New Releases of the Week: Mockingjay, Homesman, What We Do in the Shadows

There is a bit of something for everyone in cinemas this week. Big blockbuster fans have smart and bleak YA adaptation The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, those looking for somehting far more serious but equally interesting should try The Homesman and anyone after silliness in spades should give What We Do in the Shadows a chance.

Vampires, westerns, science fiction and mockumentary all in one week! 

If none of those tickle your fancy, then there is always the James Brown biopic Get On Up.

Here are links to my reviews of this week's releases in cinemas:

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 at Starburst Magazine

The Homesman at Tastic Film which I got to see at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

What We Do in the Shadows 

I'd love to recommend one of the smaller two films here that don't have the marketing budget of  the Hunger Games franchise but if I could only see one of these in the cinema, I'm afraid it would definitely be Mockingjay Part 1. The Homesman is a depressing watch and What We Do in the Shadows is bit hit and miss but all three of these films this week are really worth watching.

You can also catch me talking more about these films on Amazing Radio on Friday afternoon with Dani Charlton soon after midday.

Will you be seeing any of these in the cinema?

What We Do in the Shadows Review

Viago, Deacon, and Vladislav are three vampires living together in a flat share with their 8000 year old housemate Petyr. Attempting to cope with modern life in New Zealand is a bit of a struggle for these out of touch and lost in time bloodsuckers. When a documentary crew decides to take the unenviable task of capturing the vampires’ preparations for the annual undead get together known as The Unholy Masquerade, things start to unravel.

These vampires are hilariously having to deal with the ordinary trials of sharing a flat; paying the rent, doing the bloody dishes and trying to socialise in the local nightclubs. However, they also have to catch their prey, drink their blood and avoid too many run-ins with the gang of werewolves that also roam around their town.

Don’t worry though; even with vampires facing off against werewolves, this is a million miles away from Twilight. When the 8000 year old mute Petyr who lives in the basement turns ordinary 20-something year old guy Nick into a vampire, the more experienced vamps must help Nick to adjust to his new life as an immortal fanged creature of the night. In turn, Nick invites his very much not-dead-mate Stu to hang out with the vampires so that he can help them to learn more about the ways of the modern world.

What We Do in the Shadows is a little hit and miss. The mock-documentary format has been done to death from This is Spinal Tap to The Office but it still manages to throw up plenty of laughs here. The extraordinary elements of the vampires is constantly undercut by their talking to camera and worrying about trivial things. There are plenty of awkward moments as the vampires are revealed to be little more than bickering manchildren, completely trapped in their old ways but always facing a world moving on without them. Though the central trio range from 183 to 862 years old, they are still just silly, selfish and narcissistic little boys.  

When the young Nick and his mate Stu come into their life, it shakes things up, particularly as Nick runs around telling people he is a vampire (attracting the attentions of a vampire hunter) and Stu remains very much undead. That’s it as far as plot goes. What We Do in the Shadows is much more about characters and giving the conventions associated with vampires as much of a ripping as possible. 

These vampires hilariously fight with werewolves, have troubles getting ready for nights out without being able to see their reflections and even fight amongst themselves by turning into bats and batting heads. Their frequent references to vampire films of the past such as The Lost Boys, Blade and Twilight will undoubtedly delight fans of the genre. 

When it’s funny, it is really funny. However, not all the jokes puncture the jugular, meaning What We Do in the Shadows is likely to remain in the shadows and unseen by a wide audience. Still, with this, Only Lovers Left Alive and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night all being released this year, anyone worried that Twilight and Dracula Untold had driven stakes through the heart of decent vampires film should breathe a little sigh of relief.

More from I Love That Film:

What We Do in the Shadows Trailer

More reviews from I Love That Film

The Lost Coast Tapes: Bigfoot Found Footage

My quest to seek out good examples of found footage horror continues with The Lost Coast Tapes. Ahead of Blair Witch director Eduardo Sanchez's return to found footage with Bigfoot movie Exists come this surprisingly good effort to make the Bigfoot myth scary again.

The Lost Coast Tape, like so many other found footage films is short but at over 80 mins, it's longer than most I've seen. What is most important about The Lost Coast Tapes is that, for a change, it does not outstay its welcome. Found footage films can too often become running around shaking a camera in the dark way too early and they quickly descend into virtually incomprehensible repetitive nonsense.

However The Lost Coast Tapes takes a while setting up some amusing characters and an intriguing premise. A disgraced investigative journalist and his team head out to Bigfoot territory to interview a man who claims to have dead body of a Bigfoot in his possession. The cynical team are quite comical, particularly in their amusing banter with the serious stern Drybeck, the man who claims to have evidence of the monster's existence.

The entire cast are excellent in their roles, the camera work is far from the annoying mess of many other found footage films and the script and story maintain interest and suspense for almost the entire running time. It all ends with an added layer of mystery and the potential for an interesting twist but like with so many others of these films, it leaves the audience completely unaware of exactly what happens at the end. It will be unsatisfying to many and fails to match the abrupt, bleak ending of classics such as Blair Witch and Cloverfield.

The Lost Coast Tapes if far from terrible though and much better than the likes of Tape 407, Monster, Atrocious and many others. Its sense of humour is its real strength, making the ride worth taking with the amusing characters. The highlight is the black guy's reaction early on when asked if he wants to come on the trip to the woods to go looking for Bigfoot. It's nice when these kind of films don't take themselves too seriously sometimes. Give it a watch if you like this sort of thing!

Below is the trailer:

The Making of The Blair Witch Project

For my upcoming book on The Blair Witch Project, commissioned for the Auteur Devil's Advocate series on classic horror films, I am currently writing a chapter on the production of the film. It's likely a story you have heard a thousand times before but I've been completely immersing myself in research for the last couple of weeks and finding out more all the time.

The directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick took what they called a 'method directing' approach. The level of improvisation they demanded from their actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams is astounding. The torment, anxiety and discomfort the cast went through while shooting the film is now legendary.

It's got me thinking how many of these Blair Witch imitators these days actually try to achieve a similar effect. Blair Witch was all shot by the stars. I'm sure this is not the case with most other found footage films. I know for a fact films like REC and Cloverfield did not use this technique.

Is this why Blair Witch was so successful? Is the realism created by the production process the reason for its phenomenal success or was it more a case of being the first on the scene to try the found footage thing since Cannibal Holocaust?

I'm reading some fascinating interviews with the stars of Blair Witch in which they go into great detail about what happened on the grueling shoot of the film. To me, it is absolutely fascinating stuff. It's the kind of film I wished I'd made, not just because it made a ton of money but because I love the idea of totally immersing your actors in an experience and making them improvise. The stimulus that the directors provided should have made 'acting' an easier task for the cast. Not having to wait hours for the camera and lighting departments to set up must have been a dream come true for the actors too.

I don't want to reveal all the details of what is in the chapter but suffice to say it's looking like it will be around 5000 words and if you think you know the full story of the making of The Blair Witch Project, then I assure you that it is unlikely you do. I hope you might buy the book when it gets published, hopefully maybe by the end of this year or early 2014!

Evidence of Good Found Footage

It seems I swim through a lot of crap to get to some decent found footage horror these days. Evidence is I'm please to announce pretty damn good low budget horror. It starts off like a hundred others in the genre. Four friends are going for a camping trip and one of them wants to make a documentary. So far so blah blah blah. There's the requisite flash of boobs and a quick lesbian kiss to keep easily amused folk happy and then it starts descending into sub-Blair Witch arguments over why the cameraman is still filming and what are those noises in the night.

Some of the group want to go home, Ryan the budding documentary maker is getting just what he wants; some good footage of his friends freaking out for his documentary. They set up camp, drink, argue, spot a quick glimpse of a strange black creature and hear scary sounds while sitting round the campfire. Then predictably one goes missing. This is the point where so many found footage films fall apart with endless poorly lit scenes where you have little idea of what is going on except that people are running, screaming and scared. Their phones don't work, their RV is vandalised and they are stuck. Then another of their number goes missing and Evidence takes a wonderful turn towards the WTF!?

To say any more would be to spoil it but I actually found the rest of Evidence very enjoyable. The stuff before was ok and not nearly as annoying as other found footage examples. The latter parts still have a lot of running aimlessly and screaming but what it is the remaining characters are running and screaming from and about is brilliant. It's ludicrous of course but so was The Cabin in the Woods and that's vaguely what this reminded me of. It throws everything at the screen and looks pretty great despite the low budget. The characters lose out in all the running and its a shame that the found footage format suffers because so much time is spent not seeing the characters' faces or giving them a chance to breathe.

On the other hand this gets very exciting and kept me guessing what the hell was going on right till the very end. As usual  for found footage it barely fills its 75 minute running time but it is inventive, a little scary and completely bonkers. I recommend seeking out Evidence if you're a fan of this sort of thing. I even hope they make a sequel.

Check out the trailer:

Results for the Best Found Footage Film

A while back I asked you to vote for your favourite found footage movies. You can see the results in full here. There were exactly 80 votes in total so a massive thanks to everybody who voted!  I know it's an unpopular sub-genre but people mostly seem to like a few of these so I gave all voters the chance of picking their top 3.

Diary of the Dead, The Last Broadcast, The Magician and The Last Horror Movie were the big losers racking up an impressive zero votes each. The Last Horror Movie is quite a good little British horror and I suspect not a lot of people have seen it. The Magician is like an Australian version of Man Bites Dog and I imagine this is again little seen. Diary of the Dead is Romero's attempt at found footage and has some interesting moments but overall is nothing compared to his original 'Dead' trilogy. The Last Broadcast is the film that came out the same year as Blair Witch but ultimately got forgotten by history.

Zero Day (one of my favourites), The Last Exorcism, Project X and Grave Encounters all got one vote. I haven't seen Project X and am curious despite the hostility I heard towards it. Grave Encounters went on a little long and lost its way but had some effective scares and has a great set up. Zero Day is excellent but needs to be seen by a wider audience.

Quarantine, the American remake of Rec, just beat Rec 2 and Man Bites Dog by getting 3 votes to their 2 votes each. Paranormal Activity just beat the daddy of found footage Cannibal Holocaust with 5 votes to 4. Rec towered above all of these with 9 votes.

For the most part, it looked like there might be a tie between Chronicle, Cloverfield, Troll Hunter and Blair Witch. Eventually however Troll Hunter failed to compete and fell behind ending up with 11 votes. Blair Witch and Chronicle pulled ahead with 13 votes but Matt Reeves' New York trashing monster managed to pip all the competition by taking home 14 votes and is therefore the overall winner!

So there you have it. Cloverfield is officially the greatest found footage film ever (as voted for by 80 people). Let's hope they get round to making an equally as thrilling sequel or prequel one day without tarnishing the original. Or maybe they should just leave it alone?

Vote for the Best Found Footage Film

As part of my PhD thesis research I'd like to know what are the most popular found footage films to you my lovely readers!  I've put a list of the most commonly known ones here but please feel free to let me know if there are others you prefer!

Please vote for your top 3 and if you fancy leaving a comment on why they are your favourites, I would really appreciate it.  I know most people seem to hate found footage but I bet you've all seen a few of these and I bet you've even quite liked at least a couple of them.

If you hate found footage with a passion, then please feel free to just vote for the three that you least hate.  I'd love to get as many responses as possible to this so please feel free to share with anyone and everyone!  This is the first ever poll at I Love That Film and I hope it won't be the last.

I was tempted to put End of Watch on here but I don't think it really counts as there is so much in it that it is not shot from the camcorders that the characters carry.  Same as REC 3.  I haven't seen Lovely Molly yet so not sure where that sits either.

Personally I love voting at your blogs so I hope you will enjoy contributing to this one.  Here's the poll!  Voting closes on 30th November!  Happy voting!

The Blair Witch Project and Top 10 Found Footage Horror

Day 6 of Filmoria's 10 Days of Halloween saw me getting all emotional about my own personal horror passion.  I'm going to come right out and say it before we go any further.  I kind of love found footage horror movies.  Not all of them but when they get it right, I really do love the techniques, the immediacy and the identification they create.

That's why I chose to write about The Blair Witch Project as another of my Halloween must-see movies.  It's the film that introduced me and many others to the found footage trend and since then I've begun a PhD thesis on found footage horror.  I try to see every example but that is becoming increasingly difficult with the sheer amount that get released every year.  Blame the success of Paranormal Activity for really bringing back the trend recently.

Anyway as much as people hate the found footage fad, I think there are some absolutely fantastic examples which is why over at Filmoria I decided to share my top 10 (plus a few more worth catching).

Back in July I defended found footage from its critics over at Boolean Flix which you can read here.

Yesterday at Filmoria I argued The Blair Witch Project is a must-see Halloween movie.

And is that isn't enough shaky-cam action and you want to find some other examples that you may or may not have heard of, then please check out my top 10 found footage horror movies over at Filmoria.

Poor Heather

In other horror-ific news, I spent the day yesterday at the Lionsgate UK horrorthon in London.  In order to promote the upcoming Silent Hill sequel, they were screening loads of their back catalogue at the Soho Screening Rooms.  I sat and watched four horror films back to back between 10am and 5pm.  Starting with Jeepers Creepers and ending with the pretty bloody awful My Bloody Valentine 3D.  In between I checked out Drag Me to Hell and The Cabin in the Woods (again) and we were treated to some frankly bizarre clips from Silent Hill: Revelation.  Spending a whole day in a darkened theatre watching horror was pretty much a perfect day for me.  The quality of the movies wasn't the best but they were all entertaining enough to stop me falling asleep!  I also got a The Cabin in the Woods keyring and Silent Hill poster so thanks to Lionsgate UK for a fun day!

Forget Christmas, Halloween is definitely this horror fans favourite time of the year!

What do you think of found footage?  I'm always curious to hear people's reactions to the sub-genre so whether you love it or hate it, please check out the articles above and let me know your thoughts!

Finding the Fun in Found Footage

Please go and take a moment to check out my first article for Boolean Flix all about why you shouldn't hate on the found footage fad in modern horror!  Let me know what you think either here or over at Boolean Flix.

Found Footage PhD Update

Been a bit quiet on the blogging front and that's because for the last week I've been working on clarifying what my thesis is actually aiming to do.  It's taken me eight drafts to get this right.  I won't bore you with the details but for anyone who is interested.  This is the nuts and bolts of what I've been researching for the last year and a half and what I will be working on for the next three and half years:

Identification, Self-Consciousness and Proof in the ‘First-Person’ Contemporary Horror Film 

 My investigation will focus on the use of the mock-documentary format in contemporary horror cinema, and more specifically on those films such as The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sanchez, 1999), Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007) and Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008) that create the impression of a character within the film being in control of the camera. It is my aim to analyse the aesthetic, technological and perceptual elements of these films in order to:

 

• Ascertain all the key influences on the body of films studied here as concerns production, reception and aesthetics
• Establish who or what the audience is encouraged to identify with when viewing the films and why this identification occurs
• Establish the aesthetic, technological and psychological means by which the audience is primed for the viewing experience of these films
• Ascertain how the level of self-consciousness (e.g. the characters’ awareness that they are being filmed) impacts on the viewing experience and thought processes of the viewer 
• Determine how video recording technology is used as a method to gain proof and often fails in the task of collecting evidence of the supernatural by the characters in the film 

 So that's it bascially.  That's what I'm spending five years of my life and a shitload of money on.  If anyone does have an interest in seriously academic analysis, I will try and do the occasional update on this but I can completely understand if you think this sounds desperately boring and pretentious.  And if so, my humble apologies!



Meanwhile in completely unrelated news, have you seen the Skyfall teaser?


   

What do you reckon, best Bond ever?  Well until Nolan grabs the reins (fingers crossed)!

Characters With Cameras

      Found footage from dead filmmakers, 'home' movies capturing domestic disturbances, documentary makers way out of their depth, crimes caught on CCTV  and helmet-mounted cameras on cops investigating a zombie outbreak.  

      There is a massive trend in horror to have characters in the films holding or in charge of setting up the cameras.  From Cannibal Holocaust, The Blair Witch Project and Rec's documentary makers to the camcorder captured horrors of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity, horror characters are increasingly the 'makers' of the film the audience sees.

      As part of my PhD, I am exploring this horror trend.  Some people hate these films; their shaky camera, predictable endings, annoying repetition of conventional elements and characters that refuse to stop filming no matter what they are faced with.

      But many others (and just look at the box office figures of some) love these films.  Why?  Well that's what I'm trying to figure out.  

      Is it just the increased realism?  If so why is something 'captured on camera' more real than a traditional film?

      Is it a reflection of modern society and how so much of what we see is mediated by cameras?  

      Is it some kind of cathartic desire to see 'real' footage made by people so stunned by extraordinary events like the so many hours and hours of footage that were uploaded by amateurs after 9/11?  

      Do we identify more with characters if we see the whole film from their point of view?

      Is it more scary to see characters losing control behind the camera than in front of it?

      Is this trend a low-budget reaction to the 'show everything' gore-splashed higher budget trend in horror known as 'torture porn'; e.g. the Saw/Hostel franchises?

      Are audiences more willing to accept amateur camera work due to reality TV, mobile phone footage on the news, YouTube videos etc?

      There are numerous conventional elements to these films; the shaky handheld camera, poor visual/audio quality, the death of the protagonists, setting up the camera on a tripod to capture things that go bump in the night, using night vision or a light on the camera to see in the dark.  Some but not all include these conventions.  The camera is often visible (in mirrors, in the footage of another camera) and discussed by the characters.  They often question why the operator is still filming under the circumstances and so the camera is continually drawn to the viewer's attention.

      Here is a list of films that feature a camera supposedly being operated or that has been set up by a character within the world of the film.  The yellow highlighted films are ones I have yet to find/see and the green ones are sequels, remakes or ones that do not fit quite as easily into this trend of modern horror.

1.       Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980

2.       Man Bites Dog (Belvaux, Bonzel and Poelvoorde, 1992)

3.       The Last Broadcast (Avalos and Weiler, 1998)

4.       The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sanchez, 1999)

5.       August Underground (Vogel, 2001)

6.       My Little Eye (Evans, 2002)

7.       The Last Horror Movie (Richards, 2003)

8.       Zero Day (Coccio, 2003)

9.       Incident at Loch Ness (Penn, UK, 2004)

10.   The Magician (Ryan, 2005)

11.   Snuff Movie (Rose, 2005)

12.   Alone with Her (Nicholas, 2006)

13.   The Zombie Diaries (Bartlett and Gates, 2006)

14.   Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Glosserman, 2006)

15.   S&man (Petty, 2006)

16.   Exhibit A (Dom Rotheroe, 2007)   

17.   Rec (Balaguero and Plaza, 2007)

18.   Diary of the Dead (Romero, 2007)

19.   Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007)

20.   The Poughkeepsie Tapes (Dowdle, 2007)

21.   Welcome to the Jungle (Hensleigh, 2007)

22.   Home Movie (Christopher Denham, 2008)

23.   Quarantine (Dowdle, 2008)

24.   Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008)

25.   Resurrecting the Street Walker (Uyanik, 2009)

26.   Rec 2 (Balaguero and Plaza, 2009)

27.   Paranormal Entity (Van Dyke, 2009)

28.   Atrocious (Fernando Barreda Luna, 2010)

29.   The Last Exorcism (Stamm, 2010)

30.   Paranormal Activity 2 (Williams, 2010)

31.   TrollHunter (Ovredal, 2010)

32.   The Tapes (Lee Alliston, Scott Bates, 2011)

33.   Apollo 18 (Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, 2011)

34.   World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries (Bartlett and Gates, 2011)

35.   The Tunnel (Ledesma, 2011) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1735485/

36.   Hollow (Michael Axelgaard, 2011) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1869470/

37.   Paranormal Activity 3 (Henry Joost, Arial Schulman, 2011)

      If you know of any others please let me know as I am always on the look out for more.  If you have any thoughts about these films, please comment and let me know.  Love them or hate them, they don't seem to be slowing down production of this type of film so tell me why you think they are so popular.  What is it you hate about them?  What is it you love about them?