is pulled into a whirlpool that unleashes thousands of hungry piranhas that proceed to rip him to shreds. Meanwhile, Lake Victoria is crawling with scantily clad tourists who are ready for spring break shenanigans. Among them is local seventeen-year-old Jake Forester (Played by Steven R. McQueen), who is eager to join the party. Jake’s mother, Sheriff Julie Forester (Played by Elizabeth Shue), is consumed with keeping an eye on the drunken college kids and has barely any time for him or his two younger siblings. Jake ends up meeting porn filmmaker Derrick Jones (Played by Jerry O’Connell), who offers him some money to take him around to local hot spots so he can shoot some steamy footage. Jake agrees and takes off on a boat trip around Lake Victoria, bringing his crush Kelly (Played by Jessica Szohr) with him for the ride. As word gets to Julie about the disappearance of Matt Boyd, she teams up with her tough-as-nails Deputy, Fallon (Played by Ving Rhames), to find him. Soon, more bodies pile up and Julie is forced to investigate what is causing these deaths or close the lake. She ends up taking a group of seismologist divers to the crack in the lake floor where they make a terrifying discovery.

Once Piranha gets moving, the film really bares its teeth and chews you up, right down to the bone. Things get NASTY. The death scenes here are seriously grizzly with a heavy sprinkling of camp. The final half of the film is a never-ending bloodbath that features one memorable death scene after another. Drunken college kids are chewed in half by the scurrying school of death lurking just below their inner tubes. One naked girl after another is chewed up to the point where they are floating skeletons while one gets the top half of her chest chopped off. You can’t help but laugh when splat pack director Eli Roth shows up as the judge of a wet t-shirt judge who meets his maker by getting a speed boat to the face, spraying his gooey brains all over the tanned mug of a horrified hottie who is looking to show off her double D’s to thousands of chanting beefcakes. It practically leaves you exhausted even at its brief eighty-nine minute runtime. If you have ever found yourself annoyed to no extent by abrasive sex-starved teenage idiots, this is the movie for you. Aja apparently can’t stand them either and he makes you know it.

While it lures you in with its excesses, Piranha has a surprisingly clever cast keeping this pleasure cruise on course. I just couldn’t stop laughing over the sweet cameo by Richard Dreyfuss, who seems to be having a grand old time at this B-movie soirée. Shue and Rhames as the heroes here are exactly what you would expect. They don’t really blow your mind but I never expected them to. Rhames does get a nifty sequences where he rips the engine off a dingy and uses it to hack up a school of charging piranha. McQueen and Szohr get the typical teen roles of looking good for the camera while Jerry O’Connell dances around them in a cocaine fury. O’Connell’s Derrick is just as unpleasant as he should be and you will be counting the seconds until he comes to face to fangs with the chomping menace.  Also on board is Parks and Recreation cast member Adam Scott as the hilarious Novak, the head of the team of seismologist divers. Scott happens to be a welcome presence in anything he is in and he adds some more welcome humor to an already hysterical experience. The other awesome cameo is Christopher Lloyd (Yes, THAT Christopher Lloyd) as a pet shop owner who identifies the piranha as an extremely violent species that went extinct two million years ago.

Using almost the same plotline as Jaws, Piranha 2010 is more of a loving tribute than sloppy rip-off. It affectionately winks at the Spielberg classic, which I think is why I liked it as much as I did. Judging by some of the shots found here, I can assume that this had some truly awesome 3D to hold the audience’s attention and would have been fun in a big theater. The guys get an extended sequence of two nude women swimming around like dancing mermaids while the girls will scream over a piranha belching out a chewed up penis right at them. In addition to those two moments, the engine wielded by Rhames looked like it would have been pretty neat in 3D as does the darting school of piranha, who leap at the screen like aquatic demons. The film luckily doesn’t go on for very long, making it even more likable than it already is. Aja doesn’t hesitate to show the audience that he is capable of really creating a suspenseful mood and really freaking us out. He really is a talented guy who should be given more horror projects. Piranha may not make you a better person and it may not challenge you intellectually, but you just won’t be able to resist its B-movie allure, even if that allure is dripping with blood, guts, and tons of nudity.

Grade: B

Piranha is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Jaws (1975)

by Steve Habrat

Throughout my film courses at Wright State, one of my professors (who will remain nameless in this review) argued that Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller Jaws was not an important motion picture but rather the bane of their very existence. He rarely had a kind word for the film (or Spielberg himself) and it was just downright perplexing. On the one hand, there could have been bitterness there because Jaws was such a commercial success, the first summer blockbuster marketed on a large scale and he was stuck on the smaller scale art house fare, reluctant to give anything with an explosion in it a chance. On the other hand, he could have just been in love with his own pretention and too stubborn to realize that Jaws had some very important things on its mind, mainly reflecting the Watergate scandal that gripped the nation at the time and exploring class relations among its three main protagonists. My professor liked to argue that Jaws, and the imitation blockbusters that followed, chose not to deal with real world consequences to the violent actions within the films themselves, glossing over the cold hard truth. He is wrong, folks. Jaws DOES deal with some real world grief, fear, and the heaviness in the heart of everyman hero Brody. And if what is going on underneath all the mayhem isn’t clever enough, Spielberg makes a film that is an absolutely flawless example of how to perfectly build suspense and follow through with a delivery that will have the viewer’s heart in their throat. Maybe Jaws isn’t such a piece of garbage after all…

Considering everyone and their mother have seen Jaws at least once, I won’t dive into too much detail about the plot. Jaws opens with a group of free-spirited teens partying on the beach. Two of the drunken teens slip away and decide they are going to go skinny-dipping. The boy passes out while in the process of undressing but the girl makes it into the water, only to find herself getting tugged around by an unseen predator that proceeds to rip her to bits. The next day, police chief Martin Brody (Played by Roy Scheider), who has just moved from New York City to the scenic New England island of Amity, finds the remains of the girl on the beach. The medical examiner concludes a shark killed the girl, prompting Brody to close the beaches down, just when the summer crowds are starting to pour into Amity. Overruled by the mayor, the beaches reopen with the promise that there is nothing to fear in the water. Pretty soon, two more people are dead and Brody quickly brings in Marine biologist Matt Hooper (Played by Richard Dreyfuss) to help find the shark swallowing tourists whole. Brody and Hooper join forces with a blue-collar professional shark hunter Quint (Played by Robert Shaw) and they board his rickety boat the Orca, setting out to find and kill the predator before more people are killed. They soon catch a glimpse of what they are going up against and they quickly realize that they are going to need a bigger boat.

No matter how tough you think you are, Jaws, which is based on Peter Benchley’s novel of the same name, has at least one moment that will send you flying out of your seat. Yes, it is a rollercoaster ride caught on film but Spielberg keeps us on our toes for the entire runtime of the film. He is aided by the iconic score by John Williams, which adds to the stomach-knotting tension found woven through Jaws. I dare you not to jump when you get your first good look at the aquatic beast that rears up to show off its pearly white fangs. You’d be lying if you said your pulse didn’t quicken when Brody, who is well aware a shark killed the girl, sits helplessly on the beach while people pour into the water for a cool-off. Each playful shriek has Brody inching closer to the edge of his beach chair. I guarantee that you mimic him each time you watch the film. All of this suspense is aided by the fact that we don’t see the shark until more than halfway through the film and this glimpse is one of those reveals where if you blink, you’ll miss it. By keeping the monster off screen, our imagination runs wild with, “How big is the shark?” “What does it look like?” “Are our heroes equipped to do battle with this monster?” Between the score, the concealment of the shark, and the slowly rising tension, Spielberg crafts a film that still sends people fleeing from it to this day while the brave ones who remain scream their heads off.

While Jaws may be a big budget studio picture, Spielberg refuses to dumb the entire project down and treat us like blithering idiots. Jaws is eager to address the Watergate scandal, which the country was still trying to wrap their heads around at the time. Tricky Dick’s resignation was still fresh in the mind of most American citizens and the fear that we may not even be able to trust our own leaders is touched upon in Jaws. Throughout the first half of the film, the honest everyman Brody is pitted against Mayor Larry Vaughan (Played by Murray Hamilton), a liar done up in flashy suits who jumps on television to reassure the edgy tourists that there is nothing to fear in the waters of Amity. He breathlessly tells Brody that he can’t close the beaches down because the citizens of the area depend on the money that the tourists bring in. As the body count racks up, the slippery politician is caught up in his fib that everything is okay and out of disgrace, he allows Brody to hire Quint to track down the shark. The film uses Vaughan’s dishonesty to infuse the film with some stinging grief that really sticks with the viewer. The mother of one of the victims approaches Brody and scolds him for opening the beaches when he was aware that there was a shark in the water. This confrontation shakes Brody to his core and his character is never the same again. He seems quieter and a bit dazed as a result, seeking refuge in a bottle of wine.

When Jaws isn’t making us feel Brody’s pain, Spielberg is allowing us to really get up close and personal with the three different protagonists. Middle class Brody wanted to escape the violence of New York and live a peaceful life only to stumble into more violence where he least expected to find it. His reveal is most certainly a reflection of the violence that America was still trying to recover from throughout the 70’s. Quint is a blue-collar WWII veteran who likes to poke fun at Hooper, who has a college degree and happens to be wealthy. The group bickers with one another and they have a hard time working together at first but they are able to put aside their difference over drinks and lengthy explanations about past experiences. Quint and Hooper, who butt heads the most, are able to level with each other by comparing their scars, first physically and then psychologically. Quint’s reveal is the standout, a deeply disturbing account of being stranded in shark infested waters at the tail end of World War II. Then, to celebrate their understanding, they engage in drinking and singing, only to be yanked away from bonding by their aquatic nemesis. This bonding sequence happens to be one of my favorite scenes in the film. I love it when Spielberg cuts to the outside of the boat and up pops our antagonist, a common enemy for the uncommon trio.

Perhaps one of the most influential thrillers next to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (my professor’s favorite film), Jaws hits gold with its equal parts action, adventure, horror, thrills, and comedy, all while giving us three characters we grow to deeply care about. Unlike Spielberg’s later work, Jaws doesn’t have such a happy ending to soothe us. He is bold enough to kill off one of the protagonists, a shock to someone who is only familiar with his projects that came in the wake of Jaws. He also doesn’t shy away from graphic violence, a staple that was immensely popular in the horror films of the 1970’s. To say that Jaws isn’t a classic film worthy of study just because it was the film that “invented” the summer blockbuster and was heavily marketed by the studio is ridiculous. While marketing Psycho, Hitchcock used a gimmick that forbid anyone into the theater once the film had started. This gimmick is okay but the marketing for Jaws was a major crime? Maybe I’m the only one who sees something wrong with that argument. Jaws remains one of the best American movies ever made by a big Hollywood studio, one of the best thrillers of all time, and the quintessential summer blockbuster. An undisputed classic that will make you never want to visit the beach or go into the water again.

Grade: A+

Jaws is available on DVD. It hits Blu-ray this August, a must purchase for any fan of cinema.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

by Charles Beall

2011 was the year of vintage Spielberg.  Along with J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8,” we were treated to the first animated feature film by this legendary filmmaker; these two films, for me at least, reminded me why I fell in love with the films of Steven Spielberg in the first place.

So we have “The Adventures of Tintin,” and boy is this a great film.  I will admit that when I first saw the trailer for this movie, I aired on the side of caution.  I had been familiar with the name Tintin, but had no idea as what to expect, and in a way, Spielberg knew this.  Both he and Peter Jackson had a great challenge ahead of them, adapting a uniquely European comic for a worldwide audience.  As someone who has no idea about the source material, and who thoroughly enjoyed the film, I can say their gamble was a success.

To delve into the plot of “Tintin” would be a disservice to the reader.  But I will tell you this: this movie is a grand adventure in the style of the movies we grew up with.  There is an underlying mystery, a legend, and it is up to Tintin and his sidekick Snowy to solve it.  And I’ll tell you this, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, consumed in a child-like giddiness that I rarely experience while watching a film.

Spielberg, like Scorsese with “Hugo” (a magnificent masterpiece), uses 3D technology to add, well, another dimension to the story; it is a tool, not a gimmick.  We are literally immersed in Spielberg’s world of Tintin and we see shots that no live action film could accomplish.  There are chase scenes that come out of the imagination of an eight year-old, and it is obvious that the filmmaker is having a blast.  The detail in every scene is impeccable, from the distorted reflection in a bottle to the consistency of the pores on a face.  The love of film and serials past is evident; there is an homage to “Jaws” that made me want to go up to the screen and give it a big ol’ kiss.

But, most important, what we have in “The Adventures of Tintin” is a filmmaker who is constantly challenging himself and whom is willing to revisit the films of his childhood, and ultimately, the films that made him the artist he is today.  Tintin will be, hopefully, a character that kids will embrace on this side of the pond.  He is a smart character, who uses his intellect and imagination, not an iPhone and Google to solve mysteries or to have an adventure.  I for one cannot wait to have kids, mainly because I want to see them discover movies, and “The Adventures of Tintin” will definitely be in the “Spielberg section” that I will indoctrinate them with.

Mr. Spielberg, bravo.  (And I love you, please give me a job.)

Grade: A

Halloween Day Classic Horror Movie Review… GO!

Fright Night (1985)

by Steve Habrat

If you are someone who is familiar with the evolution of the horror genre on film, you understand that horror underwent a massive metamorphosis in the 1960s. The more traditional approach to horror films, which means the use of monsters and mutated freaks, was beginning to diminish and the interest in the human monster was growing at a rapid rate.  There had been serial killers (Whitman and Gein) and the true embodiment of evil (Nazi Germany) which had shown their ugly mugs to the citizens of America. Dracula or Frankenstein’s Monster simply no longer freaked us out and we were instead cowering at the average Joe that lived down the street. One of the first films to openly address the death of one movie monster and the birth of another was Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets, which features Boris Karloff playing a version of himself and a Charles Whitman-esque serial killer. Prosthetic movie monsters just weren’t relevant and as times became more and more violent, so did the horror movies. They were unpolished and tattered, grainy and off-putting, economical but effective.

Star Wars and Jaws kicked off the special effects boom in the mid 1970s but it truly gained momentum in the 1980s. This movement did not just mold the blockbuster genre, but it touched horror too. The horror films of the 1980s were loaded with gruesome special effects and new advances in make-up that left audience member’s stomachs churning. We had everything from Freddy Kruger to Evil Dead. We also had 1985’s Fright Night. Fright Night took the old fashioned concept of vampires and smashed it together with the monster in suburbia. The results are a half campy, half eerie merger that stands as a minor classic in the eyes of horror buffs everywhere.

Fright Night kicks off with a collage of shots of quiet suburban streets that look like they could have been plagiarized from John Carpenter’s Halloween. We climb into the bedroom of Charlie Brewster (Played by William Ragsdale) who’s necking with his gal-pal Amy (Played by Amanda Bearse). While they are preoccupied, we see Charlie’s television playing Fright Night, a horror show that presents old fright flicks that feature Peter Vincent (Played by Roddy McDowell), the self proclaimed vampire slayer. Charlie soon realizes that his debonair new neighbor Jerry (Played by Chris Sarandon) isn’t just a smooth ladies man, but a ferocious killer with something to hide. He happens to be a vampire. Jerry realizes that Charlie has discovered his dirty little secret and begins threatening Charlie (One scene involves a petrifying transformation that will knock your socks off), his mother, and his girlfriend. But when Jerry encounters Charlie’s girlfriend, who resembles a woman from his past, the terror around Charlie escalates even further.

What makes the original Fright Night work is its sleepover appeal. It’s a movie you could pop on with a bunch of your friends and watch with beers in hand. It packs a handful of memorable creep outs and some remarkable monster make-up effects. One lady vamp in particular will be etched into your brain for the rest of your days. The effects have aged well since 1985 and will satisfy the skeptics. Remember, they weren’t making movies like Transformers during this era. Yet the effects, which sometimes consist of claymation techniques, are often scarier than the rubbery CGI that’s slapped onto movies these days. They are at least guaranteed to gross the viewer out.

Another reason to seek out the original Fright Night is the panting, wild-eyed performance from Stephen Geoffreys as Evil Ed, Charlie’s smartass chum who at first provides sarcastic advice on how to dispatch a bloodsucker and then turns into one himself. Ed comes equipped with an icky transformation scene and the neatest make-up of all the demons lurking in the film. Geoffreys disappears into the performance and becomes one of the more memorable bloodsuckers in the history of vampire cinema. The film also benefits from the anxiety-drenched performance from Ragsdale, who is all twitchy desperation. Sarandon is magnetic at the beginning but he seems to run out of steam and he lets his make-up do the work in the climax. It’s a shame because he is uncannily imperturbable at the start.

Director Tom Holland effortlessly mixes gothic horror with suburban normalcy. Jerry’s home is shrouded in mist and moss. I admit I half expected to see toppled graves and headstones littering the backyard. It’s delightfully old fashioned. The film is however derailed by it’s shameless 80s flair, making the film a complete relic of it’s own era. The score is all thumping synths and blaring saxophones, which cause the film to seem painfully dated. It’s also loaded with the expected pastel color palette, especially in a wobbly club sequence. Yet Fright Night is still a relic worth digging up. It has truly classic moments that I’m sure fans that saw the film at the lap up with glee again and again. The film can also be seen as a minor little commentary of belief in good and evil, which suits the conservative Reagan era quite nicely. Furthermore, its use of a more traditional menace makes the film all the more stirring against its political backdrop. It has moments of pure cheese and it will cause you to giggle, but that isn’t a particularly bad thing. It’s a spooky, kooky good time you won’t mind reliving. Grade: B