Horror

Utterly compelling, brilliantly scripted, a masterclass of acting and direction – the original Jaws is quite simply one of the greatest films ever made…

Following up Quint’s devastating Indianapolis speech, as well as Chief Brody’s awesome toe-to-toe with the shark in the finale, was never going to be easy. Director Jeannot Szwarc had a fairly acceptable attempt with Jaws 2, which saw Roy Scheider’s Brody electrocute a bigger, badder and very annoyed underwater beastie, whilst single-handedly carrying the film on his shoulders.

The almost vertical decline in quality would follow.

Jaws 3-D was an upsetting mess with Dennis Quaid portraying Brody’s eldest son Michael, who is now working at SeaWorld. The aquatic park manages to attract a psychotic 40-foot (?) shark that can roar and swim backwards. Suffice to say, this was not a positive step, and certainly not Quaid’s finest moment. The shark death: protagonists use a very long rod to pull the pin out of a grenade that is still in the hands of a diver eaten earlier in the film (what?).

If you haven’t seen it, we assure you it makes even less sense than you think.

Surely the best thing to do at this stage is kill the franchise before anyone turns mental and goes on a mad, murderous rampage in disgusted protest. Alas, this was not to be, and a fourth instalment was given the green-light.

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Spelunking is defined as the hobby or practice of exploring caves; any additional scraps with ungodly creatures from the pits of hell are not usually included with said pastime.

That is, of course, unless you happen to fancy a trip down the holes under the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina.

The original Descent saw director Neil Marshall produce a tense British horror that generated widespread acclaim. Whilst this film was indeed scary, well shot and a lot of fun, it has to be said that Neil Marshall’s ability to write dialogue for women is somewhat akin to a dog’s ability to play hopscotch.

Considering that the whole cast was female, this was a bit of a problem; however, The Descent was not a dialogue-driven piece, and thus it escaped unscathed and turned out to be a very enjoyable movie.

We were excited about the prospect of a follow-up (although what we really wanted was a sequel to Marshall’s awesome directorial debut Dog Soldiers). The end of The Descent saw Shauna MacDonald’s sole surviving character, Sarah, believe that she had escaped the hellish cave, only to wake up realising she was still stuck down there. The deliberately ambiguous ending was brave, and worked well.

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The Twilight Saga: New Moon sees vampire wannabe Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) return for a second bite of the Twilight cherry, as ever-thoughtful-looking Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) decides to do a runner in the interests of her safety.

Bella hits 18, and becomes increasingly concerned about the potential age gap that will inevitably exist between her and Edward. He is Bella’s eternally youthful lover and saviour from Twilight, and a morally-astute vampire, with an equally ethical vampiric family (aside from the odd moment of human-bloodlust). Bella repeatedly requests a good chomp on the neck from Edward, so that she can become part of his undead, flying, fang-family.

Naturally, Edward is opposed; he believes that the life of a vampire is a curse, and cannot bring himself to turn Bella, no matter how intensely she desires the twisted transformation. On Bella’s 18th birthday, a slight paper cut to her tender human skin ignites the fire in Edward’s brother, resulting in a minor scrap, and some Matrix-style jumping around.

Whilst Bella is essentially unharmed, Edward believes that their relationship is a danger to her safety. Cue a break-up in a forest (how, er, romantic?), and one devastated teenager. After all the hullaballoo in the first film, Edward bizarrely calls it a day and his family disappear with him to an unknown destination.

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Vampires are everywhere in mainstream cinema these days. Once upon a time they were relegated to the catacombs of Hammer Horror land, but they’ve since spread from the vaults to nearly all corners of the world.

The vampire movie is no longer a subsidiary of horror cinema; it is now a genre unto itself, with countless subdivisions appealing to a wide demographic including those uninterested in pointy canines.

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels, and their subsequent cinematic counterparts, have developed vampirism for the emo generation, heavily romanticising the characters whilst holding back on any neck-biting that doesn’t take place in the bedroom.

From Dusk Till Dawn and Near Dark developed the idea of road-movie bloodsucking, and Blade gave us the futuristic, sword-wielding vampire that fights on our side as he tries to battle his own bloodlust.

Recent Ethan Hawke vehicle Daybreakers has a crack at the vampire-apocalypse; a world populated by vampires, where the number of humans, and therefore the supply of blood, is drastically dwindling. The new rulers of the world find themselves in a desperate search for a blood substitute.

As vampire films are produced at a bloodcurdling rate, filmmakers are constantly searching for innovative ways to tell an interesting and exciting new story that is not just a retread of old ground/flight paths.

With his first taste of Western financing, Park Chan-wook has tried his hand at the task.  Those familiar with Park Chan-wook will have seen his critically acclaimed ‘revenge’ trilogy, which includes the brilliant and brutal Oldboy. His most recent effort is similar in its blunt exploration of love and violence; the twisting and contorting lives lead by everyday people who find themselves faced with intense questions of morality.

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Heard of Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Of course you have. The title of Spielberg’s alien classic refers to a system of classification developed in 1972 by J. Allen Hynek. The idea was explored in his book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Enquiry. According to Mr. Hynek, once a person is within about 150 yards of a strange object or inexplicable light source, he or she qualifies for his system of classification.

Should you merely see a peculiar flying object, or some strange lights, then it is a close encounter of the first kind. The second kind would involve physical impressions left in the landscape or on the body of a viewer (perhaps a dent on a car, or a burn on someone’s arm). Hynek’s system ends with the third kind; an actual sighting of an entity or entities on board a UFO.

The Fourth Kind is not a sequel to Spielberg’s alien blockbuster, nor is it supported by J. Allen Hynek’s original list of ‘close encounters’. A close encounter of the fourth kind is generally defined by today’s ufologists as abduction, and so the premise of this film revolves around ‘actual archive footage’ of people talking about and experiencing such an encounter.

The movie begins with ‘real’ footage of Fourth Kind director Olatunde Osunsanmi interviewing gaunt psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler as she retells her terrifying story.

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Triangle is a psychological horror brought to our screens by Christopher Smith. Smith has not been particularly diverse with his cinematic offerings; he was behind budget horror Brit-flick Creep, and the gruesome Danny Dyer vehicle Severance. We enjoyed Creep, and found Severance good for a one-off watch and so were hoping for at least the same the third time round.

Triangle tells the tale of Jess (Melissa George), a single mother who reluctantly joins her friend Greg for a leisurely day of sailing, or at least that was the plan.

Greg’s friends clearly think Jess is a little peculiar; she shows up looking like she’s been dragged backwards through a bush and then slapped with a fish. Whilst her co-sailors are upbeat and ready to enjoy some fun in the sun, but Jess seems unable to get into the party mood.

An unfortunate encounter with a freak electrical storm dashes their boat to pieces. Conveniently the Aeolus, a passing ocean liner, happens to be in the vicinity, allowing the crew to clamber aboard to safety. Save for a mysterious bag-headed figure spotted on the deck before the group boarded, the ship appears to be completely deserted.

Things take another turn for the weird when Jess discovers her lost keys on one of the ship’s floors and starts experiencing some rather strong feelings of deja vu…

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Pandorum can best be described as the box-office bomb that is actually a satisfying sci-fi horror treat. If you have been fortunate enough to catch the remake of 3:10 To Yuma, you may recall Russell Crowe’s right-hand man, played by the excellent Ben Foster. Foster continues his good form in Pandorum, a freaky horror combining The Descent and Event Horizon to immensely satisfying effect.

Foster plays the astronaut Bower, accompanied by the ever-reliable Dennis Quaid as Payton. The two confused space-dwellers wake up from a long sleep aboard the ship Elysium with no knowledge of their mission, and no recollection of any prior events. There are no signs of any crew, and power to the vessel appears to be lost. The ship itself offers nothing but a mysterious, sporadic, hellish rumble; a sound akin to some kind of otherworldly monster in great distress.

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The title of this 2004 sci-fi thriller starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart refers to the notion of sensitive dependence in chaos theory, whereby a change in something seemingly innocuous, such as the flap of a butterfly’s wings, can have enormous and unpredictable ramifications, such as a hurricane in Asia. The film applies this theory to four children growing up in American suburbia whose young lives have been marred by tragedy. When Evan Treborn (Kutcher), one of the group who is now a psychology undegraduate, discovers he can travel back in time he decides to alter the present by ‘undoing’ the harrowing events of the past.

The story begins with Evan as a child who, though a kind boy, shows definite traits of madness. Rather than sailing boats and flowers, his precocious primary school drawings depict cold-blooded murders; he has frequent blackouts, raids the kitchen cupboard for knives and is eventually referred to a psychiatrist (Nathaniel DeVeaux) for treatment.

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Set in Communist Romania in the final years of the Nicolae Ceauşescu era, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days tells the harrowing story of two female students who try to arrange an illegal abortion, 20 years after the practice was outlawed so that Ceauşescu would have more subjects to rule. Directed by Cristian Mungiu, it won the Palme d’Or and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Mungiu based the film on a real story he had heard which he said “still affected me after more than 15 years”, and which had been repeated countless times among young Romanian women who turned to the black market to avoid the indignity and poverty that would accompany single motherhood. The film cost just $600,000 to make and forms part of a planned series of stories from Romania before the fall of the Iron Curtain, called Memories from the Golden Age.

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Like many films that have come out of Germany in recent years, Yella is concerned with coming to terms with the past and adjusting to the present.

Yella (Nina Hoss) is a reserved yet ambitious woman who is determined to leave behind her old life in a rather demoralising eastern German town, where her possessive ex-husband (Hinnerk Schönemann) trawls the streets in search of her, unable to accept that she no longer loves him. Partly to escape him, she accepts an accountancy job in Hamburg, but nothing is quite as it seems. After a brutal parting shot with her husband, Yella legs it to the train, sodden and dishevelled. She arrives at her new workplace the next day to find that her lecherous boss (Michael Wittenborn) has been given the sack, leaving her jobless, alone and haunted by the past.

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