Scary Halloween Movies

In the spirit of Halloween, Saturday night was spent at the home of our friends, Emily and Josh, watching two scary movies.

[REC] (2007)

IMDB synopsis:

"REC" turns on a young TV reporter and her cameraman who cover the night shift at the local fire station. Receiving a call from an old lady trapped in her house, they reach her building to hear horrifying screams -- which begin a long nightmare and a uniquely dramatic TV report.

A Spanish zombie movie! The group generally agreed that the movie was not entirely original as the filming style was reminiscent of Cloverfield.  It’s a short film but starts out slow and lags a bit in the middle, but has an intriguing ending.  For a scary Halloween movie or to round out one’s list of zombie films, I’d certainly recommend it.

I just discovered that there is a sequel – REC 2 – but I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it.  Also, [REC] was remade in the US under the title Quarantine (2008).

I’m not including any images because all the ones I found are pretty disturbing.

They Live (1988)

IMDB synopsis:

A drifter discovers a pair of sunglasses that allow him to wake up to the fact that aliens have taken over the Earth.

This John Carpenter film was an interesting bit of social commentary on consumerism, classism, and corporate culture.  If you go into it expecting camp and bad acting (the protagonist is an ex-wrestler), it’s very watchable.  I had never heard of it but it should be a cult classic.  A Variety review has a good summary:

Conceived on 1950s B-movie sci-fi terms, They Live is a fantastically subversive film, a nifty little confection pitting us vs them, the haves vs the have-nots.

Survival of the Repo Men

Bad movie alert! Two bad movies in a row.

Survival of the Dead (2009)

As I’ve mentioned before, I can’t resist a zombie movie.  So when I heard that George Romero had a new zombie film out in the theaters (this was actually playing at the Mayan for a few weeks), I knew I had to see it. But not in the theater.  Scary movies are too difficult for me in the theater.  George Romero wrote and directed the both the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead and the 1978 Dawn of the Dead movies. These are zombie classics.  They also have a touch of social commentary as well as humor (well, Dawn of the Dead has humor).

This new zombie film was just bad.  Bad acting, bad dialogue, bad zombies.  The plot strangely centered on these two Irish families and their feud.  The zombie situation was sort of a side note.  There were funny bits but that’s not worth sitting through this.

Repo Men (2010)

I have no earthly idea why I put this in the Netflix queue.  It was mostly predictable and gorier than I expected.

Netflix description:

In the world of this sci-fi thriller set in the not-too-distant future, artificial organs are readily available to anybody with a credit card. But what happens if a buyer falls delinquent on his payments? Jude Law stars as an organ repo man who's now fleeing his ex-partner (Forest Whitaker) after failing to keep up the payments on his own recently installed ticker.

Lots of blood letting and fight scenes.  Liev Schreiber has a supporting role as an asshole organ salesman.  Why is he playing so many bad guys these days?  I first saw him in the 2000 Hamlet (with Ethan Hawke) and The Daytrippers, but this role and his recent roles in Salt and X-Men Origins: Wolverine are exposing his bad guy sides.  He does play the bad guy well, I must admit.

Anyway, many of the reviews I’ve read have hit on the point that a movie about repossession of anything in this economic climate is likely to strike a chord – esp. with the backdrop of healthcare debate and reform. Unfortunately this movie doesn’t deliver. I like this quote from Salon.com: It's sad when a bit of grim futuristic silliness like "Repo Men" falls short on all counts, down to the most basic level of entertainment value.

the end of the world is coming...

Actually this isn't another blog post about cute animals, it's about dystopia in the arts.

Today I went to the book signing for Margaret Atwood's new novel - The Year of the Flood, which I highly recommend. But before you read that, you'll have to read Oryx and Crake, which is something of a precursor to The Year of the Flood.

As the book review in the first link indicates, both books are about a possible future in which climate change has had some of the more obvious outcomes (you know, the ones we hear most often - sea levels rising, droughts and desertification, etc.). Also the gaps between the social and economic classes have grown wider. The military has been privatized and permeated everyday life. The media is controlled by this military - but in a subtle way so that not everyone knows. Oh and there are the "secret burger" franchises in the future. These secret burgers are called that because the meat from which they are made is secret (meaning it could be any part of any animal - including human). Interestingly, there was an article in the NY Times today about hamburgers.

Some call this science fiction but Atwood calls it "speculative fiction." If you ask me, some of these things don't sound that out there. Anyway, I'm not doing the book justice because there a lot more themes than I'm recognizing here.

My point of this blog is that I'm fascinated by stories of these possible futures. I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy last year and that really started it. I couldn't put that book down! Well, except for one time when I was so scared I had to put it down for a minute. I won't tell any more about that book.

I've read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books, many of which are "speculative fiction." One of my favorites is Galapagos. In this tale the human race is wiped out by, what else, a disease that makes humans infertile and things are going to poop anyway with, you guessed it, food in short supply and the gap between the rich and the poor growing.

Recently I (finally) read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 - also about a possible future. I have the Ender's Game and a zombie book on my list next. Zombies are not really a possible future (I hope) but I find the various manifestations of zombies in books and movies fascinating. Not sure why...

And one other thing: