S-Horror?

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

As we gear up for another spring full of rampaging monsters and psychopathic serial killers, Desson Thompson in the Washington Post wonders if something elemental to the whole concept of the horror movie isn't missing: the victim.

After the usual handwringing over the 'torture porn' generation, the artist formerly known as Howe goes on to make some pretty compelling points: the horror films of today — even the stylized, artsy ones influenced by or coming from the J-horror movement — tend to focus entirely on the means by which the victims are dispatched: intricate traps, complex schemes, gruesome tortures, gigantic monsters. Very little attention, on the other hand, is given to providing the audience with an identification figure: while in previous horror films we were at least able to identify with the person going through such terrifying treatment (as in Rosemary's Baby) or with the person doing the terrorizing (as in Psycho), the modern-day horror film has lost its focus, one way or another, on humanity and gives us precious little to care about beyond the novelty of learning how the next victim will snuff it. "When we think of the horror classics", says Thomson, "we don't recall the gruesome acts so much as the people who weathered them. Think of Rosemary Woodhouse, the determined mother in Rosemary's Baby, who faces the prospect her baby has been fathered by the Devil. Remember Regan MacNeil, the sweet pre-teen of The Exorcist, whose satanic transformation forces heroics from two soft-spoken priests. Even Jack Torrance, the demented murderer at the heart of The Shining, affects us because he's a husband and father gone horribly awry, not some abstract ax wielder."

Providing a much-needed antidote for this alienating inhumanity in the horror genre, he claims, are a new wave of Spanish horror directors, presaged by Guillermo del Toro in the disturbing Pan's Labyrinth and followed up by two of his proteges, director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez, whose dark, moody The Orphanage is enjoying limited release in the U.S. They both cite the Spanish cultural heritage of the Day of the Dead (which is "not something that you look upon as horrifying or sad or terrible but as a way to conciliate with death; you bring death home instead of trying not to think about it", according to Sanchez) and the country's all-too-recent emergence from the shadows of fascism as reasons why this brand of non-gory, emotionally powerful, human-centered horror is hitting home with their audiences.

Whether or not The Orphanage will trigger a string of "S-horror" hits in the U.S., they're doing quite well at home; the movie was last year's highest-grossing film in Spain, outstripping even the blockbuster foreign imports like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Trailer Roundup: The Eye, One Missed Call, The Orphanage

Peter Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

The Eye

One Missed Call

The original Pang Brothers’ version of The Eye was a cheesy mix of the forgettable Madeleine Stowe thriller Blink and the early, funny films of M. Night Shyamalan. But the film nonetheless got solid reviews, so it was only a matter of time before a studio decided to mount an English-language remake. It’s hard to imagine someone out-hacking the Pangs, but David Moreau and Xavier Palud, making their English-language debut following the middling French home-invasion chiller Ils, look to be giving it the old college try. And as shoddy as most of the Asian horror remakes have been thusfar, at least some have been cast with interesting actors. That this one stars Jessica Alba doesn’t inspire confidence. But why should Lionsgate do any different? The formula of hot chick + semi-proven commodity + February release worked for When a Stranger Calls, right?

No less dire-looking is the remake of One Missed Call. The original film was one of roughly forty-seven movies Takashi Miike made in 2003, and was a decent movie that fit comfortably in an era of J-horror gimmickry. By comparison, the Hollywood version looks like another long-overdue nail in the coffin of J-horror remakes, bearing a closer resemblance to the spate of Ring knockoffs than the original version and starring the hottest cast of fall 2001 (Shannyn Sossamon, Ed Burns, etc.) You’d think audiences would start objecting to lousy horror movies, but then, we’re already on the fourth Saw.

The Orphanage

I saw this movie in Toronto, and I recommend it. But genre movies are a tough sell, so instead of accurately portraying The Orphanage as an atmospheric thriller in the vein of Guillermo Del Toro (who produced the film and gets his name prominently featured in the trailer), this trailer makes it look like a schlocky Asian-horror wannabe, complete with lots of flash cuts and horrified reaction shots and absolutely no dialogue. It’s a shame, since the audience that embraced Pan’s Labyrinth might avoid this on the basis of the lousy trailer, while the rest will probably be pissed at having to read subtitles. Still, it’s nice to see a horror movie with a heroine over forty who isn’t a spiteful old biddy.

— Paul Clark

The Screengrab : j-horror

S-Horror?

Trailer Roundup: The Eye, One Missed Call, The Orphanage