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Hellraiser V/Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)

Oct 052000

Corrupt cop Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer) investigates a series of murders that seem to be connected to him. Soon, he is seeing monsters and it is no longer clear what is real.

Quick Review: Hellraiser V? Pin Head has less then five minutes of screen time and could easily have been pulled from this film that has none of the mythology, none of the themes, and none of the virtues of the first two films. The main character is a thoroughly unlikable man who takes drugs, cheats on his wife, and beats suspects. Now a film doesn’t have to have a likable protagonist, but if it doesn’t, it needs to give me some reason to follow the character. Hellraiser: Inferno gives me nothing. Not that there is anything to follow as the events in this film are random. Joseph goes here, sees some demonic images, and then goes somewhere else. It plays out like a bad mystery, but there is no mystery (and I’m not saying it’s easy to figure out; there literally is no mystery as nothing actually happens). Yes, we’ve got a cheap plot cheat here. It’s not quite as bad as it all being a dream, but it’s close. It is a low-rent version of Jacobs Ladder, not exactly a stellar film either, but if you need to see a version of this story, see Jacobs Ladder. Clive Barker has labeled this movie “an abomination” and I have no reason to disagree.

The other films in the series are: Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Hellraiser: Hellseeker, Hellraiser: Deader, Hellraiser: Hellworld.

Back to Demons

Demons, Reviews Tagged with: Toxic

Versus (2000)

Oct 052000

Two escaped convicts and a group of yakuza with a female prisoner meet in the woods. Bickering results in the death of the leader of the yakuza, but unknown to them, this is the Forest of Resurrection, and the dead man rises as a zombie. Soon, zombies are everywhere and everyone is fighting to survive as the yakuza wait for their mysterious boss, who set up the meeting and has plans for one of the prisoners.

So, what do you get if a seriously drunken John Woo takes on the job of remaking Night of the Living Dead, with a cast that includes The Three Stooges, but halfway through, the studio tells him to change it to a remake of Highlander? You get Versus, a frenetic, campy, gore fest of gangsters, samurais, zombies, magicians, and government agents. Sounds complicated? Well, it’s not. Here’s the plot: guys try to kill others guys and zombies while girl complains about killings. That’s it. There are a few moments given over to exposition, stating that in the woods there’s a gate to some other world and one of the guys wants someone else’s blood to open the gate, but the gate and its destination aren’t defined.

So, we start off with an hour of Hong Kong style gun play, where people jump and shoot, shoot two handed, shoot in slow motion, and have Mexican standoffs before shooting. It’s pretty cool for ten minutes. It’s not bad for twenty. But eventually, I was looking at the clock wondering if anything besides shooting was going to happen. It’s a good thing I wasn’t waiting for character development. There are three personality traits in the movie: serious while killing, silly while killing, object to killing—and only the girl has the third. I’ve been calling them “guys” and “the girl” because they aren’t even given names.

At the halfway mark, the killing slows since all the regular zombies are gone. Now it’s the “cool” guy with a coat who’s traveling with the girl, versus the boss yakuza and his undead aids who don’t move like zombies. Of course, they still shoot at each other, but they also use swords. Since there are fewer bodies to be blown away, there’s more time for slow motion attacks and posing (though there was plenty of posing in the first half). Plus, now we get to sit and watch the two opponents stare as the camera travels around and around and around them.

Humor is a problem all the way through. There are many attempts, most of which are nothing more than extreme overacting (a guy screaming as he throws his arms around over his head). It never reaches the sophistication of The Three Stooges, nor is it as funny (so if you dislike The Stooges, this is going to be unpleasant).

While none of the characters manage “cool,” they try for it constantly, flipping long leather coats, putting on sunglasses dramatically, and otherwise looking like they’ve studied male modeling at an incompetent mail order school. But even if they could pull off the look, it wouldn’t have worked. To paraphrase a short evil dude, “when everyone is cool, no one is.”

Versus isn’t a bad time, but it isn’t really a movie either. It’s more like the dailies from the violent shooting days for a movie. Now they have to shoot the rest of the film and edit it together.

Back to Zombies

Asian, Foreign Language, Reviews, Zombies Tagged with: Two Reels

Uzumaki “Spiral” (2000)

Oct 052000

A small town in Japan is thrown into chaos by spirals. Some people become obsessed with them, watching them until they find a suitable, spiral-related way to commit suicide. Others seek to destroy anything connected to spirals, while still others begin to physically change into spiral shapes. Kirie Goshima (Eriko Hatsune), a girl at the local high school, is frightened, but doesn’t know what to do. Her boyfriend, Shuichi Saito (Fhi Fan), whose father was one of the first to be affected, says the town is cursed and they must leave to survive.

I often complain that a majority of films are doing nothing new, that they lack originality. Well, here’s a movie that is like no other. It is completely original. However, discarding plot, theme, and sense wasn’t what I had in mind. Uzumaki is a drug trip without the need for drugs. To say that it is weird is an understatement.

You may note that my synopses above doesn’t say what the characters do, only what is done to them. That’s because they don’t do anything. There are no protagonists. Kirie and Shuichi exist in the story; they do not move it along. Kirie, a weak and completely useless girl, does occasionally faint, but I hesitate to call that an action. Shuichi seems on the verge of doing something for much of the picture, but then he doesn’t.

So, what does happen? People watch spirals. People make spirals. People turn into giant snails. Why? Who knows. A reporter, who almost does things, starts to dig into the past, but it doesn’t lead to anything. No answers are given. The story is being told by Kirie, but there’s no way to even guess where she is, or who she’s with.

However, for being incoherent, it isn’t bad. It has a tone (also inconsistent), that is somewhere between camp and creepy. The manga (Japanese graphic novel) that the film is based on goes for frights, but the film is more interested in mild tension. For the first half, with the wild expressions and general overacting of the actors, and the deep evil just being spirals, I felt I was watching a horror film made for young children. I changed my mind once someone cut off the skin on their fingers (fingerprints have spirals in them). The gore is brief, as are most of the unsettling, but enjoyable deaths. Many of the transformation are amusing. Who doesn’t want to see a giant snail-man?

It isn’t uncommon in Japanese horror, particularly since the success of Ringu, to leave the viewer without an explanation. Why does the evil exist? How did it come into being? What are the rules? These questions are often brushed aside in favor of atmosphere. And that works in films like Ju-on, but here, with less to shock, it doesn’t. Perhaps if the characters had been more engaging I could have been pulled into the story to feel the uncertainty that they did. Instead, I wanted some kind of answer and some kind of conclusion, and got neither.

Asian, Foreign Language, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

Oct 052000

An ex-mental patient (Jeffrey Donovan) takes a writer (Stephen Barker Turner), his pregnant co-writer (Tristine Skyler), a Wiccain (Erica Leerhsen), and a goth chick (Kim Director) on a tour of Blair Witch sites. After a drunken night camping in the woods, they awaken to find their cameras and notes destroyed, and the pregnant woman has had a miscarriage. They hope that the videotapes of the night’s events will show them what happened, but instead, the images only confuse matters.

Ripped apart by almost every critic and a majority of fans, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was mainly attacked for not being The Blair Witch Project. People flocked to this film, expecting to see another group of under-trained actors wander through the woods making a mock-documentary, and when that didn’t pop up on screen, screamed bloody murder, and then no one else went. Why people so wanted a repeat of the first film is one of those mysteries I’ll never understand. Hey, if you liked the first one, go watch it.

This sequel tries to be something else, and while it isn’t successful, I’ll give it points for the attempt. The world of Book of Shadows is our world, where the first film was a huge hit, the naive were fooled into thinking that something scary actually happened, and lowlifes make substantial bucks from selling Blair Witch memorabilia. The film starts as a documentary on how the hype affected a small town that needs some chlorine in its gene pool. That’s good stuff, but thankfully short as five minutes covers anything interesting.

Things then switch to 35mm film. Yes, this is a professional movie, with a paid crew and SAG actors. If you wanted shaky DV shots, get over it. Forget the first film and take this for what it is.

The setup is slow, but the characters are engaging enough to keep me with them. They appear at first to be stereotypes, but end up as complicated personalities. Erica Leerhsen and Kim Director standout, but all the lead actors excel. The same cannot be said for the supporting players. The worst is Lanny Flaherty, but it is hard to blame him when he was given the poorly written, one-dimensional Sheriff role.

The basic concept of Book of Shadows is an excellent one. It’s a mystery, where something horrible happened in the night, and the answer is somewhere on a group of tapes. But each time something is found, things become more confused. That’s the stuff of great thrillers and horror films. Plus, it is an amusing comment on the first film as it becomes clear that you can’t trust what you see on video.

But, all is not well. There are way too many dreams and visions, with several repeating over and over. Yes, someone was knifed in the stomach and someone else was tied up; I got it the first ten times. Most of these shouldn’t have been shown at all as they give away the ending. Ten minutes of hallucinations should have been cut. There’s also needless flashbacks. Multiple times, we’re shown one character in an asylum, but it leads to nothing.

And I think an investigation is needed to look at not only this small town’s police work, but also its medical care. After a miscarriage that involved massive blood loss, the hospital releases the patient. I don’t think so.

Much of the dialog feels like it was written for a previous incarnation of the script, where the main characters were old friends. They are often too familiar with each other, at least when they aren’t having unnecessary dreams of having sex or slashing open each other’s abdomens.

The real failing comes from following the first film’s lead. Once again, there is no resolution. People come. Bad things happen. The end. A lot of whys and wherefores would have been out of place, but some explanations, some closure, some meaning, would have been nice. Nothing the heroes did in the film made any difference, so what was the point of watching them do things?

Director Joe Berlinger is primarily known for his documentary films Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Revelations: Paradise Lost 2. These films explored the conviction of two goth teens for murder in a small town in Arkansas, where fear of strange kids and Satanists had more to do with them being put away than any evidence. Book of Shadows, with its pleasant, thoughtful goth, good natured Wiccan, mindless and violent small town population, and simpleminded sheriff, touches on the same themes as the documentaries. That makes it even more disappointing that the film falls short of what it could have been.

Oh, and there is no Book of Shadows in the picture.

Reviews, Witches Tagged with: Two Reels

Ginger Snaps (2000)

Oct 032000

Goth teens Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) have sworn an oath to always be together. They also will do anything to be different. On the night that Ginger begins to menstruate, she is bitten by an oversized wolf. As Ginger becomes sexual, violent, and irrational, Bridget works with the local drug dealer (Kris Lemche) to find a cure, and their mother (Mimi Rogers) gives them advice about becoming a woman.

Part of the new, post-modern horror movement where everyone knows the old films, Ginger Snaps, is a clever werewolf picture that never works out what it wants to be. At its best, it is a dark, twisted comedic take on female adolescence. At times, it’s an emotional drama on the pain of dealing with an abusive loved one, and it ends as a standard run-from-the-monster horror flick.

The werewolf-puberty metaphors are frequent and obvious. There’s blood flow, hair growth, irritability, new desires, new acquaintances, changed appearance, sexually transmitted diseases, and social pressures, although they skip moon cycles being relevant. These would be annoying if conveyed with great importance, but Ginger Snaps plays them out with a glee that made me think of Heathers. Sure, this sounds like a female movie, and it is, but males shouldn’t avoid it just because it mentions menstruation (hey, it does it with a monster ripping out people’s throats, so relax).

For a low budget film, the production values are high and the direction is good. Isabelle and Perkins are flawless, both with the dry humor and in the deeper, emotional moments. It’s surprising that Isabelle is so accomplished at her young age, and even more astounding that the older Perkins is believable as a character close to eight years her junior. Mimi Rogers gives a nicely quirky performance, and Kris Lemche is sympathetic as a good-natured and intelligent drug dealer.

One of the best modern werewolf films (not that the competition is all that fierce), Ginger Snaps’s main flaw is failing to merge its divergent parts. Plot problems, like everyone knowing about a killer beast, but no one actually doing anything about it, the absence of police, the disappearance of the parents, and the blatant and unlocked drug greenhouse, are not problems for a black comedy, but damaging for heartfelt drama or horror. The film can’t hold any kind of tone. You get very serious emotions from Bridget, and then the mom is talking about burning down the house and how it will be fun to be “just girls.” The horror segment, which is the last twenty minutes, has the biggest problems, as not only has it been done many times before (hero, caught in a house, chased by a monster), but up till then, there’s been nothing even attempting to be scary. There’s been no buildup for a fright fest.

Enough good parts, and witty dialog make Ginger Snaps enjoyable. It could easily have been better, but they fell into the trap of making their innovative film take the customary path.

It is followed by Ginger Snaps: Unleashed and Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning.

Halloween, Reviews, Werewolves

The 6th Day (2000)

Oct 022000

Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a helicopter charter pilot, skips out of work on the day he was supposed to fly powerful businessman Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) to the mountains, letting his partner take his place. Later, his partner doesn’t show up at a bar and when Adam arrives home, he finds a clone of himself already there and a group of assassins trying to kill him, led by Robert Marshall (Michael Rooker). While cloning pets is common, cloning humans is illegal, so Adam knows he’s in the middle of a conspiracy to cover up a mistake in the labs of geneticist Dr. Griffin Weir (Robert Duvall).

A retread of the superior Total Recall, Arnold is once again an average family man (with huge biceps and a thick accent—you know, the guy next door) who ends up in the middle of a secret plot that causes identify confusion. But this time, the question is, which Adam is the real Adam and which is the clone? Since it turns out not to matter, it’s annoying that the film spends so much time worrying about it.

Arnold can do the guns and fists action in his sleep, and even with the pedestrian directing of Roger Spottiswoode, who thinks random slow motion and warped screen flashbacks are the height of excitement (they’re not), Arnold delivers. He’s not so capable in the happy family scenes which are painful to watch.

Thematically, The 6th Day is a mess. Sounding more like a traveling preacher, it states, over and over, that cloning is bad. Why is cloning bad? Because it is. Bad people do cloning, and it’s bad. Are you getting the idea that cloning is bad yet? Problematically, the film shows the opposite. Apparently the future world is being fed due to cloning (I have doubts on how that worked). Their cloning technique is perfect (as long as Arnold doesn’t blow up the lab while a clone is being grown), so no problems there. And souls aren’t an issue either as the film makes it clear that cloned Arnold is every bit as human as original Arnold. So, why is cloning bad? I haven’t a clue, but like that threadbare evangelist, it keeps saying the same thing.

The film runs too long, adding in an unnecessary and uninteresting side story about Dr. Griffin’s motivation for cloning and his sick wife. I suppose they paid for Duvall and then figured they should do something with him. A bit of judicious editing would do wonders.

The villains are all acceptable, but look pale next to past foes Arnold has defeated. There’s enough mild humor for the genre and plenty of gadgets for the background (although many, like the doll with real hair, feel like they were taken from an early draft of Total Recall).

Don’t expect more than a mediocre Arnold shoot-’em-up and you’ll be satisfied with The 6th Day.

Cyberpunk, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)

Nov 231999

Here is the beginning of a backstory we never asked for and never should have been given. Even good movies detailing Darth Vader’s history would have damaged the character and the original films, and these were not good movies. What is good about this entry? It is a very pretty film with great art design and costume design. And Ewan McGregor does the best job of acting of anyone in the first six films. The score is excellent and there’s one good lightsaber fight.

The bad? Everything else. The Jedi are idiots for no reason, with Qui-Gon Jinn being the icon for stupidity. He’s never right. No one besides McGregor can act, with Natalie Portman particularly bad. Then there’s Antisemitism, racist Asian characters, young Anakin, Shmi, immaculate conception, and the never-ending pod race. Even things that at first seem like they will be good are a mess. Darth Maul seemed “cool,” at least in the advertising, but in the actual movie, he is a void. He is given no personality at all. He is just some guy with a different kind of lightsaber. That’s his character. And of course, there’s Jar-Jar, who is not funny nor dramatic nor interesting. The general defense is that he’s “For the children,” but that’s insulting to children.

Reviews, Science Fiction, Space Opera Tagged with: Two Reels

Stir of Echoes (1999)

Oct 111999

Blue collar everyman Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon) is hypnotized at a party by his sister-in-law, opening up his ability to see ghosts. One ghost in particular, that of a missing girl who has been talking to Tom’s son for some time, has something she wants him to do. He just doesn’t know what.

Quick Review: I feel sorry for everyone connected with Stir of Echoes. They made a little ghost story involving marital problems and a child who sees dead people and released it at the same time as The Sixth Sense; timing is everything. While not up to the level of its competition, Stir of Echoes is an atmospheric horror story with a reasonably engaging plot. Bacon does a nice job as a man slowly losing his mind. But the whole thing is too predictable (we’re in standard ghost story territory here) and the only question is how will Tom’s spiritually aware son play into the plot. Answer: he won’t. It turns out the kid and his ghostly sight could be removed from the picture without altering a thing. Swiping from other films doesn’t help, with a whole digging section feeling like a rewrite of the famed Close Encounters of the Third Kind scene. The middle of the picture drags, with the characters ignoring obvious moves (why doesn’t Tom ask his kid to clarify what the ghost wants?). But the biggest problem comes from the wife, who argues over and over with Tom after she has plenty of evidence that it’s not all in his head. The viewer knows that there’s ghostly activity, so the wife’s diatribes get old fast. At half the length, this might have been a first rate, if uninspired, re-telling of the standard ghost story. As is, it’s OK to catch on the late show.

Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Oct 111999

Emotionally broken, child psychologist, Malcolm Crow (Bruce Willis) attempts to help disturbed Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), who is showing symptoms much like those of his greatest failure. Malcolm is shaken when it turns out Cole’s problem is that he sees ghosts all around him.

Quick Review: If you haven’t seen this, and avoided hearing the spoilers, then go buy it and watch it now. I’ll wait.

This is the best ghost story since The Uninvited. The much talked about ending is brilliant filmmaking, but what makes The Six Sense tower above director M. Night Shyamalan’s other twist-ending films is that it is a good story without the twist. I worked out what was going to happen very early in my first viewing, but was so rapped up in the execution of the story that I forgot it, and was as surprised as everyone else. There’s no mistakes, no down side. Bruce Willis and Toni Collette are flawless as the depressed healer and the troubled boy’s mother. As for Haley Joel Osment, it was obvious that this was the beginning of a career of incredible work—which shows that you should never believe the obvious. OK, the boy actor has done little of value since, and Shyamalan has made several of the worst films of recent years, but in 1999 they were fresh and clever and made one of the great all time movies.

Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

Shikoku (1999)

Oct 111999

Hinako, Fumiya, and Sayori were childhood friends. Sayori, the leader, was the daughter and heir to the local priestess, but had big plans that didn’t involve sticking around. But it was Hinako who left for the big city when her father got a job in Tokyo. Years later, Hinako (Natsukawa) returns to find Sayori (Chiaki Kuriyama—Gogo in Kill Bill) long dead and Fumiya (Michitaka Tsutsui) still in mourning. She also finds the ghostly image of Sayori, defaced idols, and the priestess gone on a pilgrimage. Hinako and Fumiya set out to discover what happened in the past and how it relates to the supernatural activity of the present.

One thing you can say for Shikoku, it’s not another Ringu clone. It barely fits in the J-horror movement. Instead of following the style of recent fright-fests filled with hopelessness, Shikoku takes its cues from older, folktale inspired Japanese and Hong Kong films of the ’60s and ’70s. The setting is rural, the people are simple, the Shinto religion is ever-present, and traditional village beliefs underlie everything. The plot is also slow moving and linear. If you’re sick of twist endings, you can relax. If you’re looking for thrills and chills, unfortunately, you can relax too. Every film from Asia doesn’t have to be about scares, but some kind of emotion would be nice.

The idea is good. “Shikoku” means “land of the four kingdoms.” If the pronunciation or the kanji (Japanese letters) is changed slightly, it becomes “land of the dead.” What we’ve got here is a Japanese pun. Following folklore, pilgrims who make a circuit of the eighty-eight temples on the island, in the proper order, reinforce the barrier against the dead. So, what happens if someone decides to make the trip backwards? This is a nice little supernatural drama with a pleasant though easy to solve mystery. It also has some interesting characters with an amusing romance (I was concerned that the sudden and unbelievable love story was supposed to be taken seriously; I needn’t have worried).

With all that going for it, this should be a great movie, or an above average one. Instead, it’s dull. Hinako is the main character. She should be the protagonist, but she does nothing. Such passivity is only good in someone sleeping. Fumiya, an introverted nerd-cliché, does the detective work and Hinako just stands next to him. When we reach the ghostly climax I expected her to do something, but nope, she just watches. It’s not much of a climax anyway, but she could have at least moved around and gotten somewhat involved.

At least Shikoku should work as pretty background, showing off the beauty of the island’s forests and mountains, but this is where the movie really falls apart. The cinematography is terrible. Most of the film is overexposed. The colors are muted and glare often hides part of the frame. The night shots, on the other hand, are underexposed. Often it’s impossible to tell what is happening on screen. Worse is the use of a shaking camera, not to raise the tension or show confusion, but just because they didn’t know how to shoot over uneven terrain. When Hinako is calmly walking down a path, there’s no reason for her to wobble around. This is amateur filmmaking.

Shikoku is too gentle and plodding for the horror crowd, too simple for the art crowd, and too poorly shot for anyone. It was originally released as a double feature with Ringu 2; at least it was better than that disappointment, but that’s hardly something to be proud of.

Asian, Foreign Language, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Whispering Corridors 2 {Yeogo Goedam II} (1999)

Oct 111999

At a repressive girls school, Min-ah (Min-sun Kim) finds the joint diary of Hyo-shi (Yeh-jin Park) and Shi-eun (Young-jin Lee), two schoolmates who had an affair but now are seldom together. Min-ah becomes obsessed with the book and the two girls’ lives. After Hyo-shi plummets from the roof to her death, Min-ah believes she’s being hunted by the dead girls angry spirit.

A semi-sequel to the very successful Whispering Corridors, Whispering Corridors 2, also known as Memento Mori, is a simple, bland, and un-engaging teen drama with some out-of-place ghostly action tossed in at the end. If you’re looking for thrills and chills, you’re out of luck. If you’re looking for a touching romance between two schoolgirls and the tragedy that can come from their living in a restrictive society, well, you’re out of luck there too. If you’re looking for whiny, catty, and over-the-top obnoxious teen girls, then finally, you’re in the right place.

Let’s get the horror aspect out of the way: there isn’t any. A ghost shows up at the end, but outside of feeling-up Min-ah for no apparent reason, does nothing more than play with the lights, turn on and off the water, lock the door, and visit one weak-willed teacher. None of that is frightening, though it is the best part of the film purely from a technical point of view. The early sections of the movie look like the crew was still working out where the camera should go.

For the rest, you’ve got three characters. Min-ah is a passive reader. She has no story of her own, does nothing, and could have been cut out of the movie. Yet, she’s the one we follow as she sits and reads, lies down and reads, and even (wait for it…) stands and reads. Outside of her fervent love of reading about other people’s lives, we learn nothing about her. She’s a blank from beginning to end.

Shi-eun and Hyo-shi aren’t blank non-entities, just close. We find out surprisingly little about these two and even less about their relationship and feelings. Shi-eun is a runner with degenerating hearing. She also must take a lot of drugs because she looks like she’s going to doze off at any moment. Let’s just say she’s not a dynamic personality. Hyo-shi plays the piano and acts randomly. Her behavior isn’t that of a confused teen in love, but of someone who uses dice to decide her next move. She’s also sleeping with her male teacher out of pity. Does this upset Shi-eun? Who knows? Do the two girls have anything in common? Again, who knows? Homosexuality is hardly accepted widely in the world, but in Korea it has a special place. Officially it doesn’t exist. That may be the problem here. With so little in Korean art and literature dealing with lesbian girls, the filmmakers had no idea how to portray the relationship. That’s only a guess. What’s certain is they failed in painting both the girls and how they interacted.

Like the original Whispering Corridors, this film is no fan of the Korean education system. The sadism of the faculty has been toned down (it’s still there, but the number of girls beaten to the floor has been significantly reduced) in favor of their inability to teach and general frailty. In the first, a teacher tried to sleep with a student by making creepy innuendoes and touching her inappropriately. Now, a teacher succeeds by whimpering and looking pathetic. The focus has shifted from useless and vicious teachers to stupid and cruel students. Wouldn’t it be cool if a ghost came along and gave these horrible people exactly what they deserve? Probably would be, but it doesn’t happen in this picture. Justice is as missing as realism and entertainment.

The other films in the series are Whispering Corridors (1998), Whispering Corridors 3: Wishing Stairs (2003), and Whispering Corridors 4: The Voice (2005).

Asian, Foreign Language, Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Virus (1999)

Oct 101999

The crew of a sea-going tug, including Captain Robert Everton (Donald Sutherland), Kelly Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Steve Baker (William Baldwin), find a derelict Russian science ship and claim it as salvage. Unfortunately for them, an electrical alien lifeform is onboard, creating robots and human-robot hybrids to start on its quest to wipeout mankind. They discover a single survivor (Joanna Pacula) who explains the situation, but Everton doesn’t care as he is suicidal due to his financial situation, and will do anything to take the ship in.

“Rubbish. It’s a pile of Russian Rubbish. And I, for one, am not going to listen to any more of it.” So says Captain Everton, and I couldn’t agree more (except for the “Russian” bit). Virus is a poorly acted and directed remake of ten better pictures. There is not a line of dialog, a plot twist, or even a shot, which has not occurred in a previous film.

A close sibling to the monster-on-a-ship Deep Rising from 1998, its parents are Alien and Moon Trap. From Alien it gets the salvage tug stopping to examine a derelict ship, and then things turning into a fight to the death as the blue collar crew are picked off one by one by a monster that moves about long, dimly-lit corridors. Not able to reproduce the artistry of the gloomy environment from Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, Virus insufficiently lights the entire film and tints it a drab blue. Jamie Lee Curtis does her best imitation of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, and it isn’t good enough. Ripley was a tough, no nonsense, highly self-controlled officer who had a sense of humor and a heart. She was a complex and complete character. Curtis’s Foster is just a bitch. There’s also a nod to Aliens with Baldwin’s Baker being a substitute for Hicks and Pacula’s survivor sharing characteristics with Newt, along with the big, patched-together monster being an homage to the Alien Queen.

The debt to Moon Trap is just as substantial, though may be harder to notice because far fewer people have seen that low budget space thriller. But I have no doubt that director Bruno and script writers Pfarrer and Feldman have. In it, little alien robots graft together parts of dead people and whatever metal and electronics they can find to make fighting machines. They aren’t subtly like those in Virus; they are exactly like those in Virus. Not being content to swipe its monster from a seldom seen flick, Virus also has one cyborg that could be tossed into a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode as a Borg.

The massively derivative nature of the film could be forgiven if any of it was done with energy, tension, or even a laugh or two. But there isn’t a sign of life in it. There are a few laughs, but those come from Donald Sutherland’s salty-dog, sometimes-Irish accent. With all that, it is still a step above numerous other sad invasion movies.

Aliens, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

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