Found Footage Horror - Addendum

By some freak coincidence, not one week after I wrote about found footage films, the Guardian Guide opens with a similar denouement.

Yeah, that's right. I read the Guardian. Can you tell? You can, can't you? I'm going to stop soon, though. Two reasons. First of all, if you read it online (which often I do), then the temptation to scroll below the line is far, far too great. And you really do get the worst people in the world down there. Scroll below the line on the Daily Mail's website and the worst you can get is that people will agree with the article. But below the line on the Guardian's site you get people vehemently taking issue with such stories and comment pieces that should be sparking rage and uprising in an upwards direction: “People are starving to death in Britain!!!”/”Oh Boo-fucking-hoo, I see they can afford their Sky subscriptions”, that sort of thing. And when they can't find anything to attack in the substance of the article they'll attack the writer. When they've no material for an ad-hoc attack, they'll go for the “typical champagne-socialist hyperbole” line. They're the worst people in the world and they prove that the country and, quite certainly humanity itself, is doomed. Because when we're presented with the sort of material that should make us question our government's motives, we instead choose to attack the writer's grammar. If it's unhealthy to lose faith in humanity, then reading the Guardian is very bad for your health.

The second reason why soon I intend to stop reading the Guardian (let's say, after Christmas) is because they appear to have declared war on rock music. I've no idea why they've done it, but they have. Every time they write a feature on a new or existing guitar band (which they seem to do every single week), they always seem to kick-off their piece with a caveat concerning how remarkable it is that a guitar band even exists in this day and age, when rock music is dead. Their review of the Leeds Festival openly stated how strange it was that guitar bands could still fill lineups. With shocking lack of self-awareness they described it as being like an alternative universe – as if they haven't yet grasped that there's a whole world out there.

Actually, the Leeds Festival review (which might even have been a Reading Festival review) was particularly irritating in that it described Graham Coxon as being “now officially better than Blur”. Officially? I must have missed that press release.

Then there's the flip-side. Every time they cover electronic music (coverage which has more than a whiff of “right-on” Nozin' Aroun' about it), their copy will, without fail, contain an approving reference to how guitar music's been abandoned in favour of this glorious new noise. Simon Reynolds (tedium itself) had a big piece about the rise of EDM in America. Rather than scoffing that America's just “discovered” music that's existed for two decades (and removed every trace of a black face in the process – USA! USA!), sanctimonious Simon instead lamented the continued existence of “irrelevant” rock bands.

Simon, Simon, Simon! Something that means so much to so many millions of people all over the world can't be “irrelevant”. It just can't! It just can't.

I realise that I referenced a lot of articles there without linking to a single one of them. You have to understand that, in this case, sourcing a link would create the temptation to tread through that sludge again. Why would I do that to myself?

Yes, so through sucking all the joy from that which means so much to me; and through making me feel ashamed to be part of this species – I suppose the Guardian's very bad for my health. I might give it up in the New Year.

But I read it the other day, and it opened with quite a fascinating look at found footage films.

It reminded me of that thing I wrote last week! And it made me realise a few things that, previously, I'd overlooked:

1. The genre wasn't invented by The Blair Witch Project. That honour belongs to 1980's Cannibal Holocaust.

2. The genre gave us 1994's Man Bites Dog – one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen that also manages, somehow, to provide a few laughs. So there's that.

3. (REC) also uses this device, and (REC) is bloody horrible in the best way possible! So there's that, too.

4. Paranormal Activity is a thing and is something of a phenomenon in the horror genre. I've not seen it myself, so I can't comment much. But it takes the defining trope from this sub-sub genre (the “found footage” part of it) and tweaks it a little to make it interesting once more. The camera's static, for a start. That must count for something. Whether it can count for something in three sequels and counting is another matter.

5. Some films that aren't horror films are using the same device. Based on watching the trailer alone, I had no desire at all to see End of Watch. Now that I know that we're supposed to accept that the whole thing was captured on film by a bystander determined to show “how this thing went down”, well. I think I'll just pretend the film doesn't exist. Just like I do with The Human Centipede. What Human Centipede?

That's all.

The Masque of the Red Death

A Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe adaptation starring the great Vincent Price and the lovely Hazel Court with unforgettably technicolour cinematography by Nicholas Roeg!

This one's ideally suited for a tired late-night viewing with the sound turned so low that it's mistaken for a lurid dream. It was also perfect, though, for a rainy bank holiday weekend afternoon.

Vincent Price – with his voice like cake so rich you know it's killing you – plays the Satanic prince Prospero. He hosts a series of debauched balls in his opulent castle whilst, outside, peasant and uninvited nobility alike are decimated by a deadly plague – The Red Death.

Because the source material stretches to little more than five pages in most books, this one actually incorporates elements from two Poe stories. Interwoven with The Masque of the Red Death is the ever-satisfying story of Hop Frog; which, of course, climaxes with the decadent nobility dressed as a gorilla, immolated whilst suspended from a chandelier.

Here, though, Hop Frog is for some reason called Hop Toad. His beloved Tripetena is replaced by the creepy, creepy Esmerelda. Evidently they thought the sight of a female dwarf might upset the audience. Therefore, Esmerelda's played by a child with a dubbed adult voice – easily the most disturbingly uncanny element of the whole film.

I've always been drawn to the Hop Frog story. This might be because it inspired the song which sparked what I know will be a lifelong obsession with the music of Lou Reed:


Price's Prospero is brilliant. He's a complete and utter amoral bastard, but he speaks so passionately and eloquently about his Satanic faith that you can tell that he genuinely believes himself to be doing the right thing. All of his decisions are made based upon a dark and twisted belief system – an unholy code – which makes his performance a lot more cutting and believable than the glut of tedious self-righteous serial killers currently plaguing horror.

Also, he occasionally has moments of weakness. For example, upon slaughtering the last surviving victims of the Red Death, he insists that a child be spared. Despite his guard's protests, he doesn't give a reason – he just insists that she be spared in increasingly strained tones.

Powerful moments like this – where humanity appears to be struggling against staunch Satanic doctrine – ensure that the film and performance alike transcends any possible accusations of campiness.

2012 Film Challenge #53 - Ghost Ship

I think I should stop watching all horror films made after a yet-to-be-determined arbitrary cut-off year.

Modern horror just seems to make me angry.

A lot of the films I watch and review (if you can call what I do here “reviewing”) are probably “bad films” by a lot of people's standards.

Yet despite the wobbly sets, the inchoate plots, the hammy acting and the feeble dialogue, these films have something which I find to be unfortunately lacking in the vast majority of modern horror.

Call it charm. Call it atmosphere. Call it The X-Factor, if you really want to.

But no matter what you call it, my point is that these days, something's missing. Something's wrong.

Ironically, I'm quite certain that this missing something can be blamed on a general air of maximalism. If you swathe too much paint onto a canvas, eventually you'll get a thick brown sludge which will peel slowly and die.

Those who make horror these days seem to have forgotten that the dampest corners of the collective subconscious of any audience paints a much scarier picture than even the most generous of SFX budgets.

Take Ghost Ship, for instance. It desperately wants to be “The Shining at Sea”, but it ends up being a quite literally watered-down Event Horizon clone.

At one point a character wanders through a deserted ballroom. Right before his eyes, by process of very expensive CGI, time reverses itself as the ballroom is gradually returned to its former glory.

This character, we're led to believe, is under some kind of evil bewitchment. But it's hard to relate to his possessed mind when all we're presented with is smokes and mirrors.

It would have been much more disturbing – both for him and for us – had the apparent transition to the past occurred in the blink of an eye. But no. Ghost Ship would much rather dazzle you with fancy computerised fireworks than attempt to tap into that part of your brain which has given the horror genre such an enduring appeal.

That scene, I feel, sums up the film in one.

Or perhaps does the utterly implausible and farcical opening scene, in which an entire dancefloor is bisected by a tautened wire placed exactly where it wouldn't be on a real ship. This massacre demands that you suspend all disbelief immediately. Unfortunately, all that we're subsequently presented with only serves to bore and irritate.

They had limitless potential with the abandoned cruise ship setting (complete with blood-soaked faded 60s glamour motif!) but they ruin any chances they might ever have had of achieving something memorable by adding layer upon layer of tired and lazy tropes.

A little girl wanders the corridors, all evil grins and sinister leers. Even for the 3% of the target audience who somehow haven't yet seen The Shining, any disquiet she might ever have instilled instantly vanishes the second she's revealed to be an ally.

So the real monsters must be really scary, right? I mean, if the creepy little girl's on our side, imagine what horrors lay in store for us once the more malicious spirits show themselves?

No. They just look like everyone else. Sigh. Regular people who get a little bit older! Is that scary? Maybe. I mean, you've not seen The Shining, remember?

Beyond that, you have shadowy corridors which lead to further shadowy corridors – all of which are lit by roving torch lights and little else.

Perhaps directors still think that such darkness will be scary because to explore such an environment in the flesh really would freak most people out.

Onscreen, though, it's different. Because we've followed countless heroines through countless shadowy corridors, it's almost as though we're viewing them in stark daylight. We're led by the hand at all times. We're not quite warned in advance, and yet still we know as to exactly when something's going to jump out and make a loud noise.

Loud noises are scary. Will this do?

No, it won't.

And then there's the music. If nothing else, Ghost Ship acts as a time capsule to such unfortunate early 21st century ideas as “metal is terrifying!”

And yes, it can be. Nu Metal, though, was the worst music ever. It's ridiculous. Its prominence in Ghost Ship, then, makes Ghost Ship ridiculous by association alone.

And then later there's an extended flashback of an atrocity exhibition. We see wave after wave of people murdered in increasingly sadistic ways.

Testament, once again, to the lack of imagination (and abundance of arrogance and pretension) that went into making Ghost Ship is the choice of music and presentation for this scene.

Trip-hop. Slow motion.

It looks like a perfume advert.

Ghost Ship was completely joyless from start to finish.

And yet, this disasterpiece of fathomless mediocrity doesn't even represent the pits of modern horror.

How utterly depressing.