The Long Good Friday: Underseen Early 2000s Indie Horror

by Tom Nix

In semi-continuation of our first Out of Obscurity column, this week’s Long Good Friday features a trio of recent independent horror films that simply didn’t get an audience. These flicks deserve more eyes.

May // 2002 // dir. Lucky McKee

May is a socially inept, shy, kind of off girl. Growing up with a mentally and verbally abusive mother who wouldn’t even let her take her doll out of its glass casing to play with, May has always been a little awkward.  She has a lazy eye, and her doctor suggests she wear an eyepatch to correct her vision. Needless to say, this doesn’t get her any friends either.

Some one once told her that if you don’t have any friends, make a new one. And that’s what May does. She meets a whole group of new people, and even starts to fall in love. But her oddness prevails. These people eventually turn their backs on her in her 20’s just as they did when she was small.

May decides then and there that none of these people were perfect for her. Only parts of them were perfect. So, naturally, she starts killing them and cutting them up to make a life size doll out of their perfect parts.

May is a genuinely disturbing movie, with an incredible anchoring performance by Angela Bettis. The movie, shot for $500,000 by a first time director, is comfortable with blasting through barriers that would normally be considered taboo, even now. In addition to some shockingly effective gore (this movie looks like it cost 8 times the actual budget), this movie features lesbian trysts, self-mutilation, and irreversible damage to blind children. It also features what is probably still the creepiest and unexpected ending in a horror flick in a good while. May is the real deal.

Love Object // 2003 // dir. Robert Parigi

Certainly the most deserving of the “indie” tag of this week’s title, Love Object is an eerily effective no-budget flick about the dangers of falling in love with a sex doll. Yeah, that’s right. Long before Ryan Gosling took the love of a rubbery broad to pseudo mainstream audiences with Lars and the Real Girl, Robert Parigi was examining the psychology (emphasis on the psycho) of a relationship in which only one of the participants has a heartbeat.

The movie tracks Kenneth, an awkward technical writer at a firm that specializes in electronics manuals. He is eventually assigned to a big project with the attractive new temp, Lisa. Unsure of how to approach and entice her, Kenneth instead orders a sex doll that is tailored to look exactly like Lisa and begins living out what he imagines is their real life relationship.

With his new found confidence from his new “girl,” Kenneth eventually starts to win over Lisa in real life. And the more time he spends with her, the less time he spends with his doll. And that’s when things get really weird. Sure, the doll begins to get jealous and starts to torment Kenneth’s love life. But the real greatness of the film is how rapidly it pushes past the idea of a homicidal fucktoy and into the true nature of obsession, delusion, and insanity.

I could never call Love Object a great film, but for a movie that is refreshingly DIY, it shows a ton of originality and a fearlessness unmatched by a lot of first time directors. It shies away from the really gory stuff almost out of necessity of conserving the funds for the shoot, but still has the ability to shock with how far it is willing to push the situation developed in this completely psychopathic love triangle. I hope someone gives Mr. Parigi a real budget one day, because the man could be dangerous. I mean hell, he managed to snag both Udo Kier AND Rip Torn for a movie about a man and his silicone sperm depository. Give the man some respect!

Below // 2002 // dir. David Twohy
Written by Darren Aronofsky. Directed by David Twohy of Pitch Black fame. Ignored by everybody.

Below is a taut, suspense driven haunted submarine movie set in World War II. The USS Tiger Shark is an American submarine sent out on a mission to destroy German warships. After a successful attack, the captain of the boat is killed on deck, allegedly by falling overboard attempting to collect a souvenir from the destroyed ship.

The new captain, Lt. Commander Brice (the always reliably great Bruce Greenwood), rescues three people – a British nurse, and two sailors – from the wreckage. They are from a British hospital ship taken out several days earlier.

Shortly after these people are taken aboard, however, strange things start to happen. The crew starts seeing things. The sub starts experiencing unexplained mechanical failures and inconsistencies. Stories are being told that maybe old Captain Winters isn’t quite dead. The sub is constantly trying to steer itself back to the place where the German ship was destroyed.

Below may not actually be as independent as the rest here. It features a full submarine set, lots of explosions, a huge cast, and some crazy CG effects. What it does share with the rest is that it is a genuinely unsettling flick. The tight, cramped, uncomfortable spaces of a WWII submarine are even smaller and more terrifying when the unexplained is happening all around. The movie makes very little use of blood and gore, and instead opts to use these cramped quarters as well as just the appropriate amount of atmosphere to give the viewer the creeps.

Very few things are what they seem in the world of Below. It even features a very restrained and complete performance by Zach Galifianakis as the boat’s resident “mystic.” Below was notoriously included in the Dimension Films Fall Dump of 2002 with a little flick called Equilibrium. They both were treated to about 50 screens for two weeks.

But unlike that other film, Below is actually worth watching.

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by Tom Nix

The Thing is, on the surface, about a team of scientists and engineers studying the climate in Antarctica. They come across a thousand-year-old spaceship in the ice, and unwittingly let loose a shape shifting alien who slowly begins picking them off. Sure, that plot doesn’t sound so revolutionary from the two sentence description. And that is okay, because it’s not about the plot, it’s about what the plot tells us about humanity.

This tight knit group of men is torn apart (figuratively and literally) by this creature. It’s entire modus operandi is to murder and mimic any living organism perfectly. It integrates into any society and destroys it from the inside.

It’s a miracle that the Thing landed in Antarctica. If it had landed in any populated area, the human race would be all but annihilated within a year. That is how unstoppable this thing is. It spreads as fast as the Rage virus (28 Days Later), but has zero side effects (well, except instant death) visible to the naked eye. Imagine how hard it would be to kill a loved one if they turned into a zombie. Then imagine how much harder it would be if the looked and acted exactly the same as they did when they were still themselves. There’s no way to tell the thing from the real thing until its too late.

And that’s a truly terrifying premise. But enough about the surface chatter. Let’s get down to why this film works. One reason is Kurt Russell. His MacReady is a rough and tumble man who is, for all intents and purposes, humanity’s last hope. If the Thing escapes, it dooms us all. John Carpenter uses this idea more than he falls back in the scares and shocks. But even when those come, they don’t disappoint.

The film contains one of the single best jump scares of all time. Telling here would be unfair. If you’ve seen it, you know. If you haven’t, be prepared. Who would have thought that the best scare in the film would involve petrie dishes? Also an important part of this film is Rob Bottin, the man (in his early twenties!) who designed all of the effects for the film. From the shunting pile of snow dogs to the most memorable operating table scene ever committed to film, his work on this film outshines everything else he’s worked on.

But what really drives this movie out of the park is the characters interactions with each other. The trust, and lack of it, is palpable. These are men that are locked in a life or death battle with themselves. How many films about an alien invasion barely focus on the alien? The film’s power comes from its actors fearlessness and its director’s brutal honesty.

That honesty is no more evident than in the films ending. It’s one of the darkest and hopeless in the director’s career. It’s a sheer surface level camaraderie in the face of total devastation. It’s the notion that there is no way for it to end any other way than badly. It’s just the scale of the badness that’s up for debate.

And that’s the best kind of movie. One that rattles you to your core from evocative storytelling, but still allows you the privilege to draw your own conclusions and write the story that moves you most.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is not only the best remake ever attempted. It is what every horror film should aspire to be. It’s the pinnacle of a genre. A cold, dark, bleak, terrifying masterwork. There will never be another just like it. And humanity is better off because of it… for now.

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By Tom Nix

I’m not one to believe in an Omen / Exorcist debate. Both films can be enjoyed on their own merits, and they approach a similar subject from totally differing points of view. Demonic kids have been a staple in cinema for a while, but the thing that William Friedkin accomplished in this film that sets it apart is that there is a genuine concern for the girl being possessed.

And in this way, it is less a film about the Devil as it is about a family falling apart from uncontrollable circumstances. It’s about the sacrifices a mother will got through for her daughter. It’s about the difficulty of having faith in the face of a demon. Across the board, the film is flawless. The performances by Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair are career defining and the priests played by Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller have become part of pop culture.

Not to say that the whole film hasn’t. The head spin and the pea soup have been used and abused since their introduction here. It’s a film of unequaled power and influence. The film’s scares are undoubtedly visceral. There is not a lot of suggestion in the execution of The Exorcist. All of the worst parts of the film are there right on the screen. We get to see the most blasphemous use of a crucifix in bloody detail. We get to see a spinal tap in uncomfortable closeups. We get to see all of the pus and blood oozing out of a nine year old girl’s body. The brilliance is that none of this feels exploitative. It’s all part of servicing the story and scaring the hell out of every audience that sits before it.

And what a story. From a family drama, to a detective story, to a crisis of faith, to a balls to the wall horror flick all in two hours. One of the most impressive parts of the film is its ability to tell that incredibly dense story through its characters. There is almost zero exposition in the film, and all of the plot points and events unfold as naturally as possible. Combine that with the subliminal image embedded editing, and career best work from William Friedkin,* and The Exorcist is a film that never loses impact, no matter how many times you’ve seen it, and no many how many years have passed.

*I am convinced that his lack of success in later years is due to increased human rights. During the making of The Exorcist, he slapped a man to tears, pulled a gun on another, and nearly broke his lead actresses back.

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By Tom Nix

George Romero was already adept at making societal commentary through the eyes of the undead in 1977 when Dawn of the Dead was released. The original (and, really, it can pretty much lay claim to that term across all the levels) Night of the Living Dead took a sharp left turn at the end to use the zombie apocalypse as metaphor for racism. While there were a couple other insights placed throughout that film, they all had a narrow focus.

Dawn, by making the primary setting a shopping mall, takes a very broad look at entire culture. Although, to be fair, in the 70’s it was more of a subculture. Malls didn’t captivate the huge percent of the population that they did in the late 80’s and 90’s and still do now. While the film isn’t really that frightening – the zombies are little more than people painted grey – it sets up two very specific things. One is the extreme brutality on display. Tom Savini does some his best work on this picture, allowing guts to be pulled from bellies and the scalps of zombies to get ripped off. The other is an actual sense of what the end of the world would be like.

Here are four people trapped in a mall, with all the luxuries that would provide. Some of them are lifelong friends. Others are in relationships. These are people that enjoy being with each other. This all ends quickly. Having for fortify the acreage of a supermall combined with the prospect that virtually everyone you know is dead or undead makes for a pretty drowsy cocktail. Hope has been vanquished. There is just survival.

The movie clocks in at almost 140 minutes in length, all of them necessary. This is not a world of fun zombie killing and mall sex. This is a world of staring the enemy in the face every day and sweating just to see the next. The film features so many classic and copied scenes that first time viewers may be a little confused as to the reputation this film has built up. I can assure you, it has earned it.

Seldom does a movie splice biker/zombie deathmatches with long stretches of despair. Seldom, because few filmmakers would ever conceive of mixing these two horror staples. Seldom, because there are no other filmmakers like George A. Romero. Especially during this exact time during the 20th century when he took all of a humanity through a journey that told them there is no more room in hell.

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By Tom Nix // 10.07.09

There are a LOT of Halloween movies. Hell, there’s a whole franchise that bears the holiday’s name. Lots of movies are made that use the night of October 31st as a backdrop to all kinds of supernatural slaughter and maniacal mayhem – witches, werewolves, zombies, vampires, and all sorts of other ghouls are allowed to walk along the living to case a whole bunch of damage to those that still have a heartbeat. But, with all of the history and traditions of all Hallow’s Eve, very, very few of those movies are made that take the time to incorporate WHY these things happen only on that specific day. TRICK ‘R TREAT is one of the best Halloween movies ever made simply because it is thoroughly and totally ABOUT Halloween. Yes, there are psycho killers. Yes, there are ghouls, and beasts, and poisoned candy bars. But all of these things are told from the perspective of the holiday itself. Despite some of the films shortcomings, it makes for a unique experience in the arena of horror – and for that it should be duly praised.

The film is essentially a throwback to the anthology series of the 80’s (Think Creepshow, but with a little of The Monster Squad thrown in) and the EC comics of way back in the day. It tells four intertwining stories along the evening of Oct. 31st in a small, sleepy town in Ohio. These stories, while as a whole are pretty archetypical, present these iconic tales lit by the flickering soul of a Jack O’ Lantern. Every twist and turn are expertly handled – unlike the recent ZOMBIELAND (Editors Note: REVIEWED HERE), there is a ton of subtext going on here – welcoming second and third viewings. In fact, this feels like a movie that was specifically made to be watched every Halloween on a big screen TV, with the sound turned up and the snacks and beer widely distributed.

Which brings us to the storied history of TRICK ‘R TREAT: Shot in 2007 by first time director Michael Dougherty (You know him as the guy who co-wrote X2 and SUPERMAN RETURNS), on a $12,000,000 budget, the studio had no idea what to do with it. And so it got pushed back from its Oct. 5th, 2007 release. And then it got pushed back again. And then again. The story picks up two years later, when Trick ‘r Treat made its way straight to DVD after a few showings at varied film fests around the country. Looking at the 100% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the glowing reviews coming from all corners of the globe, it could be construed that Warner Brothers shit the bed on not releasing this in theaters.

I, however, am perfectly happy with TRICK ‘R TREAT being a straight to video release. This is where this movie belongs. It needs to be that movie that only has one copy at the video store. It needs to be the film that some fifteen year old finds at random amongst the other horror titles. It deserves to shove and fight its way into the repertoire of great horror films that high school and college kids watch every month. While it’s a shame that a movie as great as this never got the fanfare it deserved from WB, the home theater is where TRICK ‘R TREAT lives and breathes. It’s certainly a movie that I will, without fail, add to my yearly Halloween festivities. It’s something of a minor classic.

And here I am, 600 words in, and I haven’t even started talking about the specifics. And this is a good thing. There’s nothing that happens in this film that minor spoilers would ruin – there is no major final act reveal – but I’m content with being as vague as possible. This is a movie you need to see, and this is a movie you need to see with no prior knowledge of the world it sets up.

Unfortunately, the world is both the strongest and the weakest part of TRICK ‘R TREAT. You have to come into this movie armed with an above average knowledge of Halloween lore. If you don’t know who Samhain is, or why people wear masks on Halloween, or why Jack O’ Lantern’s are so important to your personal health, this movie may confuse you a little bit. There’s a few hints and setups in the credits, but this movie feels like it really needs to be seen with the proposed tie-in graphic novel due out this month. This doesn’t really diminish the appeal of the flick, though as the individual stories themselves are so strong and self contained, that understanding a little more about the TRICK ‘R TREAT universe would just serve to make you love the film even more.

In truth, the only complaint I have about the film is its length – It’s just too short. Clocking at just over 85 minutes, some of the storylines feel like they just don’t get their ideas across. The Dylan Baker Serial Killing Principal storyline in particular feels just a little too truncated. It gets the general idea across, but that character has a lot more going on than what is eventually shown to the audience. It’s kind of damning praise that the worst I can say about the film is that the characters are too interesting, and I wish we had more time with them.

And it’s a little bit of a shame because the cast of this movie is impeccable. Dougherty uses actual real kids in the Trick or Treaters storyline – something totally taken for granted by modern filmmaking. In most cases, these would be high schoolers played by twenty-somethings. This movie doesn’t undervalue how much age-appropriate actors can bring to the story. Every scare and plot point is derived organically out of the characters motives, and that is a rare thing, especially in horror.

The biggest downer surrounding TRICK ‘R TREAT (and I’m sure Dougherty feels the same way) is that this was intended as the first in a series of yearly anthologies, made by different directors, to fill in the blanks of the world that Dougherty has set up. October has, for the last six years, been the pissing ground for the SAW franchise, and with the right studio involvement and support, we could instead be seeing more movies involving Anna Paquin’s Little Red Riding Hood riff and Little Sam, the pumpkin boy. This might be one of the most depressing franchise non-starters in recent memory.

At the end of the day, TRICK ‘R TREAT is an amazing little movie that manages to take a lot of stories done before by a lot of other movies and turn them on their heads by focusing on the significance of Halloween as the doorway to all of the things that are hiding just beneath the shadows.

8.9 out of 10

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By Tom Nix

Robert Wise is no slouch. The man has made multiple classic films in multiple genres. But The Haunting is my favorite film he’s ever produced. It’s one of the most purely cinematic experiences one can have. Also, its genuinely creepy.

Shot in glorious black and white, The Haunting could be described as a dense film. There is so much going on in the production design of this film that it would be impossible to immerse yourself in it without multiple viewings. From the ingenious use of mirrors to the hidden messages written on the walls, this film has a way of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. The brilliance of this is that The Haunting contains neither any ghosts nor a single drop of blood. It is all atmosphere, and it is this that makes the movie the best hannted house movie ever filmed.

The movie tells the story of Hill House, a huge mansion built by a shut-in billionaire for his sick and dying wife. A psychologist has decided to take over the house years after the house has become vacant to conduct a study on the paranormal. He aims to prove ghosts exist, and has enlisted the help of some “subjects” with experience in the paranormal. One of the women has a very powerful ESP ability, and the other is trying to forget her poltergeist experience. The lone male subject is the heir apparent to Hill House, simply there to make sure his future cash cow is protected.

What happens to them is almost completely up to debate. Is the house haunted? Maybe. Like I stated before, the movie features zero ghosts, but that doesn’t mean that the house itself has intentions for its guests. Robert Wise makes this film so memorable by making the film unbearably spooky during scenes that would otherwise be commonplace.

Keep an out for the constant use of statues and faces hovering just at the edges of the frame. Some of them even appear to move with the camera. Watch how he manages to make the wallpaper subtly undulate before your eyes. Consider how the reflections in the mirrors just don’t exactly line up with the people standing in front of them. The film, even if it weren’t for a tight, snappy script that hits all the right beats, would be a design and cinematography masterpiece.

There are no other films made that feel like The Haunting. Nothing gives the audience that little sense of dread of the things that may not even be there. It’s almost unfair to call it just a movie. With no action, blood, guts, or confrontations, The Haunting manages to be one of the ultimate cinematic adventures.

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By Tom Nix

I’ve had the pleasure to watch The Evil Dead on the big screen during a screener in college. Even then, almost 20years after its initial release, there were parts that made the people in the theater jump, cringe, and scream.

It’s certainly not the story that does it. Five kids go to a cabin in the woods, accidentally invoke the undead, and die. Essentially, that’s the flick in a nutshell. What makes it the undying cockroach of indie horror is all in the presentation. Sam Raimi dominates this film visually. He made this movie when he was 20 years old (!!!), and the visceral visual style of this film has more or less stuck with him for his entire near 30 year career. Inventive camera rigs beget evocative camera moves, and the lack of any proper budget doesn’t hinder the crew from showing every inch of the violence that befalls the characters.

The film is brutal. From pencil shivs to penetrating tree branches. There’s some stuff there that is still a little hard to stomach, even with today’s torture porn movies. You’ve got entire bodies getting chopped up by axes, and pus filled corpses spewing all kinds of fluids in the faces of the heroes. 30 years on, it’s not hard to see why the film was rated X and banned in some countries on release. Along with defining Sam Raimi’s visual style, it also defined his work ethic.

And what this means is his willingness to absolutely destroy a human being working on his films. Listen to any commentary or interview about life on set with Sam. Hell, watch any of his movies. The characters in the films are typically not enjoying themselves, and Sam Raimi is the one personally responsible. I can’t think of any other movie that almost single-handedly sums up an entire director’s career as well as this one. It all started here.

The film can’t be mentioned without adding its the one that introduced the first cult hero in Bruce Campbell. The Evil Dead Trilogy introduced this living cartoon character to a generation of internet obsessed nerds. The man has made a career out of his overblown man’s man image. And that all started here.

The Evil Dead is a towering giant in the genre of splatter horror. The reason? It’s probably still the best one out there, and we’re 30 years past expiration date. It’s an unhinged, insane movie made by unhinged, insane people. It’s probably responsible for a lot of the horror films that are coming out today. Find an self respecting horror director under the age of 40, and ask them why they’re in the business. Chances are they’ll tell you it all started here, with The Evil Dead.

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By Ryan Brlecic

1.) The Beyond, 1980 dir. Lucio Fulci

Usually as an avid film watcher one comes to know Lucio Fulci in the following way: “There is this movie where a zombie fights a shark, you really need to see it” (Zombi 2). So you do. Then after you realize Zack Synder’s end credits sequence from Dawn of the Dead was able to remake that movie in under five minutes, the effect wears off. Fulci’s work however can linger and the urge to explore it further might resurface; this is when most find The Beyond. This film represents both a highpoint of his later career and the starting point of his cinematic downward spiral.

Good horror can be debated, but true horror should have an almost metaphysical linger on it’s intended audience. Zombi 2 never reached past the sights of tearing flesh and shock of gore, it stayed comfortable in being simple suspense. With The Beyond, Fulci uses everything at his disposal to envelop you in madness and present you with no easy answer, no good, or solution once Hell begins to slowly encroach on Earth. He leaves nowhere safe, so much so that by the end the only place you have to run is into Hell itself.

This is part where I could entice you with lines about scenes from this film, but this film is too good to be boiled down like that. Fulci sets about destroying the flesh – slowly boiling it away in the process – in effort to leave nothing but the soul of true horror. Watch this film now and when you meet avid film watchers, ask them if they know Fulci.

2.) The City of the Living Dead, 1981 dir. Lucio Fulci

It should be pointed out that all three of these films share another connection past the slow retreat in Fulci’s abilities. They all follow a theme of awakening horror that will unleash hell on our plane of existence and are known as “The Death Trilogy”. The City of The Living Dead (COTLD), follows a reporter and a psychic race to close the gates of hell after the suicide of a clergyman caused them to open, allowing the dead to rise from the grave.

Inspired most likely by Dario Argento’s “Mothers Trilogy”, Fulci set out to document our descent into madness in his own connected series of films. With this film he shot high and came in somewhere between his previous ventures. COTLD has more then just brief moments of the brand of terror that made The Beyond an horror essential, but it falls back on Fulci’s bad habits and the lackadaisical film-making of Zombi 2.

The film tries to give you more informed madness and often this causes the film to be slow at times. The plot however still represents that of trying to piece together a broken mirror with only a few of the big chunks in hand. Fulci seemed to be resting on his laurels with this entry. This however was and is a Fulci film and memorable for a scene in which a young woman proceeds to vomit up her insides while crying blood (Editor’s note: her boyfriend in the scene is none other than Cemetery Man director Michele Soavi). In the end however the film is more memorable then most Fulci fare, but lacks the lasting power of The Beyond.

3.) The House by the Cemetery, 1982 dir. Lucio Fulci

All of the above leads to The House by the Cemetery, for those that enjoy Fulci (warts and all) this film represent an end of the road for the filmmaker. It was the last time his work seemed to gel in that vaguely familar Fulci style of horror. Lucio made films till his death in 1996, but The House by the Cemetery (THBTC) was the last good film he made.

The Beyond’s horror affected the world it inhabited. COTLD’s horror affected the town it resided in. THBTC affected the house and more importantly the family that it lived in. It is unsure if Fulci meant to explore unfathomable events and death in almost a russian doll like fashion, but it seems to have unfolded that way. There is not much to say for THBTC besides that is it worth  watching to round out the death trilogy and more than likely geared for avid fans of Lucio Fulci. By this film Fulci’s layers had peeled away, boiled down to nothing but his cliches, and leaving nothing but the lingering essence of his brand of horror on film.

What watching Fulci Leads to

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The above picture pretty accurately sums up how I felt after watching this film.

Murder Party was heralded as a brilliant low-budget horror movie, steeped in genre history. It seems more like the genre stepped in something. the story hinges around Chris, a very lonely and boring traffic policeman, trying to enjoy Halloween in spite of his situation. So, when he comes across a stray, black envelope inviting him to a “Murder Party,” Chris goes home, juryrigs a costume out of a cardboard box, bakes a pumpkin loaf, and attempt to enjoy himself. At a house that is miles away from where he lives. With people he doesn’t know.

So its much to his consternation (or, actually not – Chris barely reacts to anything going on around him) that the partygoers have a plan to murder the guest that shows up. They’re a bunch of art students, you see. And their endgame is to turn the act of human sacrifice into an art exhibition to impress a shady art dealer who has promised the “winner” of the group a sizeable grant.

Well, at least that’s what I think happens. You see, this movie has no time for things like continuity with a plot this complicated (read: not). No one ever really competes for the prize, and the grant issue isn’t even really brought up until it fills a need for a useless reveal/subplot. Not to mention how most of the running time is spent letting completely unlikeable, whiny, self-obsessed art students talk about the most trivial things. I will give the flick points for accuracy, but it’s still not something you’d expect to see in a horror film. Especially sine the film is seemingly not attempting to ridicule the stuck up art world and is instead content with allowing these idiots to fanwank themselves for 30 minutes at a time.

It’s depressing. You can tell from the movie’s premise that the creators had something interesting to say. The idea of a literal murder party is pretty inspired. Plus the ideas of obvious trust-fund kids wanting to commit murder for the sake of art (actually money, passed off as art) is appealing. So why is this movie so relentlessly terrible?

Simply put, its because the people involved are relentlessly talentless. The cast is uniformly awful, playing smug when smarmy is appropriate. Hell, the actor cast in the lead spends most of the film with a gag in his mouth because he wasn’t a good actor. The dialogue doesn’t help their case either. It plays out like a badly written Kevin Smith movie with its head even further up its own ass. The editing falls totally flat. There are many times in the film attempts to use a smash cut to elicit laughter. Not a single one of them works, as the scene before it is played too long, too short, or too obvious. The direction seems to consist of simply telling the actors where to stand (and often in visually unappealing tableaus) and to say words. It appears that subtleties in performance, or visual storytelling were glossed over, or more likely, flat out ignored. The only success is the cinematography, and this is simply because the steadicam operator didn’t have parkinson’s. The shots are flat and boring, but at least they’re consistently non jittery.

I am aware that this film was an extremely low budget release. It went to production without any funds set aside, in fact. And with that in mind, the effects are admirable. They’re few and far between for a reason, and none will stick with you any longer than the running time. It’s just a sad sight (and one far too common in today’s genre filmmaking) that a group of people that wanted to make a horror film so badly were able to miss the mark so broadly.

It seems very much like I am picking on a small movie about people at a party who want to kill someone for art for not having any artistic merit. And I am. But please let me qualify my hatred. There are many, many, terrible films that I unabashedly love. And the reason is simple. They know they’re complete trash, and the effort is put into making the audience go along with that trash from the opening. Transporter 2 does not attempt to address issues that affect anyone. It is simply there to put a foot chart on your face and learn the Jitterbug. Even flicks like Andy and Luke Campbell’s almost brutishly bad Demon Summer boil down to a group of friends that are obviously having a great time shooting a crap horror movie and to hell with you if you’re not along for the ride. Murder Party is like showing up to a LAN party and having everyone gregariously talking about how to harvest figs. They’re having a grand old time, but why the hell did  you get an invite?

Murder Party, in the end, brings up some very interesting ideas to the table. The idea of the privileged becoming savages for unsavory reasons. The conflict of dealing with people who want to kill you for no reason (but instead just tie you up and talk about themselves for 5 hours), the complete fakeness of people, and wha reality exists underneath. The idea of the act being the art. All of these concepts are introduced within the running time of the film, and none of them are given any discussion beyond the sentence or scene they are mentioned.

One of these days, I hope I will get a chance to champion a low budget, independent, innovative, and effective horror movie. I just hope I don’t have to suffer through many more movies like Murder Party in order to get there.

4.5 out of 10

Note: 1.5 of these points come from killing the biggest hippie in the film with non-organic food.

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1. Face The Sea Of Darkness
2. Schweick’s Destiny
3. Woe Be Unto Him
4. The Voice Of Nothing
5. Falling For Emily
6. Liza Sweet Liza
7. An Eye For The Dead
8. Beyond Emily
9. The Bridge
10. Looking For Joe
11. Hospital Creaking
12. Acid Burn
13. See How I Destroy Your Lives
14. John And Lisa’s Blues *
15. The Blind
16. Ghost At The Piano
17. Room 36
18. Hotel Lament
19. Liza Gets Schweicked
20. The Evil Below
21. Voices From The Beyond
22. Spider Attack
23. On That Day
24. Death Chorus
25. You Must Return
26. Liza Damned Liza
27. Undead Rising
28. Descent
29. And All Therein That May Be Explored
30. Finale
31. The Beyond
32. Reality Is A Nightmare
33. Goodbye Lucio

And there you have it. Imagine the possibilities. How many people will be talking about “Liza Damned Liza’s” show in their friend’s basement next week. The chugging metal of “Death Chorus.” “Schweik” will also suffice. Then everytime you play a show, you can use your band name as a verb. Lisa will get Schweiked every night this week. Ensure this. Also worth noting is Cat in the Brain, Fabio’s last composed score. I don’t know how you manage to not sell a million records under that moniker.

These are band names that you would expect to pay a fortune for. It’s not very often that a benefactor will just hand out phrases like “Face The Sea of Darkness.” But here at The Red Circle, we feel that everyone should be given the ability and the right to make Nickelback look like assholes. So here’s your chance, totally free of charge. All we ask for in return is for you to love us.

Note: Fabio Frizzi had no involvement in this article. I am not even sure he is still alive.

*If you change the name of this track to “Tom and Lisa’s Blues,” you have a more accurate title for the movie The Room. Track 13 is also appropriate.

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