Another Stab at the Genre-within-the-genre

SCREAM 2 (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(Originally reviewed in 1997)

"Horror movie sequels suck," says a film student at one point. "The entire horror genre was destroyed by sequels." I couldn't agree more considering the junk that preceded the original "Scream" such as "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" or the slew of other horror sequels. I approached "Scream 2" with the same kind of dread: why make a sequel to a self-referential movie that didn't exactly ask for a follow-up? Surprisingly, "Scream 2" is that rare sequel that is far superior to the original in every aspect - it is wittier, funnier, bloodier and, double surprise, more cunning and clever. It's also a more effective commentary on teens and twenty-somethings who get wrapped up in the mundane slasher/horror films of yesteryear.

"Scream 2" brings back Sidney (Neve Campbell), the strong screaming heroine from the original Scream, who now has a new boyfriend (Jerry O'Connell), and is attending a midwestern school called Windsor College. This time, she has caller-ID and can tell when someone is playing a prank on her. Jamie Kennedy is also back as the geeky survivor from the original who is now a geeky film student at the same college. All is well until someone dressed in the Edvard Munch-like mask and black cape begins to stalk the streets again. The killer is now hacking off girls at the college's sorority, a group whom Sidney wisely decided not to join (Shades of "Black Christmas"). The corpses begin to pile up forcing tabloid reporter/superstar Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) to unwisely report on the murderous news, once again. These incidents also bring the former police officer Dewey (David Arquette), another survivor from the original, back to visit his old friends and to rekindle his romance with the unwilling Gale. And we also see Liev Schreiber (he had a brief cameo in "Scream") as the wrongly convicted Cotton who's looking for a little pay back.

"Scream 2" might seem like just another slasher picture with better actors, but it is more than that - it manages to be a sequel-within-a-sequel film that keeps referring back to itself in clever, original ways. For example, we see that Gale's book on the events in the first film had been made into a feature film called "Stab." We see clips from the film starring Heather Graham ("Boogie Nights") in the Drew Barrymore role, and Tori Spelling as Sidney, an actress whom the real Sidney had scoffed at in the first film. And then we have the coup de resistance: the opening sequence set in a movie theatre showing the film "Stab" where most of the audience is in costume waving fake knives. However, the real killer may be somewhere in the theatre.

And there are the requisite in-jokes and little asides. My favorite is when Gale refers to her nude Website as her head on "Jennifer Aniston's body." I also liked the scene where the geeky film student is talking to the killer on a cell phone: "My favorite scary movie is 'Showgirls'. Very frightening." And the aforementioned sequel discussion in film class is a classic.

"Scream 2" is very effective in establishing its characters including Sidney, the 90's horror version of Jamie Lee Curtis impressively played by Neve Campbell, who still harbors certain doubts about the people in her life, such as her boyfriend who may or may not be the killer. Campbell has several good scenes, and she, once again, makes Sidney a sympathetic, heroic character. She has a very moving scene where she is performing the part of Cassandra on stage stalked by actors in demon outfits. One of them turns out to be the killer wearing the mask, or was it just a hallucination? Courteney Cox is more animated and hilarious, this time, as the media-obsessed Gale who has a fixation on the killer and can't wait to see when he'll strike next. She has a hysterically funny scene where she hires a new cameraman who's hesitant to work for her because he might get killed like the last one. "He wasn't gutted. I made that up. His throat was slashed," admits Gale. The cameraman's response: "Gutted, slashed - the guy is not in the union anymore. Besides, brothers don't last long in situations like this." Isn't that the truth?

"Scream 2" is strictly by-the-numbers in terms of plot structure and story, but it also tends to be unpredictable. There are the usual scares but some of them are unexpected. Basically, it's a sequel about a sequel being made as we are watching it - you can almost feel the giddiness in Gale's character as she becomes aware that the events happening around her is good material for her next book that will eventually be made into a movie sequel to "Stab." Get it? "Scream 2" is part of the 90's postmodern movement where we are consistently reminded we're watching a movie about a movie-within-a-movie.

Director Wes Craven still knows how to build suspense and thrills better than any other horror director: the opening pre-credit sequence with Jada Pinkett as a moviegoer at the "Stab" screening is one of the most frightening and compelling scenes I've ever seen, certainly topping the Barrymore opening from the original. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who also helmed the original, has crafted a smarter, more character-oriented script with sharper dialogue and a keener eye for detail. "Scream 2" also succeeds in pinpointing the problem of teenagers and twenty-somethings obsessed with violence in American movies today, especially horror movies, and how many of them will blame the entertainment industry for their own blood lust.

"Scream 2" was easily one of the most entertaining movies of 1997, and it is Wes Craven's best work since the original "Nightmare on Elm Street." Neve Campbell and the whole cast bring a sense of humanity and pathos that definitely makes this a cut above the rest. As a character rightly suggests at the end of the film: "It's going to be one hell of a movie."

The Doom Generation

SCREAM (1996)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1996)

Wes Craven's career as a director is starting to get more interesting - he seems to be finally exploring the mysteries of horror as he did in the classic 1984 film "A Nightmare On Elm Street." His subsequent films didn't match that one's genuine power or mystery as witnessed by the horribly misguided "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" or the jarring horror-comedy "Vampire in Brooklyn." "Scream" is a visually impressive movie and it attempts to revise and transcend the typical slasher flick with mixed results. At the very least, it tries.

"Scream" is set in a typical L.A. suburb where the local high school teenagers worship the torpid slasher flicks of the 80's, including the Jamie Lee Curtis screaming roles from "Halloween" to "Prom Night." They know all the formulas and cliches by heart, and they worship them with unmitigated glee. Neve Campbell, from TV's "Party of Five," stars as Sidney, a virginal teenager who is receiving strange calls from a stalker; he keeps quizzing her on slasher movies. Sidney's mother was killed by a stalker, and she is torn (pardon the pun) by how he mentions intimate details of her. Enter Sidney's pals, which include her anxious boyfriend, Billy (Skeet Ulrich), and her best friend (Rose McGowan from "The Doom Generation"). I will omit the other cast members for now because part of the fun of this thriller is that we don't know who the killer is, it could be any of Sidney's clique of friends.

Strange murders start occurring at the high school and Billy is a prime suspect. Feeling that her life is in danger, Sidney attends an all-night slasher video party with her pals. Although not as naive as her friends, Sidney should know better than to go to her friend's house (after all, she watches those dumb movies, too). No medals for anyone who guesses that the killer may be there. And if these teenagers are so clever, why do they make the same mistakes as the cartoonish teens in those movies?

"Scream" is a smart, very entertaining satiric thriller in the first three-quarters. It is only until the last quarter that the movie opts to be as bloodily nauseating and predictably stupid as any of the slasher flicks it pretends to mock. Instead of throwing us surprising thrills and chills, it goes for nonstop gore and an avalanche of stabbings and pointless cruelty - blood filling up the screen is not scary. Craven takes the easy route rather than enthralling us in our seats with unimaginable horror as he does in roughly the first hour and ten minutes.

The pleasures in "Scream," though, are many. The electrifyingly intense and scary opening sequence with Drew Barrymore is one of the most thrilling sequences in any thriller I've ever seen. Another plus is the killer who wears a black cape, and a mask that resembles Edvard Munch's painting, The Scream, thus making the killer a monstrous figure of pain. The performances by the actors set the right tone for this material. Neve Campbell makes Sidney into an effective heroine; a girl tortured by the painful memory of her mother's death, and with the sad notion that her boyfriend could be the killer. Rose McGowan is beguiling to watch with her huge eyes and Betty Boop lips as Sidney's no-nonsense pal, and there's the brooding Skeet Ulrich who resembles Johnny Depp from the original Elm Street. There's also a pointed jab at the media with a "To Die For" news reporter (Courteney Cox) who wants to find this stalker by any means necessary. There are also numerous in-jokes and cameos including Wes Craven himself as a janitor named Fred and, if you're quick, Linda Blair as a reporter.

"Scream" is scary, effective and sometimes haunting and balances elements of comedy, horror and satire with ease. But when the typical stalker-in-the-house routine ending comes in making Sidney less stronger than she was previously, it's all blood and guts with no imagination or real sense of terror. Craven's idea was to make a film that would transcend all the cliches of the slasher film genre, invent some new ones, and bring a creepy sense of menace to the proceedings. By the end, it's Craven wallowing in the bloody thrills rather than poking fun at them, and reinventing them.

Life is short, ha-ha

CURSE OF CHUCKY (2013)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

With the exception of the bizarrely funny and wickedly dumb "Bride of Chucky," the "Child's Play" series has been a disaster. None have matched the unique blend of horror and pathos that the original 1988 shocker maintained. "Child's Play 2 and 3" have been nearly unwatchable and "Seed of Chucky," just sadly numbing and boring. Don Mancini, the creator of the Chucky franchise and director of "Seed," has directed this new one, "Curse of Chucky," and it is an adequate, semi-strong sequel that removes the comedic elements that destroyed this series but it is hardly anything that will set the world on fire.

Chucky (voiced by the incomparable Brad Dourif) arrives in a package at a Gothic manor that looks like it was spit out of Tim Burton's mind. Nica (Fiona Dourif, Brad's real-life daughter) is wheelchair-bound from an accident that I will not disclose. She lives with her nearly suicidal mother (Chantal Quesnelle), a painter. Their house has an elevator that can take Nica to her bedroom! In one shot, for lack of continuity, Nica answers her bedroom door standing up yet she is paralyzed from the waist down. Enough about continuity issues. Mom dies from a fall that might not have been suicidal (remember Chucky is nearby). Nica's sister, Barb (Danielle Bisutti), her husband (Brennan Elliott), their child (who loves Good Guy dolls) and their au pair (!) arrive at the house to take care of Nica and the will with regards to ownership of the house. Of course, the devious Barb has plans to sell the house since it would help provide for her family (her "loser" husband works at Starbucks since "print media is dead").  The fantastic A Martinez, by the way, shows up playing a sympathetic priest who is not too sure about Nica's cooking skills.

"Curse of Chucky" has a deliberately slow pace at the beginning and for roughly 40 minutes, the movie is spooky and one almost imagines the Chucky doll to be truly frightening all over again (who knew). But once the blood-splattered murders begin (including an electrocution by way of a laptop and a water pail), interest begins to slightly wane. When it is made clear why Chucky is at this residence, it is fifty shades of ridiculousness and a little heavy-handed (the flashback footage of Brad Dourif as Charles Lee Ray is rather murky and disconnected from the rest of the film). We also get a lesbian makeout session (straight people in this movie never seem have to sex, and Nica's attraction to men is given short-shrift. This is hardly a complaint but it is interesting that in the entire series, wood puppets and lesbians are the only ones having sex); Chucky's mercifully few and rather tiresome one-liners; an elongated ending that goes past the credits and includes two characters from previous films who abruptly make an appearance; the administering of rat poison; the horrific aftermath of a car crash; homages to previous films and much more.

Don Mancini does an admirable job of developing menace and terror in dark surroundings and, to be fair, most of the tension is kept free from the restraints of post-modernist winking that afflicted previous Chucky entries. Some scenes are startling and scary, especially Chucky who often be found in different areas of the house sitting and smiling. When the little girl mentions how Chucky told her that life sucks and God doesn't exist, it is scarier hearing her say it than watching Chucky say it. In fact, it might have been best to keep restraints on Chucky's obscenity-fueled rants overall, which dominate the last third of the film.

"Curse of Chucky" is a well-acted, modestly entertaining and astoundingly well-made sequel. It is eons better than most Chucky sequels and Chucky, at least earlier on, is a doll that keeps the fright factor on high alert. Mancini can't resist on swinging for an over-the-top, cartoonish mentality after a while - it is hardly a Grand Guignol climax and it could have been given the setting. That is a shame but it is not a washout. "Curse" is the closest that a Chucky sequel gets to being on equal ground with the original. A mixed blessing, I suppose.

Break it down for me

UNBREAKABLE (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Original review from 2000 screening

M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable" is an ambitious effort - to deconstruct the myth that people may have special superhuman powers - but it fails to rise beyond that very notion. And yet, as evidenced by Shaymalan's previous effort, "The Sixth Sense," he has an uncanny ability to draw the audience in with precious directorial tools - atmosphere and subtle, introspective performances.

Bruce Willis, who also starred in "Sixth Sense," is a security guard named David Dunn who has just survived a catastrophic train crash. It is so catastrophic that everyone on board the train dies except for David. He does not have a single wound! How can this be? His wife (Robin Wright-Penn) does not recall a single day in their 12-year marriage where he ever got sick, much less suffered an injury. His idolizing son (Spencer Treat Clark) is worried about his father, arguing that he may have special powers to the point where he wants to show off his father's athletic ability to other kids. I mean, who on earth could survive such a train crash with nary a scratch?

Enter the cryptic Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a comic-book gallery owner who has a medical condition where the bones in his body are practically brittle - he was born with broken arms and legs and walks around with a purple cape and a glass cane! He looks like a comic book action hero! Price is interested in David's case, and assumes that David must have superhuman powers. After all, David is able to...oh, I would not dream of revealing much more than that.

"Unbreakable" is the psychological version of "X-Men," a supposedly analytical study of one man's amazing ability to survive tragic accidents that should otherwise leave him for dead. The problem is that Willis hardly engages us. He seems to walk around as if in a trance, virtually catatonic to the point of being a zombie. Wouldn't Willis's character, David, at least wonder why he survived the crash? And why his life seems indifferent considering there is the potential of a divorce from his wife? How about the scene where his son threatens to kill him with a gun? Wouldn't David feel any emotion about his curious condition and how it may be affecting others? The problem is that his wife seems to be in a bit of a daze herself over their marriage.

The nature of David's condition brings up all kinds of philosophical questions. I thought writer-director Shyamalan might invite us to ponder the answers but he refuses to. Once David discovers his gifts and abilities, the film shifts into a thriller-of-sorts where the madness of the world and its inhabitants shakes, rattles and rolls David. Unlike the underrated 1993 film "Fearless" that dealt with how one comes to grip with surviving a tragedy, "Unbreakable" merely turns into a cartoonish version of itself, expunging all drama and tension for the sake of some minor thrills. The surprise ending is not so much a surprise as it is a hindrance, and we are thus left with more questions than answers. That is not necessarily a hindrance in itself (I do love unsolved puzzles) but here it is the result of an underwritten screenplay.

I will say that M. Night Shyamalan has a gift of his own - he knows how to appropriate the right kind of atmosphere and mood. There are superbly visceral moments of fear and dread, such as the scene where David walks among the families of the dead passengers who are perplexed at his survival, the train station scenes where David observes every person walking near him, and a precious moment between David and his son where words are silently exchanged.

There is a lot to admire in the choice of actors. Leaving out Willis's zombiefied state, I loved the electric presence of Samuel L. Jackson - a truly unbreakable actor who is irresistible to watch. Robin Wright-Penn does not have much to do in a relatively thankless role but there is some compassion and humanity in her character. Spencer Treat Clark is no Haley Joel Osment but he does have some affecting scenes of his own.

"Unbreakable" is often fascinating and haunting but its central lead character walks through the film in such a daze that you wish someone would break him.

Ghosts in Philadelphia

THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally written in 1999)

Good horror stories are a dime a dozen mainly because writers and directors have lost the imagination to tell them - gore and dismemberment have stood in the way of cohesive storytelling elements. "The Blair Witch Project" is a great horror film whereas "The Sixth Sense" is merely a good one - a sensitively written, well-directed story of a journey into the world of ghosts. This film along with Bruce Joel Rubin's "Ghost" play with the idea that ghosts inhabit the earth for a reason - to complete some unfinished business.

"The Sixth Sense" begins with Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a psychologist who at the start of the film is shot in his home by a deeply disturbed patient of his. A year later, the seemingly recouped Malcolm finds a morose, quiet boy named Cole (Haley Joel Osment) suffering from similar problems as Malcolm's former patient - Cole becomes Crowe's latest study. It turns out that Cole can see ghosts in his own home, though nobody else can. One is a nervous, evidently abused woman in a pink robe, the other is a girl who brings Cole some mysterious box, and so on. Crowe is mystified and intrigued by Cole's visions yet he does have problems of his own. Crowe's forlorn wife, Anna (Olivia Williams), suffers from depression and is ostensibly having an affair, which angers him enough to throw rocks through storefront windows. They seem unable to communicate, and she leaves hastily when he is late for a dinner date. He is consumed by work, she is consumed by sadness.

"The Sixth Sense" is mostly told through the point-of-view of Cole - we see these visions through his eyes. No adult can see them, but the good doctor begins to believe him. The best scenes are when Cole is scared and tense about some of the ghosts intruding in his home, or when he senses something unspeakable in a dungeon-like room at a friend's house. There is also a scene where Cole sees a car accident victim while trying to convince his mother (Toni Collete) that he "sees dead people."

There are some effective scenes of controlled tension and without the minimalist strength of Willis's performance or Osment's whispered innocence, "The Sixth Sense" might have fallen apart from lesser hands. It is only when dealing with Cole's and Crowe's inner lives that writer-director N. Night Shyamalan ("Wide Awake") fails to lend much weight. Olivia Williams, the incandescent co-star of "Rushmore," is given little to do and her role lacks development or impact. Somehow, we know she does not listen or communicate with Crowe, but we learn little about her and her feelings. There is also scant development regarding Osment's mother - we get mostly reaction shots and a big emotional scene but little in the way of knowing how she relates to her tense son. She almost seems to avoid him, or not pay much mind when she finds the kitchen's drawers and doors open a second after leaving them intact while her son is eating breakfast.

"The Sixth Sense" has a haunting sense of menace through its controlled level of mood and pace (the city of Philadelphia never looked so daunting and overcast), but it is off-kilter in its emotional context. Its surprise ending pays off nicely, but there is none of the unifying breadth or tension of the similar, dream-like "Jacob's Ladder." Still, Willis and Osment keep you involved and guessing as to what will happen next.

Massacre Laid me Down to Sleep

THE RETURN OF THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A week ago, I watched the engrossing documentary "The American Nightmare," a compelling study of how society and world events can sometimes shape a horror film's scare factor. It was fascinating and introspective, particularly director Tobe Hooper's comments on what made the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" possible (a description about lack of gas in one scene mirrored the country's own lack of a precious commodity). Watching "The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (also known as "The Next Generation"), I can safely say that nothing in this film was influenced by anything except greed.

Well, there is one other factor. The film posits the theory that Kennedy was not killed by the goverment but by crazy backwoods people! That is certainly a new theory, unworthy of much speculation. And who would have thought that Leatherface would listen to his intended victim by sitting down at the dinner table and keeping his mouth shut! And how does a prom queen, who is visibly impaled on a meat hook, able to drag herself out of the dreaded cannibals' house with no visible blood spillage? And how about Matthew McConaughey as the most over-the-top ex-CIA agent-cum-cannibal in history whose right leg runs on batteries and keeps a slew of remote controls in his pockets! And if nothing is as deadly awful as that, how about Renee Zellweger as the mousy virgin who at one points makes a declaration that even Marilyn Chambers in the original wouldn't have thought of: "I am leaving right now!" Well, she almost makes it. Interestingly, I might have overstated one fact: this new family doesn't seem to be interested in cannibalism. They just want to scare the living daylights out of their victims.

The original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a nightmarish masterpiece of unblinking, unrelieving terror that still gives me goosebumps. I would have preferred revisiting it than watching yet another poorly conceived and downright unwatchable sequel. Another cartoonish sequel like this and Leatherface will have his own Saturday morning cartoon.

An extended Twilight Zone episode

STIR OF ECHOES (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Kevin Bacon is another one of our most unsung actors in the movies whose talent is often unspoken of. This man has appeared in "J.F.K," "Sleepers," "A Few Good Men," and "Apollo 13." He has also had his footing in the sci-fi/horror genre in films like the original "Friday the 13th," "Flatliners" and "Tremors." It is nice to see him back in this genre with the fitfully exciting and alternately disturbing "Stir of Echoes."

Bacon plays Tom Witzky, a telephone service repairman with a faithful, pregnant wife (Kathryn Erbe) and a cute son (Zachary David Cope), who talks to himself in his bedroom and in the bathtub. But who is he talking to? Some unseen force or spirit, or is it the kids' imagination? Of course, a creepiness sets in when we see that he is talking to us, and we are the spirits.

One night, Tom goes to a neighborhood keg party and is hypnotized by his sister-in-law (the quixotically alive Illeana Douglas). Afterwards, he begins to get headaches, drinks orange juice by the gallon, and feels the need to dig in his backyard searching for something. Tom also sees visions of the ghost of a missing girl in the neighborhood, and every time he gets close to her, he feels cold and sees frost in the air (shades of "The Sixth Sense"). Everyone thinks he is going crazy except for his son who tells him not to be afraid.

"Stir of Echoes" is great, intriguing entertainment for the first hour. Tom's visions begin to get more bizarre and violent, and he also foresees the future. We also see how this affects his wife, their sex life, and his son who seems to embody other spirits (he is possessed briefly at one point). Unfortunately, as written by Richard Matheson (based on his 1958 novel) and David Koepp, the movie gradually stirs itself into a narrow corner. Too many plot threads are left hanging and we are left with a movie about the spectre of a dead girl who affects an entire neighborhood. Once the film examines the mystery of this girl, "Stir of Echoes" never truly builds on the psychological layers of Tom's character to see how this might affect him. There is nothing here to suggest the implicit ironies of "The Sixth Sense" or Roman Polanski's masterpiece, "The Tenant." And the anticlimactic, mediocre ending lends little in the film's favor.

There is still a lot to savor in "Stir of Echoes." Kevin Bacon projects anxiety and fear in a nicely balanced performance - his cocky, tense behavior is well-modulated but he could have done so much more with an in-depth script. Illeana Douglas is a sprightly wonder and brings the film alive with her charisma. A real shame that she is so underused considering she unleashes the can of visions to Tom in the first place. I also enjoyed Kevin Dunn's brief role as Tom's sexually lustful friend.

There are some surprises but not enough to overcome the fact that "Stir of Echoes" is nothing more than an extended "Twilight Zone" episode. It had more potential than that, if only writers Matheson and director David Koepp stirred all the elements to come up with a fruitier mix.