There Is No Yellow King

With 8 episodes, the HBO mini series True Detective changed the television landscape. A couple years ago American Horror Story found success with a formula that made each season stand-alone and story-complete. Soon after, Netflix released House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, television seasons beholden to no advertiser, sweeps week, or seasonal dictates.

True Detective took it a step further. It consists of 8 hour-long episodes, too long to be a traditional mini-series, too short to be a season, and stars two lead characters who will not ever return. It should be mentioned that these two acting stars are Hollywood A-list actors, and that the two behind-the-camera stars are relative unknowns who had the creative control to do something original and unique.

True Detective proved that you can be deep, you can be good, and you can be popular all at the same time.

And oh my, was it ever popular. As the series progressed, and the mystery of Dora Lang’s gruesome murder sprawled into something more profoundly sinister, the internet was abuzz. Each episode was dissected and examined, each clue (or non-clue) studied. Elaborate theories were abound. Everyone was captivated – who was the Yellow King?

When the mystery was finally resolved, it was not in the way most expected. It turns out that the Yellow King was actually a clothesline for the real story at play. While everyone got caught up in the identity of the killer, they lost sight of the fact that True Detective is the story of two men hunting for a killer. No more, no less.

Marty Hart and Rust Cohle are the “bad men who keep other bad men from the door.” They are uniquely flawed, and… let’s be honest here, they are dicks. Both in the sense of the slang term for detective, and the slang term for someone who is being a dick. They aren’t your usual oil-and-water buddy cops from TV, they are oil-and-water cops who strongly dislike one another, but who work together because they are professionals and good at their jobs.

In episode one, the detectives catch the Lang case. The depth of the psychosis they see at the crime scene leads them on a ragged, often terrifying journey. This journey is what True Detective is about. The identity of the killer isn’t the point, the point is how the search for him changes and evolves these men.

The viewer became obsessed with the Yellow King just as Rust Cohle did. It consumed him, sent him into the old case files for hours of digging, and quickly pushed him over the edge. Of course, he was right on the edge in the first place, but still… as the Yellow King filled up the detective’s world, it did the same with the captivated audience. But is the Yellow King even a “who”? Or is it a “what”?

Over the weeks, more bodies were found. The sprawl grew. The detectives became more focused, and more adversarial. The case was getting out of hand. 

And yet, the case was never the whole show. We followed these cops in their lives, or what little lives they had. Marty was a family man, and a pathological cheater with a strong taste of alcohol. He has two daughters we got to meet, one of whom seemingly had a dark secret (one of the plot strands the show maddeningly never pays off, unfortunately). Rust on the other hand was a despondent loner, addicted to pills and constantly awash in depression and self-pity masked as contempt. These are not good men, they are complicated men.

In many ways, True Detective is just a good, old fashioned cop show. There is a case, troubled cops, a naggy wife, a Captain always yelling at them to wrap it up, there are gunfights, plot twists, and serial killers. Those words could be used to describe almost any law enforcement tv show since Hill Street Blues. 


The difference is depth. True Detective gave stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson the time and space to get into the skins of Rust and Marty and make them real human beings. It took commitment, both from the writers and the actors, to invest themselves into these men. The payoff is right there on the screen, every episode – the individual performances and their combined chemistry are engrossing, and makes them feel real.
That feeling allowed viewers to connect with these characters in ways they weren’t used to. And it was this connection that made the Yellow King seem so very important.

The first mention of the Yellow King is in Dora Lang’s diary, and then the name comes up (or is referred to obliquely) time and again. The name is tied to a cult that does unspeakable things to women and children, and is the center of a web of legends about horror and bloodshed in the bayou. After a certain point, the Yellow King started to seem supernatural.

The show smartly plays against this, giving us a big “reveal” of the killer’s identity as a throw-away bit at the end of an episode. There was no dramatic “duh-duh-DUHHHHHH” music, it was very matter-of-fact, and actually subtle enough that some people might not even have noticed it. They subverted the very concept of a Big Reveal by showing us the monster as being a country boy on a lawnmower. And that’s because the killer they catch is not the Yellow King… and indeed there probably isn’t a Yellow King after all.

True Detective is a story. And every story needs a bad guy. After chasing this boogeyman for 20 years, he has been so built up there is no way to effectively pay it off… or so you’d think.

In truth, when we finally spend some time with the madman in the final episode, it delivers completely. In a short but harrowing bit of work, actor Glenn Fleshler creates one of the most skin-crawling psychopaths television has ever seen. The man oozes malevolence, and in just a few minutes of screen time he becomes absolutely unforgettable. Even the way he just looks at the children of the schoolyard will give you shivers.

For a series with such a sterling build-up, having a finale that didn’t blow the doors off would have been a disappointment. And in its final run, True Detective managed to ratchet up the intensity one last time, and send Rust and Marty into the mouth of Hell to find their killer. It’s very cinematic, and Fleshler really helps make it work with his monstrous, larger-than-life character. 

The quest to find the Yellow King needed what most dreams have “a monster at the end of it.” And it delivered. But what makes the show so good – and I think it’s an easy call to say it’s one of the best things every made for television – is the quest itself. 

But while Fleshler is the killer they have been searching for, the man at the center of this mystery, he isn’t the Yellow King. There is no Yellow King… not in the flesh and blood sense, anyway. When Cohle ventures into Carcosa, what the madman calls his killing lair, he sees a regal throne made of bones and sticks, crowned with skulls and adorned with yellow fabric. This is the Yellow King we have been hearing about.

Either the Yellow King is a deity worshipped by the cult, or was the masked figurehead of the cult at one point. It’s not clear either way, and ultimately doesn’t matter. The point is, the killer doesn’t think he IS the Yellow King, but instead he kills IN SERVICE OF the Yellow King. 

And what of the rest of the cult? Personally, I think they are in the wind. Fleshler’s character has re-created the cult in his own mind, rebuilt Carcosa, fashioned a throne for the Yellow King, and lives out his sickening fantasies under the umbrella of this grand “religion.” He isn’t bringing victims to the Tuttle family any more. Perhaps inspired by the Army, he has become a Cult of One. One and a half, if you count his special lady friend.

The Yellow King, all along, has been a concept and not a person. But the cops can’t have a final confrontation with a concept, so instead they resolve the case by doing battle with the human personification of that concept; the demon in human skin who commits atrocity in the name of the Yellow King.

And then the show displays its genius one final time, because after the case is finished, the two detectives spend some quiet time together at the end. They show how they have evolved, how facing the devil himself has brought them closer to God and changed who they are as men. 
The show ends on a sweet note – one might even say it’s the happiest ending possible – focused on the two men it was always about. By the time the starshine fades into closing credits, they have already started to forget about the Yellow King… and so have we.

A Good Day to Rage-Watch

Several months ago I gathered with some friends to watch the Blu Ray release of A Good Day to Die Hard. Although the series has had its ups and down, we were all huge fans, and even though we had all read the bad reviews, we dismissed them. 

“Ha!” we said. “Critics don’t know shit about shit. They especially don’t know shit about action movies.” And with that, and a short prayer at the altar to Bruce Willis set up in the foyer, we poured drinks and started the movie.
Less than 45 minutes later I was the first to tap out. I had given the movie time to develop, but it turns out I had only given it enough rope to hang itself. Even worse, the movie hung itself in 15 minutes tops, I just kept poking its gently swinging corpse looking for signs of life.

Finally I couldn’t take any more and I rage-quit the movie. I didn’t just “not like” the movie, I hated it for desecrating one of the (if not The with a capital T) greatest action franchises of all time. I was like Putin watching Pussy Riot play a gig at a church, and I stormed out wanting to throw everyone into a gulag.
Months passed. My anger never subsided.

HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME? TO US? TO THE WORLD?

Die Hard and Die Hard with a Vengeance are action classics. Die Harder and Live Free or Die Hard are good movies. Not great, but good. But this fifth one is actually so egregiously bad that it makes the first four movies worse by association. Ever since I tasted Die Hard 5, my pallet has been soured on the entire franchise. And that, my friends, is quite the accomplishment.

Last week I attempted to bring some closure to this ugly period in my movie watching life. I decided the only way to move on and put this disgrace behind me was to sit down and finish watching it. Maybe by doing that I could work through my issues.

It had not been the first time I turned off a movie in anger and disgust – but this would be the first time I turned ON a movie in anger and disgust. It was the first time I ever rage-watched something.

And I’ve to tell you, I’m so glad I did! Not because I enjoyed the movie by any means – it’s actually worse than I remembered – but because it was a grand new way to watch a film! 

We’ve all played Mystery Science Theater before. For me, it revolutionized the way I watched movies, and made me seek out bad films to watch, just so I could mock them. But a rage-watch is different – it’s like MST only Mike and the Bots have been replaced by Bill Hicks, Eric Cartman, and Don Logan from Sexy Beast.

Instead of being fueled by humor, the rage-watch is fueled by fury and driven by disdain. There is no need to be clever or make jokes, you just squeeze your arm rest a little too hard, let your eyelid twitch a little bit, and every once in a while stand up and unleash a torrent of shocking and horrifying expletives and epithets at the screen.
It’s the sort of thing home theaters were built for!

About the seventh time alpha-stud John McClain shouts “I’m on vacation!” I was ready to drive to Willis’ house and ask him “Since when did McClain become Dante Hicks from Clerks, whining about ‘I’m not even supposed to be here today.” That not being an option, I simply changed my allegiance and started actively rooting for the Russian mob to kill him… and his whole family, too. There’s a much better vacation, a permanent one!

Every time Willis and his son (a tough guy CIA agent named Jack McClain, played by Jai Courtney trying to rekindle that magic Shia LaBeouf had as Indiana Jones Jr.) have a bitter father-son argument in the middle of a fire fight, I let loose my inner fire and started fantasizing about alternate endings. Perhaps Jack McClain would execute his father and join the Mob? Maybe John McClain from Part One would show up in a flying Deloreon and throw this modern-day imposter into a garbage can filled with started-up chainsaws.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, somehow – like Nature --it found a way. The stupidest thing I’ve seen in any movie since Nuke the Fridge happened, and it sent me into a screaming fit. The good guys and the bad guys are converging on Chernobyl for the final showdown. Pretty radical, right? How can you shoot radiation poisoning? Perhaps I could watch with glee as the McClain family went the way of Spock in Wrath of Kahn (or Kirk in Star Trek Into Darkness, for those of you with a less expansive movie reference database).

The bad guys pull out anti-radiation spray. They spray it around and wa-la! No more radiation.

Seriously.

Somehow they had stolen Adam West’s old Bat-utility belt and found A FUCKING AEROSOL CAN OF ANTI FUCKING RADIATION SPRAY WHICH MAKES TOTAL SENSE BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN FUCKING ELYSIUM. 

Oh wait, it’s not Elysium. It’s Die Hard. 

Just so we’re all clear on the rules: in Die Hard you can use a helicopter as a weapon, you can outrun an explosion, you can shoot a million bullets and never reload. This is fine. But inventing a piece of technology so outlandish it would make the Mission Impossible writing team shake their heads in pity. And that, my friends, is quite the accomplishment.

The only way this movie could have made me any angrier is if Jack McClain was played by Adam Sandler, doing his stupid Waterboy voice the whole time. 

No, wait. That actually would have been an improvement.

When the movie had finished, and I had completed my first rage-watch, my blood pressure was dangerously high. One of my eyeballs had blown out a capillary, and looked all Eye-of-Sauron-ish. My fists had been clenched for so long they refused to unfurl. 

But somehow, through all the madness and misery, I had found a way to laugh again. 

13 Best and Bloodiest Moments from Friday the 13th

Friday the 13^th, it’s like Christmas, only with severed heads instead of jingle bells, and nubile screaming co-eds instead of carolers.

In other words, it’s the most wonderful tiiiiiiiiiiime of the yeeeeeaaaaaar.

The Friday the 13^th movies were never anything less than despised by film critics. They routinely featured piss-poor acting, terrible dialogue, nonexistent plots, a complete lack of character development, and a staunch, some might even say intransigent, policy of making sure their villain remained incomprehensible.

So why are their 12 of them? As the legend Joe Bob Briggs would say, it’s because of the 3 B’s – blood, breasts, and beasts. The “beast” in this case was Jason Voorhees, the poor retarded boy who drowned in Crystal Lake, only to emerge as a deformed mountain man who stalked the woods and slaughtered anyone he possibly could.

Friday the 13^th found a successful formula, and worked it like a boss for 30 years. Not a bad run for something with so little depth.

I poke fun at the Friday movies, but few people have as deep and abiding an affection for them as I do. I must have watched them dozens of times. I’m a bit of a purist – the first four films are the best, then it gets a little iffy before entering blasphemous territory with the last couple. (Seriously, Jason is possessed by a demonic alien body-hopping slug? Jason get infected with nanites and becomes a cyborg? Just get back to killing promiscuous teenagers, please and thank you.)

We all have our favorite moments from the Friday movies. But my list, I’m willing to bet cash money, is better than yours.

(For the sake of clarity, this is NOT a countdown. These are my favorite moments, in no particular order.)

1. Safety in numbers be damned! Jason drops out of a tree in front of some work-retreat paintballers and decapitates three of them with one swing of the machete! What incredible upper body strength you have, Jason! (Part 6)

2. “Give me a milk… chocolate!” Crispin Glover spent a little time in Crystal Lake before going back to the future, and it didn’t end well for him. Not only did he get a corkscrew through the hand and a meat cleaver to the kisser, then he gets nailed to a doorframe. (Part 4)

3.  Freddy vs. Jason was a silly movie. But sitting through that ridiculous story was all worth it when you get to the pay-off. The final throw down between cinema’s two most notorious serial killers was a thing of beauty, an epic concerto of supernatural violence that left me completely satisfied. (Freddy vs. Jason)

4. One of the greatest visuals the series has produced, Jason shows that he is an equal-opportunity butcher when he gives a paraplegic a chop to the face and then rolls him and his wheelchair down some steps that are definitely not approved by the ADA. (Part 2)

5. Have you ever seen what Kevin Bacon looks like with a knife sticking out of his neck? He looks good. But then, he always looks good. (Part 1)

6. Jason has established himself over the years as the innovator of violence (no offense to Tommy Dreamer) and one of his most original ideas was Death by Sleeping Bag. When an unruly teen has the audacity to go to sleep in the woods, Jason zips her up in the bag and smashes it against the tree a bunch of times. (Part 7, then later re-used in Jason X and in the Friday the 13^th remake)

7. Little Corey Feldman was such a cute kid. And he was never cuter then when he planted that machete in the side of Jason’s ugly mug. But what sets the scene off is the Tom Savini effects of Jason sliding down the length of the blade, his deformed face twitching. It’s totally disgusting. Fun fact – some years later Feldman used the same technique to murder Corey Haim. (Part 4)

8. In a post-coital glow, it used to be fairly common for men to walk around on their hands. But that all changed after the scene where Jason bisects a hand-walker from crotch to neck with a downward slice. Jason killed the trend just like he killed this idiot. (Part 3)

9. Head squeezin’ and eyeball-poppin’ IN 3D! Take that James Cameron. (Part 3)

10. First, Jason kills someone with a Winnebago (by smashing her face into the metal wall so hard it leaves a faceprint on the outside). Then he kills someone in the Winnebago. Still not content, Jason KILLS THE WINNEBAGO! The shot of him standing atop the wrecked vehicle is like a caveman standing over a fallen Mastodon. In a series not known for memorable cinematography, that one shot may be the high point of the series. (Part 6)

11. Jason does not approve of pre-marital canoodling, this much is apparent. But never has he made his point so forcefully as when he takes a spear a shish-ke-bobs two lovers engaged in the style of the missionary. The guy never saw it coming, so you could say he got off easy. But then again, guys usually do. Hey-yo! (Part 2)

12. You ever seen someone get their face dipped in liquid nitrogen and frozen solid, and then smashed against a sink? It’s actually pretty cool. It’s like an ice cube filled with brains! (Jason X)

13.  And finally, a moment that always makes me chuckle and I don’t know why. When Alice, sole survivor of Part 1, is making some hot tea she finds the severed head of Pamela Voorhees in her fridge. She doesn’t even have time to freak out before Jason jams an ice pick into her temple. And then, for no reason fathomable based on anything that happens in the entire series, he takes the whistling kettle off the stove. (Part 2)

And there you have it. My 13 favorite Friday the 13^th moments. Which of your favorites did I omit? Speargun to the groin? Toy horn to the eye? Crowbar to the belly through the outhouse wall? I want to hear your opinion.

(This blog had been brought to you by a grant from the American Council on Desensitization)

The Iceman and the Irishman : This Blog Inspired by True Events

Movies are not real life. If they were, then who the hell would go see a movie? Nonetheless, movies are fond of proclaiming that they were “based on a true story” or even more vaguely “inspired by true events.” Which is all well and good, after all it’s the job of advertising to tell you anything that might get you to pay money to go see explosions, zombies, robots, or pirates.

It never fails to make me laugh when people complain about movie not being realistic, or changing the details around. To these people I always like to say “No shit, this must be the first time ever a movie isn’t accurate.”

We expect truth from books, but only entertainment from movies.

The Iceman and Kill the Irishman are both hard-boiled dramas about old-school gangsters who happen to be surprisingly sweet and sensitive with their families. They are both based on the lives of real men. Are they accurate? Probably not, but if I wanted truth I would spend more time at the library than on my browser scrolling through movie titles.

But are they entertaining? That’s the valid question to ask.

The Iceman is a killer for hire living with several textured layers of lies. Bungling any one detail could ruin his life, get him sent to jail, or even whacked. Richard Kuklinksi (Michael Shannon) balances his lies almost as well as he makes people disappear.

One on level he is a devoted husband, a loving father, and a generous friend. Although he seems distracted, and often has to go away for work, he has a perfect family life, and he knows it, and he needs to keep making money to support it. He makes money by killing people for the local crime boss. When said crime boss comes under pressure, he orders Kuklinksi to stop working.

This cuts off his income – which he can’t afford – so he becomes a silent partner to Mr. Freezy, a freelance hitman played with pinache by an unrecognizable Chris Evans. This ice cream-truck driving psycho is about as far from Captain America as you can get, and Evans is terrific. He’s a good match for the quiet, sullen Shannon, who excels, as always, as portraying silent rage and bottled up resentment. He’s one of the top character actors in the world right now, and is always commanding when playing this type of creep.

The Iceman is not a perfect film, skimming over some areas of interest and taking way too long in areas of not-so-interest. But the cast carries the film every step of the way; aside from Shannon and Evans, you’ve got Ray Liotta, James Franco, Robert Davi, and surprisingly strong dramatic work from Wynona Rider and David Schwimmer. Not a type-o.

Kill the Irishman begins softly, following the humblr beginnings of Danny Greene, an Irish American bloke with the body of the brute and the mind of a scholar. Against his better judgment he gets involved with the local union. He only has the best of intentions for getting a fair shake for the dock workers, but you know what they say about good intentions; before you know it you’re making deals with Christopher Walken. And if you’ve ever seen a movie before, you know you should never make a deal with Christopher Walken.

Greene is a charismatic, likeable fellow, and his portrayal by Ray Stevenson is the driving force that makes the movie work. The supporting cast is solid. Linda Cardellini is great in a thankless role, Val Kilmer and Vincent D’Onofrio are good, as you would expect, as is Robert Davi (who now must be cast in all organized crime movies, by order of law). But it’s Stevenson’s movie, and he makes the most of it. He has a rare combination of strength and humor, which is why is usually see him in strongarm roles like in Thor, The Other Guys, Punisher:War Zone, and Book of Eli. This is a rare starring role for Stevenson, and I think he single-handedly makes the movie worth a watch.

Overall, Kill the Irishman is a good movie that falls a little short of being great. The material is good (the real Greene endured so many assassination attempts it boggles the mind) and the cast is solid, but somehow the movie never stops feeling like Scorsese-lite. With a more sure-handed script and director, this could have been an all-time great gangster movie. As it stands, its still a good one.

Now, as to the veracity of these movies, it seems to be in short supply. The real-life Kuklinski bears little resemblance to his movie counterpart. And the closing moments of Kill the Irishman show newsreel footage of the real Danny Greene, and it makes you feel like watching a documentary about the guy. (There isn’t one yet. I checked.)

But if you’re anything like me, you can’t handle the truth. You don’t want to handle the truth. Just give me some good gangster movies, and leave the actual factuals to the trolls on website forums. The Iceman and Kill the Irishman are good movies – they won’t straighten your curlies or anything, but they are well worth a watch.

Fringe and the Art of World Building

A good tv show tells a story. A great tv show builds an entire world, and then tells a story within it. The Wire brought Baltimore to bitter, bleak life. Twin Peaks radiated weirdness and suspense from every tree and owl. OZ made you feel trapped in the prison. The Office made you feel trapped in that awful, awful work environment.

When a show builds a world, it makes the viewers feel like there are other stories at play, other characters we haven’t met yet. It makes everything that happens feel bigger and more expansive, because it has a context that reverberates.

No show has ever done this better than Fringe. They got so good at it, that after a while they built a new world every season.

Fringe – for the poor, pitiful souls that don’t know – follows FBI Agent Olivia Dunham as she works for the secretive Fringe Division, investigating cases involving mad science and the supernatural. She recruits Walter Bishop, a deranged genius fresh out of the asylum, and his son Peter Bishop, a con man who goes by the name of Pacey. Together, they solve bizarre cases and save the world one week at a time.

Sound a little like X-Files? It is. But what starts as a sort of X-Files 2.0 rapidly comes into it’s own, and stands after 100 episodes as one of the best, most perfectly crafted shows ever made.

The cast is outstanding, and the stories are great, but where Fringe was ahead of its time was in world-building. (Spoilers to follow – I’ll do my best, but there is no way to discuss the show without revealing some secrets)

Season One introduces us to a world where fringe science has arrived. And although the public doesn’t know about it, the government does. Fringe Division works in the shadows, in conjunction with Massive Dynamic, a global tech corporation so rich and powerful it just HAS to be sinister. Right?

The first season is filled with hints and suspicions, but the season finale breaks open the world and changes the status quo – Yes, Olivia, there is an alternative universe, filled with a planet of our exact (or almost exact) duplicates. Season Two explores this idea to the fullest, and then raises the stakes for Season Three.

Now here’s where it gets brilliant. It’s also the same moment that loses a lot of people. During the season three finale, Peter Bishop gets thrown into an alternate future where one of the two universes has been destroyed. For a mere hour, the show creates a haunting and imaginative version of the Fringe world, and then goes back to the status quo…

For about thirty seconds. Then with whiplash speed it tosses the status quo into a dumpster and walks away whistling.

Season Four, at its outset, is set in a different version of the Fringe world. There are still two parallel universes, and all the characters we love, but it’s different now. Peter Bishop never existed in this world, and that one small change has radically affected every aspect of the Fringe world we have come to know and love. 

Of course Peter tries to find his way back to the original Fringe-verse, but what he discovers along the way changes everything! Or perhaps it changes nothing. Fringe is way deeper on an existential level than anyone would believe.

But wait, they aren’t done yet! After giving viewers some resolution at the end of Season Four, Season Five jumps ahead into a grim and desperate future. The final 13 episode season has the feel of an epic Fringe movie, with a new world to explore, and higher stakes than ever. The drama is at an all-time fever pitch, and so is the action.

Instead of giving fans of the show what they expect, Fringe goes in a new a dark path, building yet another world in which to tell their stories of love and redemption.

Oh, I didn’t mention Fringe has one of the greatest love stories ever filmed for TV? It does, but don’t let it stop you from watching it.

Most shows are heralded for building a compelling original world. Fringe never was, even when it reinvented itself and rebuilt the wheel time and time again. And what makes this a work of genius, and not just a gimmick, is that every new world ties into the old, and leads into the next. It’s a tight, cohesive, staggeringly well-plotted tale that unfolds across worlds and universes.

The complete series of Fringe, all 5 seasons, is available streaming on Netflix. Watch it. And if you don’t have Netflix, sign up for it just to watch Fringe. It’s that good.

Low Budget Horror Roulette -- Absentia and Don't Go in the Woods

I’m a sucker for low budget horror movies. Everyone has their “thing” right? The movie version of comfort food, the visual version of your favorite album, that thing you can watch constantly and never get tired of. For some folks it’s romantic comedies, or cartoons, or Stallone movies, or Mystery Science Theater. For me, it’s indie horror.

90% of low budget horror is awful. I’m the first to admit it. But the thing is, when I find that good one, it makes watching those 9 terrible ones worth it.

This week I played Streaming Roulette and came up with two notable movies; one notable in the good way, the other in the bad way.

Absentia

In a quiet neighborhood, a dark force lives in an underpass. It’s not a fearsome looking tunnel, just an innocuous, run of the mill walk through. But there is something inside it, something that makes unearthly clicking noises, accompanied by hellish screams.

A few houses down the street, Tricia is under a lot of stress. She is very pregnant, and in the process of having her husband Daniel declared dead in absentia. He has been missing for 7 years, having simply vanished from the face of the earth. And as much stress as she thinks she’s under, her blood pressure would be a lot higher if she could see the ghostly image of her hubby stalking her.

Her sister Callie, a recovering junkie, has come to stay to Tricia to help her out. But she knows something is wrong with the tunnel. As she starts to investigate, the weird occurrences start escalating, and then…

Well, I don’t want to say anything else. This is an indie movie, so it takes its time building tension before any real weirdness jumps off; but the plot turns come unexpectedly, and although the story moves deliberately, there is never a dull moment.

Writer/director Mike Flanagan hits this one out of the park, and he does it the old-school way: very little violence, very few special effects, earning the fear with characterization and atmosphere. Keep your eye on this cat, he’s got the skills to take him to the next level.

The film is well scored, as well. If only those poor folks in the neighborhood could hear the background music, they would KNOW to avoid that damned tunnel.

Speaking of terrifying music…

Don’t Go in the Woods

A group of hipsters take a camping trip deep in the forest, trying to get away from distractions and focus on writing some new songs for the band. With no cell phones, no girlfriends, and no way out, it is the perfect spot to kick out some wimpy jams. And kick they do! Song after song they sing, until they are interrupted by a big group of victims… err… girlfriends, who come to surprise them.

All the while, a masked figure lurks in the shadows, ready to breathe heavily and hack off fake-looking limbs.
OK, so you have all seen a movie like this before. Hell, you might have even seen a movie with this exact title before (Don’t Go in the Woods was one of the greatest Friday the 13th rip-offs of the 80s). What makes Don’t Go in the Woods different is that it’s all about the music, bro.

This isn’t a long movie, less than 90 minutes, and over half the run time is comprised of these hipsters singing and earnestly playing their guitars. And it’s not good. Perhaps in the context of sitting in a coffee house in a black beret, these would be good songs. But in the context of “hey, I want to watch a movie about idiots being chopped into kindling by Paul Bunyan’s insane little cousin” they are damn near insufferable.

And then when you wade through the songs (which feels like an eternity of wading) you are only rewarded with amateurish special effects, Z-grade gore, and off-camera kills. The biggest gross-out moment comes before the opening credits, and remains, sum and total, the best thing the movie has to offer.

The movie was directed by Vincent D’Onofrio, one of my favorite character actors. He’s got this great Christopher Walken/Willem Dafoe quality of being effortlessly creepy, and I love him for it. And so when I say he needs to stay in front of the camera, and never direct anything ever again, I say it out of love.

Love you Vince! But seriously, don’t go streaming Don’t Go in the Woods.