The Ward

Year:  2010
Director:  John Carpenter
Screenplay:  Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen
Starring:  Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Laura-Leigh, Lyndsy Fonseca, Mika Boorem, Jared Harris
Running Time:  90 minutes
Genre:  Horror, psychological

This is a fairly average, low to mid budget horror film.  In the year 1966, in North Bend, Oregon, Kristen (Heard) is arrested after setting fire to a remote farmhouse.  She is taken to a psychiatric hospital and placed on a secure ward which she shares with four other young women:  friendly and artistic Iris (Fonseca), vain and arrogant Sarah (Panabaker), tough Emily (Gummer) and timid and childlike Zoey (Laura-Leigh).  On the ward they are treated by the sinister Doctor Stringer (Harris) who is using a range of experimental techniques.  Kristen soon discovers that the ward hides some very dark secrets when she learns that a large number of patients have mysteriously gone missing and never been seen again.  She also finds herself haunted by a hideous female figure.

This was John Carpenter's first feature film since 2001's Ghosts of Mars, and while it fails to rise to the levels of his best work, such as Halloween (1978), it remains watchable enough.  Set almost entirely in the claustrophobic confines of the hospital, with engaging performances from the cast, Carpenter opens his box of tricks and provides plenty of slick shocks and scares.  The problem is that everything feels very much by the numbers, with nothing that fans will not have seen countless times before.  A twist before the end is initially interesting but ultimately unsatisfying. 

It's not really a bad film at all, it's just bland.  Carpenter is a great horror director and has a legacy of some truly spectacular work, but here it just feels like he is merely going through the motions.  It's far from being the worse of his output but then it is nowhere near his best.  Fans will have seen it all before, but there is still enough to make it an entertaining enough diversion.

Amber Heard is about to be sent to The Ward

  

Julia's Eyes

Year: 2010
Director: Guillem Morales
Screenplay: Guillem Morales and Oriol Paulo
Starring: Belen Rueda, Lluis Homar, Pablo Derqui, Francesc Orella, Julia Guttierez Caba
Running Time: 112 minutes
Genre: Horror, thriller, psychological

Summary: After the apparent suicide of her blind sister Sara (Rueda), astronomer Julia (Rueda) becomes convinced that Sara did not kill herself, and is soon obsessed with finding the truth behind her death, with the reluctant help of her concerned husband, Isaac (Homar). Julia is suffereing from the same degenerative disease that Sara suffered and is already going blind. She knows that if an operation to save her sight fails, soon she too will be totally blind. As her investigation progresses, Julia begins to feel that she is being watched and followed from the shadows. As a spate of apparent suicide claims the lives of people involved in Sara's last days, it becomes apparent that someone will do anything to prevent her from uncovering their secret.

Opinions: This Spanish horror movie was produced by Mexican writer, producer and director Guillermo Del Toro (who also produced the 2008 horror hit The Orphanage). The horror here is centered around blindness and the fear of being chased by someone who can see you but you can't see them. There are also a few disturbing sequences featuring eyeballs. It starts off as an investigative mystery thriller before suddenly switching gears and becoming something totally different.
The acting is very good throughout, and the film provides plenty of chills and genuinely thrilling chases. The film works on a lot of very primal levels, and the tension is sustained throughout. It also provides some unexpected twists thoughout. The film is well-made with a number of inventive visuals. It manages to pull off the concept of the veiled, hidden threat very well. The influence of Alfred Hitchcock is felt very strongly in this work, and there are also of plenty of typically quirky Del Toro touches.
The only real flaw in the film is an unsatisfactory coda in the closing minutes.
The film is a must-see for horror fans, and also for general thriller fans, who are looking for something a little different.



Belen Rueda in Julia's Eyes.

Orphan

Year: 2009
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Screenplay: David Leslie Johnson, from a story by Alex Mace
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder, Jimmy Bennett, Aryana Engineer
Running Time: 123 minutes
Genre: Horror, thriller, psychological

Summary: Recovering alcoholic Kate Coleman (Farmiga) and her husband John (Sarsgaard) find their already strained marriage stretched to breaking point after their third child is stillborn. They decide to adopt a nine year old Russian girl named Esther (Fuhrman) from a nearby orphanage. At first glance Esther, who is a talented painter, appears firendly and intelligent, if slightly strange.
At the Coleman household Esther is welcomed almost immediately by the Coleman's deaf-mute daughter Max (Engineer), but she is disliked by the older child, Daniel (Bennett), who immediately takes exception to Esther's mannerisms and eccentric taste in clothes.
Before long Esther begins to display increasingly violent and manipulative behaviour. However, as Kate becomes increasingly suspicious of her John refuses to believe that Esther is anything but misunderstood. As their relationship begins to disintegrate Kate becomes determined to uncover the secrets of Esther's past.

Opinions: This film belongs to the "evil child" sub-genre of horror (which includes The Bad Seed (1956), The Omen (1976) and The Good Son (1993) among many others) as well as the "cuckoo in the nest" sub-genre in which a family comes under attack from an enemy within.
The film is slow to get going and the final half hour gets ludicrously over the top, but mostly it is an impressively atmospheric slice of horror. Moving at a deliberate pace the film builds up it's characters and their relationships, allowing for a number of elements to be dealt with more subtly (such as John's infidelity and Kate's guilt over an accident involving Max). The film, which was shot near Montreal, also gets a lot of milage out of the wintery landscapes.
The performances all round are superb, with Isabelle Fuhrman delivering a standout performance as the murderous child, seemingly all sweetness and light, but with a cold, dead-eyed stare which makes The Omen's Damien look about as threatening as Dennis the Menace. Vera Farmiga also impresses as the increasingly suspicious mother.
It's a good and effective psychological chiller up until the last half hour or so when it all goes into slasher movie territory. Still, it is more than watchable and provides plenty of good chills, and is worth watching for the perfomances if nothing else.



Vera Farmiga and Isabelle Fuhrman in Orphan

Dread

Year: 2009
Director: Anthony DiBlasi
Screenplay: Anthony DiBlasi, based on the short story "Dread" by Clive Barker
Starring: Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Evans, Hanne Steene, Laura Donnelly, Jonathan Readwin
Running Time: 108 minutes
Genre: Horror, psychological

Summary: Present day America: Film student Stephen Grace (Rathbone) befriends mysterious psychology student Quaid (Evans). Stephen agrees to help Quaid with his research project into the nature of fear and introduces Quaid to his classmate and editor Cheryl Fromm (Steene). The three interview volunteers about their earliest experiences of fear and record the interviews on camera. Quaid becomes angry about their lack of progress and also about the fact that his two colleagues just see it as another college project. Disturbed by his increasingly irrational and violent behaviour, Cheryl and Stephen decide to quit. However, Quaid has just started his experiments and intends to take them "to the next level". Soon Cheryl and Stephen find themselves plunged into their own very personal nightmares.

Opinion: This movie is based on a short story by Clive Barker, which was originally published in volume two of his short story collection Books of Blood (1984). It's kind of unusual for a Clive Barker story in that there are no supernatural or other fantasy elements. As a short story, the tale was tense, tight and gripping. However here, necessarily expanded in order to fit the running time, some of the tension is lost. Mostly it works pretty well though.
The film benefits from a strong atmosphere and does well with it's low budget. The film is shot with high contrast between light and shadow and at times the amount of shadows on screen can be irritating, and there are moments when it is difficult to distinguish what is going on.
While the horror in the film is predominantly psychological, there is a high level of violence and plenty of gore. There are also plentiful scenes of people being graphically tormented in grimy rooms in the manner popularised by the likes of Saw (2004) and Hostel (2006).
The film is relentlessly downbeat and the all-pervading gloom (in every sense) may prove too strong for some viewers.
The performances are good from a largely unknown cast, and, despite some occasional lapses in pacing in the middle part of the film, the whole thing moves pretty well.
The whole film is largely well-made, and has plenty of atmosphere and tension, and enough surprises to keep fans of the genre entertained.



Shaun Evans researches Dread

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Year: 1919
Director: Robert Wiene
Screenplay: Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer
Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski
Running Time: 71 minutes
Genre Horror, psychological, silent

Summary: A small town in Germany is holding a fair. One of the attractions is the "somnambulist" Cesare (Veidt) who apparently permanently sleeps inside a coffin-like cabinet and awakes only occasionally to do the bidding of his owner and master, the mysterious hypnotist and mystic, Doctor Caligari (Krauss). A series of bizarre murders starts around the same time that Caligari arrives. When Franzis (Feher) and his friend Alan (von Twardowski) visit Caligari's sideshow, Cesare predicts that Alan will be dead by daybreak and, sure enough, that night he falls victim to the mysterious killer. Naturally enough Franzis suspects Caligari and Cesare, however the truth is more complex then it seems.

Opinions: This film is one of the first horror films ever made and is arguably among the most influential being one of, if not the first, examples of a "frame story" and also a twist ending in cinema. Most films, even science-fiction and fantasy films, pay at least some kind of lip-service to some kind of reality. This film doesn't even bother. It belongs to the "German Expressionist" movement which was sweeping German art, theatre as well as cinema in the inter-war years. The film uses bizarre, skewed, flat, painted sets, strange camera angles, and weirdly designed intertitles. Part of the reason for the expressionistic style was the fact that the producers didn't have much money for sets and lighting.
The effect is a genuinely dreamlike experience. Almost every image in the film has some element that is slightly "off", whether in the bizarre angles or designs of the sets, or the exaggerated makeup and costumes of the characters.
It is a must-see for anyone seriously interested in horror films or in film history in general, however some viewers might be put off by the fact that it is a silent film, it moves slowly, the very obvious fakeness and staginess of the production and also the exagerrated and often histrionic acting that was a hallmark of silent films. however, if you can get past this, it is still a powerful and striking experience.
Another word of warning is that the film is in the public domain and therfore exists in a number of different versions and cuts, so as always "buyer beware". I saw it in the cinema with live music, and that is by far the best way to see it and if you ever do get the opportunity to see the film "live" as it were, don't miss it. If not, it is still well worth your time checking it out, but be careful that you get the best version.



Conrad Veidt flees with Lil Dagovar in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari