Biting Without Teeth: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg's Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

The scary thing about sequels is that, no matter the genre, they are all in jeopardy of falling into the same trap. When the first movie is a success, the desire to please is overwhelming, so the writers try to concoct ideas they feel will be even bigger and more bombastic than they were before. It's a hard thing to pull off, since audience members are so eager to be impressed in ways they weren't the first time out. To not deliver what you promise is a good way, in some respects, to discredit the original product. Depending on how bad the sequel is, its predecessor can look like a stroke of luck.

Sure, lots of great movies have worthy and sometimes even better sequels, but for comedy, it seems to be the rarest or rarities. It is the hardest genre to pull off well, after all, due to the fact that trying to determine what will make people laugh is a genuine risk. If it hits, more power to you but if it doesn't, start searching for a new job. Sadly though, the standards for what's funny have sank to an incredible low. Real comedy, based on situations and characters, has been replaced by people smoking weed and performing stupid tricks. I'm not saying I have an issue with this; I'm just saying that it gets old when the characters are the same from one movie to the next. It's the lack of variety that makes these "stoner comedies" feel so desperate to me.

I had a lot of anxiety when I went to see Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. First off, it's a stoner comedy and secondly, it stars two guys who, up until then, had been reduced to cheap sketch roles. Color me amazed that not only were they both very appealing, the movie didn't reduce them to the level of brain dead idiocy. Even more so, they're both quite intelligent and you can tell they think before they speak. In addition to being likable, Harold & Kumar (gasp!) has something to say, and it doesn't shove it down our collective throats. The movie is a very sharp (almost deceptively so) critique on racial hypocrisy; it's the struggles of two guys, one Indian and the other Asian, who are forced to deal with blind ignorance.

The movie was vulgar too, but it knew there was a line. Most of the tasteless stuff was spoken, not seen. Pity that so many filmmakers have forgotten that often, the idea of something is funnier than having it displaying right before your eyes. So, I was thrilled with the movie, bummed out when it tanked, and then thrilled again when home video rescued it and a sequel was announced. Both stars had signed to come back, a positive sign, plus the original writers were also returning, yet another and equally as crucial positive sign. I, for one, could not wait to see what would happen to Harold and Kumar next.

Movie two is called Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, and it picks up right where the first one ended. Harold (John Cho) is the brainiac with a respectable finance job, and Kumar (Kal Penn) is a child prodigy destined for a great medical career. Despite Harold's high aspirations, Kumar would rather smoke dope than go to his med school interviews, which always lands them in a situation they would rather not be in. In other words, their planned trip to Amsterdam gets canceled on the plane thanks to Kumar, and what follows is a series of misadventures similar to the ones experienced in the first movie. Only dirtier.

Those last words are one of the biggest problems with Harold & Kumar 2. Writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (making their directorial debut) have ditched the sly smarts of their first project and replaced it with a lot of visually gross humor, ranging from flying cum to heavily bearded genitals. About ten minutes in, I was stunned and a little sad that the one element the first movie left out was now being embraced as if it had always been there. Aside from that, the reason for the journey this time doesn't have the same ring to it. The last outing was for those tasty little burgers. Picture two is all about impressing a woman. Where's the originality in that?

The movie tries to recapture the main theme again, which is the fact that the average white American is ignorant to anyone who doesn't share their skin color. That would be all well and dandy if the filmmakers actually had something new or funny to say but instead, they beat a dead horse. It's the equivalent of satire trying to bite without teeth, most of the time meaning the attempts at humor are embarrassing. The largest example of this comes in the form of Ron Fox (Rob Corddry), a government agent convinced that Harold and Kumar are terrorists (South Korea and Al Qaeda working together) and won't listen to anyone's reasoning as to why they're not. The character is not funny because he's painfully aggressive, making the execution more offensive than anything else. Examine the scene where he taunts a black Orthodontist to best understand what I mean.

The situations Harold and Kumar stumble into on this journey, which I will not reveal here, lack the bizarre and nightmarish quality they had the first time (Okay, I'll spoil one. Do we really need another scene involving a minority and a KKK rally?). Each disaster is obvious and feels like it could have come from any stoner comedy; I guess I just expect more from a Harold & Kumar movie than say, Half Baked. Their quest for the American Dream has gone from something worth rooting for to a pale imitation of the wackiness found in a Cheech and Chong movie. Not to say there isn't anything to laugh at. Cho and Penn once again have dynamite chemistry, and a handful of their one liners do resonate, but those graces alone can only carry a movie so far in the long run.

Needless to say, it wouldn't be a Harold & Kumar movie without the presence of Neil Patrick Harris, who enters the picture midway and runs away with it for about twenty minutes. He's horny, he's high, and he's hallucinating, which is helpful since he's able to distract from just how wrong most everything else feels. It really was, for me, that painful to watch more often than not. I came out of it hoping that maybe the theatrical success of this chapter will lead to another, because I'd hate to give up completely on two characters as engaging as Harold and Kumar.

Which leads me to how the movie really loses its sharp touch. SPOILER Harold and Kumar accidentally end up in the Texas home of George W. Bush, who has already been spoofed in many a movie. Even though I was disappointed up until then, I had a small glimmer of hope that maybe the filmmakers had found a creative way for our heroes to fuck with the president. Instead, W. smokes weed with them, mispronounces words, and makes a statement about loving your country even if you don't love your government. Wow. Throw that in with a lame romantic subplot for Kumar (complete with his beloved ex about to marry a Republican jerk, although I must confess I smiled at Kumar's dorky poem) and all we're left with is the first hugely anticipated misfire of the year. Better luck next time, boys.


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Putting Hedren Through Hell: Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds

Before her tortured performance in Marnie, former model Tippi Hedren got put through the ringer in a different sort of way in The Birds. This was Alfred Hitchcock's post Psycho project, and while it might seem like a strange choice, there's no question it was an appropriate one. The picture has come under fire quite a bit for its stale lead performances and supposedly cheesy moments, but I think the criticizers are missing the point. As usual, there's something much larger at work here. The result may not be one of Hitch's best movies, and yet that certainly does not keep it from being one of his most fascinating.

If Psycho probed into Hitch's obsession with women as sexual objects and creatures to be feared, The Birds carries this idea forward, minus the focus on voyeurism. Instead, he takes birds, which are relatively harmless to the human eye, and turns them into dangerous predators that attack without reason. It sounds cheesy when you hear it described, and it would be if Hitch's motive for picking birds didn't have something deeper behind it. You see, "birds" was once a term used when referring to women, so should it come as any surprise that their primary target in the picture are the children? This shares with Psycho the theory that mothers are only capable of causing harm to their offspring, whether it be mental or physical (in the case of The Birds, it's both).

It goes without question that a woman is to blame for the the birds' strange behavior. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is the spoiled daughter of a wealthy newspaper tycoon, her name known throughout San Francisco due to how frequently it shows up in the tabloids (she notoriously jumped into a public fountain naked). While ordering some birds at the pet shop, she's played for a fool by Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), an attorney who has seen her in court as a result of some of her public mischief. Pissed off that he got the best of her, Melanie follows Mitch to his weekend getaway in Bodega Bay, and ends up stranded there when the birds begin their reign of terror.

Mitch's family situation is a classic Hitchcockian scenario. He lives with his pre-teen sister (Veronica Cartwright) and mother (a creepy Jessica Tandy), the latter a great reminder of why Norman Bates went insane. Every woman who comes into Mitch's life poses an immediate threat to her; despite the fact he's well into his 30s, his mother will not let him go. Throughout the picture, she's in constant paranoia that he'll abandon her. There's an unsettling scene where she explains to Melanie that she really wants to like her, but is obviously conflicted in doing so because of the anticipation of being replaced. It's enough to make one wonder if, had the The Birds been made first, Mitch could have been Norman Bates and Psycho could have served as an unofficial sequel.

The other major female character in the movie is Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), a former flame of Mitch's who stayed in Bodega Bay just to be close to him. Upon Melanie's arrival, the jealousy is portrayed without subtlety. Annie exists for no other reason than to be an object of ridicule, as most of her scenes consist of her looking enviously at Melanie or longingly at Mitch. SPOILER It turns out she's no match for the birds either; they take her out while she's trying to protect Mitch's sister. Like most women in Hitchcock's pictures, she's ultimately disposable.

All the women are hysterical in The Birds. Melanie is full of outbursts, most of them directed at Mitch, who does nothing more than let her know what an irresponsible child she is. There's an over-the-top scene where a frightened mother freaks out on Melanie, pointing the finger at her in accusation since the birds didn't begin their rampage until she arrived. And then there's the "birds" themselves. Aside from being constant pests, they're voices are not unlike the non-stop screeching heard from the female characters.

Given what Hitch had to work with, I found the bird attacks to be rather terrifying due to their relentlessness. This is best displayed when the kids flee from the schoolhouse, making them accessible victims with no method of self defense. Equally as great is the climax as the birds try to bust into Mitch's house. What makes this sequence stand out is the scene where Melanie follows a noise upstairs, only to find that the birds have found a way in. Once in the room with them (it's a bedroom), she can't get out because every attempt to open the door is foiled by another beak forcing its way onto her body (it's probably the most disturbing rape imagery in a Hitchcock movie). Less memorable is the restaurant attack, thanks to a goofy explosion and a drunk's constant warnings about the birds signaling the end of the world.

Shortcomings aside, The Birds remains as compulsively watchable as anything else Hitch made during his golden years. By this point, his punishment of women was reaching an extreme that made me wonder how many other ways he'd find to do it in future decades. With this in mind, I came to the realization that The Birds is mirrored heavily by William Friedkin's The Exorcist. After making the connection, it's intriguing to speculate on how Hitchcock reacted to it. Was it a picture he could identify with, or was it too gruesome? You could speculate that in the early 1960s, the Master of Suspense was on his way to metamorphosing into a full blown horror director. Sadly, it's a side of his career that never got developed to its fullest potential.


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Was It Worth the Wait?

I watched a fair amount of Bruce Lee movies during my early teenage years, but I consider Jackie Chan to be the reason I began to love martial arts movies. Like so many other Westerners, my introduction to him was Rumble in the Bronx, a movie I immediately became obsessed with and led me to seek out every Jackie Chan title available in the states. The man who ran the store where I bought my videos eventually ran out of Chan movies to recommend and suggested I explore some other fighting styles. He ending up placing Fist of Legend in my hands, thus beginning my fascination with Jet Li.

It was inevitable, I guess, that one day Chan and Li would face off, although I kind of wondered how much fun it would be since they're styles are so different. Chan, who has played it straight on occasion, is known for bringing a hint of physical comedy to his movies while Li is always deathly serious (I can't recall having seen him smile more than a few times). After many years and many rumors, the two masters finally decided to join forces on screen, and just the confirmation of this was enough to stir excitement into my nostalgic eighteen-year-old heart. Despite my anticipation, a hint of disappointment arose when I learned that it was not going to be helmed by a Chinese director.

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying there aren't American directors capable of pulling Chan and Li's first onscreen collaboration off with a bang. My concern comes from their histories in American movies; so far, they've both been mishandled (Li's only noteworthy non-Chinese release is Unleashed, which is British) and their English still is often hard to understand. Instead of bringing in a director known for shooting effective action sequences (I have a hard time believing Ronny Yu and Tsui Hark weren't available), the studio inexplicably hired Rob Minkoff, whose previous efforts include The Haunted Mansion, Stuart Little, and The Lion King. With a resume like that, Minkoff would not be my first choice, mostly because I'd be afraid of the movie being too cartoonish.

If anything was going to save this project, titled The Forbidden Kingdom, from complete disaster, it would be the inclusion of fight choreographer Woo-Ping Yuen. In his hands, at least Chan and Li would be utilized in the right way, particularly when they finally have a go at each other. It seems like the filmmakers were banking on this fight scene alone to sell the movie. Look at the story, the ridiculous CGI, and the bullshit philosophy and it's easy to realize that. While it's true Chan and Li's imports didn't have profound screenplays, at least they were sturdy enough to hang the fight scenes on.

My goal here is not to go too much into the movie itself, because it's just not worth the time. For the first half, at least it looks like Minkoff has a decent hold on the reigns, but after Chan and Li throw down, the whole thing collapses under itself. The movie becomes a truly boring affair, with horrid dialogue, a predictable and lazy Karate Kid plot device, and fight scenes that are shot too close up to care. I was with the movie for a good forty-five minutes, so it was a real shame when it finally became what I'd feared from the beginning.

The burning question is this: if the movie itself fails to live up as a whole, how is the first onscreen fight between Jackie Chan and Jet Li? To my surprise, it was quite wonderful. The stars let their limbs fly almost nonstop for roughly five minutes, causing the joy of seeing these two legends working their magic so blissful it feels like it lasts a welcome eternity. Wisely, Woo-Ping doesn't turn their styles against each other; call it a welcome compromise. The result is the best time I've had at the movies in quite a while - even if it only lasts a few moments.

If anything aside from the fight scene save The Forbidden Kingdom from being completely awful, it's the fact that Chan and Li look like they're having a blast. Chan gets to do a subtle recreation of his old Drunken Master routine, while Li goes against type by actually playing a mischievous character who laughs. Even though I was pleased with this, I was thrilled that they come off as if they enjoy working together, which was certainly a concern I had going in. Would one ego try to push the other one out of the way? Given their natural chemistry, I do hope they decide to make other movies together (especially before Chan, who is 54, decides to retire). Otherwise, Chan will never get his revenge on Li, who tries to humor him about summoning the rain by peeing on his head. Who's the master now?


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Sir Psycho Sexy: Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie

After completing The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock turned his focus on Winston Graham's novel, MARNIE, and it's easy to see why the Master of Suspense was so intrigued by it. The main character is a mentally deranged woman who becomes the center of fascination for a good looking, wealthy control freak. In some regards, it sounded like quintessential Hitchcock before the screenplay was churned out; if anything set it apart from what audiences expected out of him, it was the lack of traditional thriller elements.

Bringing Marnie to the screen turned out to be a huge headache for Hitchcock. The screenplay went through a number of writers, the first of which was Psycho scribe Joseph Stefano. Hitchcock finally turned to playwright Jay Presson Allen, which was interesting considering the reason he kept firing the previous screenwriters. The novel contains an intense rape scene that felt unadaptable, since the concern was that once the male lead was finished, the audience would not like him anymore. This didn't seem to bother Hitch, so every time one of the writers refused to add it to their script, he replaced them. All the early drafts were written by men; it wasn't until he hired Allen, a woman, that he got what he desired.

Hitchcock believed the scene was crucial to the story, and was convinced that the right actor could keep the audience hooked no matter what he did. But casting a leading man was not the difficult part; that hinged on the leading lady. Hitchcock was eager to work with Grace Kelly again and at first, it looked as if she was going to play Marnie. But Kelly backed out at the last minute, a decision that Hitch apparently never got over. Having just worked with her on The Birds, he approached Tippi Hedren and she agreed. Since he had just put her through hell in one movie, why not go ahead and do it again?

I never would have suspected Hitchcock to be the James Bond type, but that's what drew him to Sean Connery. It turned out to be a perfect match. The amount of depth required to play a British spy is fairly limited, so it was to Hitch's credit that he was able to take Connery's suave onscreen appeal and turn it into something humane. The character strikes an odd balance between kindness and creepiness, making it hard for the audience to decide if we should sympathize with Connery or not.

I've often heard that Marnie functions as a companion piece of sorts to The Birds, and while I understand the comparison (mostly in context to what the main character goes through), I see the picture going alongside Vertigo. As we know, Hitchcock obsessed over his leading ladies; how they looked onscreen meant everything. For this reason, Vertigo could be viewed as Hitchcock's ultimate fantasy, since it was about a man more or less sculpting a woman into his ideal vision of what she should be. Like Vertigo, Marnie is a movie about control, specifically a man's control. In both cases, these men are portrayed as sexual predators.

But even if the men in Hitchcock's movies are predatory and domineering, they are still not the bad guys. Any action they have to take is the result of a situation the women have put them into; look at most of Hitch's thrillers and you'll find the root of the trouble leads to a female. Hitchcock always found a way to make it clear that the women are guilty; time after time, the plot involved an innocent "man" wrongly accused. But despite the fact the women created disaster upon disaster in Hitchcock's world, he also continued to show how fascinated the men were by them. I think this was a genuine reflection of Hitchcock's own deep fear and confusion with women. Why else would you spend your whole career making them indescribably nuts?

Marnie is a liar and a thief with a trepidation of men and a closet full of nervous ticks. Early in the movie when she goes to visit her mother (Louise Latham), there's a strong sense that Marnie's issues are family related. Her psychological deficiencies keep her on the move, staying in one place long enough to rob the safe where she's working. Since she skips town after each job, the thought of getting caught never crossed her mind. Enter Mark Rutland (Connery), born into money and running a huge corporation. When Marnie comes to work for him, he's immediately mesmerized by her looks and demeanor. It isn't until he tracks her down after she's emptied the safe that he realizes just how unstable she is.

Marnie becomes somewhat of an experiment for Mark. He is taken aback by her strange behavioral patterns, and seems convinced he might be able to fix them. After assuring her he won't turn her over to the cops, Mark forces Marnie to marry him even though she is terrified of his touch. It's hard to figure out at first if Mark's intentions are thoughtful. This is most evident in the controversial scene on their honeymoon when he (emotionally) rapes her. Every time Mark is forceful with Marnie, we might as well hear Hitchcock's voice coming out of his mouth.

In the novel, Marnie gets caught in a love triangle between two men. In the movie, it's no surprise that one of the men has been replaced by a woman, Mark's sister-in-law, Lil (a lovely Diane Baker). Her jealousy of Marnie is evident from the beginning, and once she finds out Marnie's secrets, tries to play an active part in pushing Mark away from her. To Hitchcock, this could be perceived as a delightful game: one woman is infatuated with the man, who is infatuated with the other woman.

As expected, Marnie is technically wonderful. Hitchcock stages each scene impeccably, so it's no surprise that he was stickler when it came to storyboarding. The standout is the opening, which follows Marnie from behind as she walks down the center of a train station platform. In classic Hitchcock fashion, her hair is the first of three different colors; it goes from black (mysterious) to blond (flirtatious) to brown (inconspicuous). This is the movie's first major echo of Vertigo. Other standouts include Marnie ripping off Mark's company safe and a horseback riding accident.

Marnie is wholly unpleasant and retching, but also endlessly absorbing and frightening. It represents Hitchcock at his best (and most naked), once again driving out of his lead actress a performance of raw intensity. Aside from Vertigo, I can't remember another picture where the Master bared his soul this openly. SPOILER ALERT This is most evident during the picture's conclusion, when we finally learn the reason for all of Marnie's mental trauma. As a child, her mother was a prostitute who would wake Marnie up in the middle of the night so she and her client could use the bed. One night, a visiting sailor innocently tries to comfort Marnie from a thunderstorm and her mother automatically takes it as a sexual advance. A scuffle ensues, ending with Marnie killing the sailor. The bottom line is that the off balance daughter is a direct product of her off balance mother.

You have to see Marnie to believe it, and even then, you still might not. When it was released, the feedback was less then encouraging, but over forty years later, it remains one of Hitchcock's most under appreciated movies. Even though it doesn't play like his most popular thrillers, it still manages to be chilling for all the right reasons. Film critic Walter Chaw said he didn't understand Hitchcock until he saw Marnie. After revisiting it for the first time in about seventeen years, I understand exactly what he means. With Marnie, Hitchcock proves that he was more than just the Master of Suspense; he also had quite a grasp on human despair.


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Bordering on Boredom: Zev Berman's Borderland

Despite the claim that it's "based on true events," Zev Berman's Borderland plays like a low rent cross between Hostel and Wolf Creek, the difference being it lacks the former's outrageous gore and the latter's attention to character. This is not to say the movie isn't gory, but considering it wants the audience to take it seriously, the kill scenes feel borderline campy. I'm frankly surprised Borderland earned so much enthusiasm when it premiered in last year's After Dark Horrorfest. If this is what passes for a compelling story then the future of horror movies is bleaker than I thought.

The picture is set in a small Mexican town where, in the late 1980s, a local cult kidnapped and killed their countrymen as sacrifices to their god. The DVD has an interview with a Texas sheriff who investigated the disappearance of an American citizen who was one of the cult's victims, and his stories are both chilling and fascinating. However, instead of focusing on the issues pressed against a cop working outside of his jurisdiction, which could have been interesting, Berman takes the easy way out by setting his sights on three American college kids who cross the border looking for a good time and end up finding themselves in over their heads.

I guess the filmmakers felt like they had to cover familiar territory in order to attract a larger audience. Why else would they ditch a reasonably compelling piece of recent Mexican history for standard horror fare? The horrifying aspects of the murders should be what the movie is about, but instead they feel more like a backdrop for a lame revenge thriller. Borderland opens with two cops uncovering a house filled with weird ritual props, only to be taken hostage. One of them is tortured and killed and the other (Damian Alcazar) is let go so he can tell the police who mutilated his partner. Cut forward a year and the disgruntled cop is still seeking vengeance on the wackos but naturally, no one will take him seriously.

A stroke of good luck appears once three recent high school graduates hit town. Of course, before going to Mexico, there's the obligatory scene where they get drunk on the beach and talk about their futures, which is always a clear indication that they're not going to have one. Once across the border, they hit up the strip clubs and whore houses trying to get the virginal preacher's son (Rider Strong) laid. But he has morals, another reason he won't live, and sure enough, he's kidnapped by the cult and taken away to be cut up on the altar. The rest of the movie consists of his friends trying to find him, leading to several ridiculous altercations (translation: trash talking) between one of the cocky young Americans and the kidnappers. Not the best idea.

Like clockwork, the cop shows up to help them get their friend back, even though he's had a year to take the cult down himself. The fact he's failed to take action is no surprise, as nothing in Borderland makes any logical sense. The movie's biggest puzzle involves Valeria (the gorgeous Martha Higareda), a bartender who takes a liking to one of the boys. You'd think that after she sees what kind of trouble he and his friends are wrapped up in, she'd hot tail it away from them. Since the movie needs a pretty face around, she stays, even after her best friend is murdered by the cult (!). If that's not dedication, especially to someone she has barely known a day, than I don't know what is.

The bizarre casting award goes to Sean Astin, who inexplicably pops up to guard the cult's American prisoner. Why they chose this redneck outsider is beyond me, unless it was for his outspoken bloodlust (Astin talks in detail about his love for killin'!). If all the movie's dialogue is predictable and stupid, Astin's takes the cake, since he is given the sarcastic one liners. Aside from trying to be funny, the only other reason the character exists is to have another enemy to take down during the Climactic Showdown. This is the section of the movie where the heroes, who are held up in a house, must fend off their attackers from all directions.

It may be hard to fathom that the greatest offense committed by Borderland isn't that it's boring or by the numbers (I can't recall a single surprising moment). Nope, what truly sets this one below other bad movies in the genre is the idea that we're supposed to take it seriously. Even though this was the case, I kept trying to convince myself otherwise, particularly during the movie's hilarious key sacrifice scene, which tries to milk sympathy and terror out of showing both the victim and the slayer pray to their respective gods.

Aside from the occasional unintentional laughs, I couldn't find a single redeemable quality about Borderland. The movie's visual style is bland, as is its score, as are its performances. And the gore, which should be the highlight of a movie like this (especially if everything else sucks), is handled in a sorely unimaginative fashion. Given the acts themselves are pretty unnerving, the pure spectacle alone should be shocking but instead, it's a notch above, say, a community theater production. I wonder how the residents of Mexico feel about their country's participation in this picture, considering the viewpoint seems to be that Mexicans kill because they're all religious nutcases (and all the women are hookers or sluts, mostly when it comes to pleasing American men). That theory alone is no question the scariest element Borderland has to offer.


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The Shaky Transition from Page to Screen: Carter Smith's The Ruins

Adapting a horror novel to the screen is a task of great difficulty; if you don't believe me, just look at most of the movie versions of Stephen King's works. Horror novels benefit from having an astronomical amount of space to build suspense and develop character, both of which are generally lost when translated into screenplay form. There's not enough time to give the best elements of the book their due, so what you're usually left with is a lot of horrifying sights and little else. More often than not, the movies suffer most when they're taken from page to screen by the original author, since they can't fairly decide what should stay and what should go.

It's fitting that Stephen King went apeshit over Scott Smith's sophomore novel, THE RUINS, for like a lot of King's undertakings, it contains a supernatural element terrorizing a small group of desperate people. Given the premise, it's a surprisingly intense and rewarding read, even if it does require a good bit of patience. You could almost say Smith builds anticipation too slowly, but when it finally reveals the main attraction, it was worth the wait. The greatest fear I had for the movie version, aside from the fact it involves vacationing teenagers, is that the book's primary threat could easily come off as cheesy and downright laughable.

Smith is responsible for the screenplay for The Ruins, and while I could label it with having the Stephen King Syndrome, I'm not entirely sure that was the case. Hollywood studios think they know what will sell, so there's a distinct possibility Smith handed in a juicy draft of the script and they tossed it because it didn't focus enough on "the scary parts." I'd be curious to hear how he feels about the finished product; there's a good deal of his original source still intact, but the spectacular mounting dread that was present before has been thrown out and replaced by a need to deliver spectacle and nothing else.

It was a bit disconcerting, since the movie could have feasibly stretched its first half out to make room for the characters' steady decline from hopeful to helpless. They were not heavily developed in the novel, but Smith outlined their personalities enough so we could understand and identify with each person's moments of despair. True, the novel was gruesome, but it was also pretty thick with psychological breakdowns. I sometimes had to wonder if exhaustion and fear weren't responsible for a great deal of the events the movie makes literal.

The movie touches on many of the elements mentioned above, although they become afterthoughts more or less right after they're introduced. The pacing by director Carter Smith (no relation to Scott) is so swift I almost didn't notice the lack of character development until it was over. In a way, the movie's greatest weakness also turns out to be its greatest strength, meaning that if you're going to skimp out on giving us a reason to give a crap about the people in peril, be sure to throw them into it right away.

For the uninformed, the story revolves around two couples who go on a vacation to Mexico shortly before graduating from college. They accept an offer to seek out some Mayan ruins that aren't in any of the tour guides, only to discover upon their arrival that the frightened locals won't allow them to leave. If that wasn't enough, there's something strange going on with the plant life. The scenario of being restrained by others is terrifying enough, and the movie gets some tense mileage out of it. The kids quickly start to brainstorm ways to free themselves of the situation, with results that are less than helpful.

Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) tries to deem himself the leader of the group, hastily offering survival tips that will keep them alive until (hopefully) they are rescued. As things get worse, so do his decisions, since something inhabiting the ruins has powers beyond his control. Sadly, the hazards aside from the worst one are all but forgotten. It's abundantly clear that The Ruins champions piling its crisis situations on top of each other instead of allowing things to unravel slowly. This doesn't turn out to be a completely bad move, due to the fact that each catastrophe is handled in a brutally efficient and often skin crawling manner.

The gore effects on display here are some of the more impressive I have seen in quite some time. I was leery whether or not some of the book's nastier set pieces would make it to the screen, and yet there they are, in glorious detail. If the director Smith excels here, he also does a splendid job establishing an atmosphere of inescapable danger, not just on the ruins but also inside a mine shaft. Before seeing the movie, I was concerned that the CGI used to create the ruins' killer would be too fake to take at face value. Aside from a single moment, I found the visuals to be pretty seamless and undeniably eerie.

At barely ninety minutes, The Ruins hardly feels like it was on for an hour. I'll be curious to see if a Director's Cut surfaces later, as there's a part of me that presumes the writer Smith crafted a screenplay that focused just as much on the inner demons as it did on the outer. That would be quite a movie. Even though I was hoping Smith would be able to bring his novel to the screen with a little more authenticity (even some of its best gross out moments are nowhere to be found and a new ending is a letdown), it's damn near impossible for me to deny the picture's visceral impact. If it's a well oiled machine you're seeking, then you could do a whole lot worse than The Ruins.


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Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008

"They're Rat People...Fuckin' Rat People!": Jim Mickle's Mulberry Street

If the market is overcrowded with horror movies, there's no doubt most of them contain zombies. What is it that fascinates current filmmakers so much when it comes to zombies? Could be the fact they're pretty easy movies to make, since all you really need are a bunch of extras covered in make up, walking around and moaning until they stumble upon someone who doesn't look like them. It's a safe assumption that nine out of ten zombie movies made in a given year are god awful, mainly because they don't bring anything new to the table. There are only so many ways a zombie can attack, and there's only so much social commentary to be explored.

Every once in a while, however, there's a filmmaker who actually puts some thought into it and is able to find a way to thrill us with their movie by putting focus on something other than the zombies. Case and point is Jim Mickle's Mulberry Street, a movie I might have hesitated to watch due to its inclusion in the 2007 After Dark Horrorfest. Before getting picked up, it received some positive feedback on the festival circuit and eventually caught the attention of Lionsgate Films, who felt it would be a good addition to their lineup. Even if their marketing is less than savvy, it's not a bad way for a $60,000 movie to get some exposure.

There have been a number of thoroughly entertaining movies that were made for no money; the key is to know how to effectively spend your dollars, but even more than that, it's crucial to have a good screenplay. The writing is the first element that stood out to me in Mulberry Street. I was keeping track, and was amazed to discover the big outbreak didn't occur until around the forty minute mark. In most horror pictures, the majority of us would be colossally bored by then, but this movie isn't just wasting time. Mickle and his co-writer, (and co-star) Nick Damici actually use the first half to (gasp!) introduce and develop their characters.

I was stunned. I began to scan my memory and had difficulty remembering when I had last seen a horror movie that wanted me to get to know the characters (Wolf Creek maybe). Horror movies these days do just enough to set the inhabitants up for the slaughter, or they try to make them so unlikable that we can't wait to see them die. In Mulberry Street, I was surprised to find myself interested in each person introduced, so much so that when the shit hit the fan, I was concerned. Part of the appeal might have been the welcome fact that there's only one teenager in the movie; most everyone else is at the middle or near the end of their lives.

A majority of the movie's events take place in a nasty, crumbling New York apartment building. It is quickly established that many of the residents have been there a majority of their lives, and as the movie opens, we learn they are on the verge of being evicted to make way for new and improved housing. While this is normally a tired set up, the movie does not use it as a gimmick. In fact, all we ever see of the evil developer is his picture on a poster. Instead, the threat of these people losing their homes is interwoven with the bigger threat of a strange infection that begins to take over their neighborhood.

In a recent interview with Mickle and Damici, they described Mulberry Street as a "neighborhood" movie (most of the characters are based on people the filmmakers have lived around). Their ultimate goal with the setting and the characters was to install a sense of community, showing that these people have known each other for years and because of that, they can depend on each other. Mickle acquaints us with this idea not through dialogue, but by showing us around the apartments. There are subtle clues everywhere that provide a perception of how long the residents have been there, and in certain cases, the history they have with one another.

Mickle and cinematographer Ryan Samul shoot the apartment building as a claustrophobic's worst nightmare. The hallways, staircases, and the units themselves are bland, dark, and uncomfortably small, maybe not unlike being stuck inside a rat hole. Despite the lack of light in the place, we can constantly tell what is happening. Even so, Mickle's main method for creating suspense isn't by showing us the creatures and the damage they do; it's through the noises coming from right outside the door and inside the walls. Just because the door's locked doesn't mean the flesh hungry predators won't find a way to get inside.

The city streets turn out to be equally as menacing as the building, which is shown largely when key character Clutch's (Damici) daughter, Casey (Kim Blair), returns from Iraq and notices that the safe place she hoped to re-adapt to is just as bad if not worse than where she was. Since the subway has been shutdown due to the outbreak, she's forced to make the journey home on foot. Mickle excels at giving tranquil settings, such as a playground, an ominous and unsettling aura. It would have been easy to show the streets full of panic but instead, Casey finds them deceptively deserted.

I have grown weary of the whole government-experiment-gone-wrong approach to zombie movies, and while Mulberry Street's infection through rat bite idea may not seem much better, it works wonders since Mickle never has to waste time giving long, drawn out explanations. The opportunity is there to showcase fancy make up effects of people turning into overgrown rats, but it's not pondered on. The glimpses are quick, creating a greater level of fear since we have to try to grasp what we think we saw through the peephole.

If I have any real complaint with Mulberry Street, it's that the movie is too short. It runs eighty-four minutes, a standard running time for a horror movie, and this is one of the rare cases where it does not feel like enough. I wanted to spend more time with these characters, to see more interaction between them. After getting comfortable with who they are, the picture wrings us dry and then lands at a very abrupt conclusion. I was so invested in everything and everyone that I didn't want it to end, especially not without the smallest amount of anticipation. Surely the filmmakers could have found a way to close the movie with a bang instead of just a loud whimper. Even with this minor letdown, Mulberry Street is a wondrous achievement, a picture that understands that even horror movies are about more than just violence and gore. In this day and age, it's a diamond in the rough.


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Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008