The Best Things I watched in 2010

An end of year list - of course! Here is a run down of the films that I found hit the mark with me, excelled, etc. Some are new, some are old... 25 favourites in no particular order:

1. Where the Wild Things Are - (Spike Jonz, USA, 2009)
2. The Road - (John Hillcoat, USA, 2009)
3. A Prophet - (Jacques Audiard, France/Italy, 2009)
4. Kick-Ass - (Matthew Vaughn, USA, 2010)
5. A Serious Man - (Coen brothers, 2009, USA/UK/France)
6. Afterschool - (Antonia Campos, USA, 2008)
7. The House of the Devil - (Ti West, USA, 2009)
8. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - (Phil Lord & Chris Miller, 2009)
9. Lake Tahoe - (Fernando Eimbcke, Meixco/Japan/USA, 2008)
10. Do You Remember Dolly Bell? - (Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1981)
11. Martyrs - (Pascal Laugier, France/Canada, 2008)
12. Diamonds of the Night / Démanty noci - (Jan Nemec, Czechoslovackia, 1964)
13. A Swedish Love Story / En kärlekshistoria - (Roy Andersson, Sweden, 1970)
14. Valley of the Bees / Údolí vcel - (Frantisek Vlácil, Czechoslovackia, 1968)
15. The Cremator / Spalovac mrtvol - (Juraj Herz, Czechoslovackia, 1969)
16. Libero (Along the Ridge) / Anche libero va bene - (Kim Rossi Stuart, Italy, 2006)
17. The Bridge / Die Brücke - (Bernhard Wicki, West Germany, 1959)
18. Box (Three... Extremes) - (Takashi Miike, Japan, 2004)
19. Picnic at Hanging Rock - (Peter Weir, Australia, 1975)
20. Valerie and her week of wonders / Valerie a týden divu - (Jaromil Jires, Czechoslovachia, 1970)
21. Barry Lyndon - (Stanley Kubrick, UK/USA, 1975)
22. House of Voices / Santa Ange - (Pascal Laugier, France, 2004)
23. Waltz With Bashir / Vals im Bashir - (Ari Folman, Israel (et al.), 2008)
24. The White Ribbon / Das weisse Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte - (Michael Haneke, 2008, Germany (et al.), 2009)
25. Deadwood - (TV: all of it)

What have I learnt from this list? That I apparently discovered the Czech new wave in a big way and that I obviously think Pascal Laugier is one fine horror director.

_____

And ten more of note that I liked or found of note -

Scott Pilgrim Versus The World

We Are What We Are

Four Lions

La Antea

Life During Wartime

The Girl Next Door

In The Loop

Pontypool

Moon

My Way Home / Így jöttem

___

And the worst that I saw this year... and yes, they are horror films.

The Unborn

Pirahna 3-D

Death Tunnel

Notes on why "Let Me In" is not "Let The Right One In"

Notes on why "Let Me In" is not "Let The Right One in"

When I was a boy, I would buy comics, read them and then, with my collection of felt tips, I would colour them in. It didn’t matter if they were black or white: if they were colour pictures, I would simply go over their red with my red, etc. What a hideous act of destruction, I think to myself in retrospect (those comics could have been worth loads now!). But it also appears to me that my act of vandalism was a side effect of coveting the artwork and stories I so enjoyed. With ruinous tools, I attempted to claim them for my own and, yes, perhaps even improve them. It also occurs to me now that this is much like the art of the remake.

There is no getting around comparisons with the original, and that’s why these words are going to be about why “Let Me In” is not “Let The Right One In”. This is only marginally different from damning one with contrast with the other, but I do want to distinguish that this is my agenda from the start. What we have is Thomas Alredson’s “Let The Right One In” being a masterpiece, the superior adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel, and Matt Reeves’ decent version called “Let Me In” being an American remake of the Swedish film. In fact, the original’s instant classic reputation was/is still warm and spreading when “Let Me In” was made. I shall agree to a large extent with Victoria Large that “'Let Me In’ may be a song that you’ve heard before, but it still sounds great.” If “Let Me In” is a lesser version cashing in, it has only itself to blame, for that is predominantly the domain of the remake and the nature of the beast. Let this be less a straightforward takedown of a remake for not being the original, and more a exploration of why it isn’t. Reeves' film may be a different take on the novel, but it seems likely that it would never have been made if the Swedish film had not become such a cult success. Reeve’s film should not be condemned for any perceived lack of thorough fidelity to the source; making alterations and taking liberties does not automatically flaw an adaptation ~ Alfredson and Lindqvist left out entire chunks in their translation onto screen, after all. In fact, variations and liberties should be encouraged in the hope that they illuminate the original text. It is all about which choices and variations are made: will they illuminate, strengthen or sabotage and weaken?

The title: somehow, the abbreviation, or truncation, of the title is a big clue as to how “Let Me In” compares with its predecessor. “Let The Right One in” - thank you, Morrissey - as a phrase is full of ambiguity, suggestion and scope that “Let Me In”, as a title and film, does not possess. Once the remake was annouced, its pending inferiority was predicted, for the majority of sequels are anticipated to be so, and it does not disappoint on that score. “Let Me in” is certainly not a bad film, being engaging enough and a decent variation on the original tale, carrying a lot of atmosphere and seriousness; but anyone suspecting that a translation to American cinema would neuter much of its resonant detail will have their conjectures confirmed. “Let Me In” does little to dispel a widespread view that any Americanisation (i.e., Hollywoodisation) of a foreign film will simplify if not “dumb down” a more layered and intelligent original. Indeed, there is the infamous case of the terrible subtitling of "Let The Right One In" with the first Ameican DVD release, prime evidence that American translations tend towards "dumbing down" (and you should definitely look here at Fright to see how appallingly a non-English language film can be treated in translation).

And arguably, “Let Me In” does suffer from a neutering, a simplification of all the fascinating and discomforting elements of the Swedish originals, book and film. It is poorer because it is more average, in its adherence to a more traditional genre template, to the very tropes that the originals managed to a large extent to refresh. “Let Me In” is inferior in its persistent obviousness, in making much of the primary mystery explicit, in its more mediocre dialogue and black humour. It is lesser in the obviousness of its vampire make-up, in its recourse to CGI to assist in creating a more inhuman monster (and no, I am not letting “Let The Right One In" cat scene off the hook). Anyone immersed in both the horror and the coming-of-age genre will find things simply more conventional in a way that Alfredson’s film avoided. Reeves’ film is enjoyable, but often uncertain, often copying the Swedish predecessor, ditching the tricky stuff, lacking the challenges and true poignancy of the earlier film. “Let Me In” is more than passable as a remake, but it simply misses so much. Remakes have the difficult goals of both being faithful ~ which usually mean duplicating original material ~ and staking their own identity. One could look to the American remake of “The Ring” to see a remake that actually amplifies and successfully varies the scary tension of the original. Rob Zombie’s “Halloween”, for all its flaws, definitely justifies its alternative take on the original story and commands its own individuality. “Let Me In” simply does not diverge enough, or in an original fashion, and even on its own terms it comes over as too obvious. Everything is sign-posted and tagged. Michael Giacchino cues every response he thinks we ought to be experiencing as if scoring a more needy drama in need of emotional overstatement.

“Let Me In” includes nods to all the major points and characters of the original story ~ many crucial secondary characters are name-checked and pass by (listen for a mention of Tommy, a key character in the novel otherwise absent in both films) ~ but they are all swept away to focus on the young romance. Groan as Owen (previously Oskar) is reading “Romeo and Juliette” for school. But this narrowing down does not cause sharp focus: again simplification occurs. This means that Owen’s dyfunctional family is reduced to brief banal ‘they’re separated’ dialogue and squabbles. When Owen’s mother is propped next to a finished bottle of something ~ alcoholism playing a major part in “Let The Right One In” ~ here it looks like crass shorthand. Whereas “Let The Right One In” comes with a fine catalogue of side characters, the adult support in “Let Me In” mostly evaporate. So a woman goes up in flames (and in keeping with the film’s add more ethos, takes a nurse with her), but it’s simply a set-piece shocker, for we do not know her at all and we don’t care, we’re just suitably horrified. More shorthand: curious and investigative locals are replaced by a single generic Detective - gone is the sense that Oskar’s community has been left to rot, to fend for itself, that there is no protection from or effective law, that any horror can hide there.

In the original, the whole of Oskar’s frozen community seemed sodden with the scourge of alcoholism, an epidemic numbing all human affections, leaving them reeking of despair and dead ends ~ and that being the promise of Oskar’s future. I do not agree with David Jenkins that, in “Let The Right One In”, “eccentric characters are thrown in as story padding” (1): the stir crazy locals are crucial to Oskar’s alienation, his circumstances. In “Let Me In”, this is absent and loneliness and alienation is created by the sense that Owen barely even meets anyone. The backdrop somehow possesses none of the winter-chill eeriness of the original either: rather, the courtyard is bathed in light that is something between bright warm oranges and piss-yellows. This, although apparently caused by the courtyard lighting, seems an odd choice as it robs the story and film of its natural temperature. The one time the film really makes use of Winter is the remarkable image of a corpse in an ice block being pulled out of the lake. Otherwise it’s just footprints in snow.

All this, one can argue, is simply a shift in emphasis for a different market; others may see these details as evidence of “dumbing down”, the occasional uncertainty of tone I earlier accused “Let Me In” of.

More:

When we first meet Oskar in “Let The Right One In”, he is toying with a penknife and, unforgettably, mimicking his tormentors at school ordering him to squeal, little piggy. When we find Owen indulging in this, he is emulating how his persecutors call him a girl. The shift is striking: it evokes homophobia and the denigration of the feminine: they try to verbally castrate him. How very American a translation. Less abstract, primal, and less evocative. This Are you a girl? insult and provocation ends up carrying all the gender confusion that the original novel finds so crucial. (2) In the novel, it is as if Lyndquist wants to push his young loners beyond gender, so that their friendship transcends the problems of gender and social relations. The novel also has a more difficult and distressing portrayal of sexual monsters that could never be fully moved onto the screen. Consequently, for example, Hakan ~ Eli’s adult protector and the most problematic character who, in prose, carries a horror that outdoes Eli’s vampirism ~ is almost entirely devoid of complexity or character in “Let Me In”. All the ickiness has been carefully, surgically removed. Eli is now simply a vampire girl. Hell, Owen even keeps his pyjama top on when Eli comes to seek chaste comfort from him in bed.

If it was not for Chloe Moretz ~ still fully hyped from "Kick Ass" ~ it is easy to imagine that Abby (previously Eli) would also become very vapid by comparison. (3) There is good stuff between her and Kodi Smitt-McPhee as Owen (still hyped from his turn in "The Road") ~ a nice retro-moment in an '80s arcade ~ but as competent as these young actors are, they are left a little stranded with mostly unchallenging dialogue and an unevenness of tone. They don’t feel as iconic and a right as Hadebrant and Leandersson. Their playfulness is lost. They have the loneliness, but not the tangible fury and despair of the original, because “Let Me In” is missing that breadth of context; it is afraid to allow Abby and Owen the full range of what and who they truly are, and the film simply lets them drift through, actors struggling for bearing, plot dragging them towards the conclusion when so much of it should be guided by their characters. When Owen discovers the truth about Abby, it comes as a total shock to him, for beforehand he has not really been shown to have suspicions about his new friend; the element of an impending Faustian pact of sorts that must be made just to gain friendship, that too is vague. Trampled apparently by the romanticism of “Romeo and Juliette”, their relationship has the gore but lacks the chilling revelation that the need for friendship can be a horrifying force.

We are never afraid of Owen, but this is less due to Smitt-McPhee’s abilities than this reduction of the key relationship being put down to simple adolescent loneliness. With Oskar, as played by Kare Hedebrant and his terrible hair in the Swedish adaptation, we felt that his consummate alienation and torment at the hands of others make him a potential psychopath in the making. It is that piggy stuff: he mimics his tormenters so furiously and bitterly. When he hits his bully across the head with a branch, we might feel he has crossed a dangerous line, but one that was always a part of him. He got a kick from it and we feel he wants more. Oskar relishes. He is, we feel, reaching his full potential. When Owen does it, it is simply self-defence: no real moral complexities are evident; his soul is barely at stake. Even providing Owen with a little “Rear Window” voyeurism early on doesn’t ultimately trouble his character. It is worth quoting Matt Reeves himself (still respected from Cloverfield) to demostrate that he gets so much of what Oskar is about, and yet cannot carry this over so very clearly and starkly in Owen, who is a far more pacif, rudderless character:

"...there's something very interesting about a 12 year old boy growing up in a world where he's bullied so mercilessly that he deserves revenge but he does not know what to do about it. He's so helpless, and how could he not be? He's only human. He has those feelings. And yet the world around him is telling him those are evil thoughts and that they mean he is evil.Because there's none of that within us, we are fundamentally good. And wouldn't he not understand any of that and feel lost?" (4)

This sounds interesting, a summary of a fully formed character and context. But this is not particularly the character of Owen that we meet. We do not really see him being told that his thoughts of revenge are evil. Keeping this quote in mind, when Owen calls his father and asks if he believes in evil (neatly, the father is so self-obsesses he thinks this is just Owen's mother poisoning the boy against him), perhaps we are meant to sense Owen's confusion about his own desire for violent revenge, although it is all so vague that we might feel he is simply referring to Abby, who he has discovered to be inhuman. This reference to "evil" also seems paricularly American, as if American horror can only see monsters and violence in terms of an abstract, religious context, which the original sources are very particular about side-stepping. But Owen's reference to "evil" is a non-starter and barely contributes to what comes after.

What Reeves does offer that is new is something not found in either the novel or the Swedish adaptation: in place of an eerie, distressing locker room scene, a botched murder attempt, we get an action set-piece: it is a fairly breath-taking and scary car crash as viewed from within the vehicle, and it is probably the only truly original and virtuoso set-piece “Let Me In” has. The other set-pieces mostly copy, paste and add more gore. In his “Little White Lies” review, Adam Woodward waxes that “Let Me In” is “bloody and unabashed”; that the “eerie quietude so deftly composed by its predecessor is here ousted by bloodcurdling screams and eye-watering violence” (5). Perhaps I am jaded from too many modern European and Asian ‘extreme’ horrors, but I cannot say I saw much of the bloodcurdling, the screaming and eye-watering violence, or no more than the average modern horror. Nevertheless, “Let Me In” is probably bloodier than "Let The Right One In". By the time we get to the pool scene, wondering if perhaps this version will be able to pull out a different angle, what we get instead are a thick wodge of horror orchestra and simply more limbs and blood in the pool, and therefore none of the sheer originality of Alfredson’s careful use of sound, angle and hints. So of course it would be possibly impossible to out-do the original pool scene ~ a total, horror classic ~ but to simply trace over the original and add more bloodiness… was that even trying? Sometimes more blood simply seems desperate. And here, again, Reeves misses the tiny details that mean everything: the apparent and increasing confusion of cruelty and conscience of the main bully’s henchmen; the way Eli leaves just one alive, traumatised. And then, in closing somehow, someway, the brilliant openness and ambiguity of the original ending feels narrowed, somehow explained and less troubling (and Hakan’s birthmark is another groan-worthy cue that undoes much of the mystery once it appears in some old photos Owen sees). It has less resonance because the rest is a more confirming, more straightforward telling of a modern classic. And then the strings swell.

It has to be said that Giacchino’s score is a terrible offender. It cues in every emotion, every horror as if worried we just aren’t getting the undercurrents. And in that score, as well as the abbreviated title, we find everything that “Let The Right One In” was not.

++

It must be noted that "Let Me In" is the first film from the revived Hammer Studio Brand. Not a bad start, even if it seems a safe bet to cash in on a previous established title. Hammer was, after all, a certain kind of exploitation. Welcome back then. Better than Amicus' return with "It's Alive".

(1) David Jenkins review for “Let The Right One In”, Time Out Film Guide 2011, (ed. John Pym, Time Out Guides Ltd, London, 2010) pg. 609

(2) One friend called this version of the knifing-the-tree scene embarrassing, badly acted and executed.

(3) Another friend feels that Moretz is badly cast and that this scuppers the whole film.

(4) Matt Reeves interview by Jonathan Crocker, Little White Lies Magazine, issue 32 nov/dec. pg. 76

(5) Adam Woodward, "Let Me In" review, Little White Lies Magazine, issue 32 nov/dec 2010, pg.77

"The Road"... and the cracks in it

Haha, Philip Challinor - the excellent author and sharp-edged political commentator - takes a chunk out of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". He is right. I find myself being in the camp of being a fan of "The Road", and remaining a fan, even though the perceptive and enlightening criticisms of it that I have read seem totally correct also. Naturally, part of the issue is that Cormac McCarthy is a huge literary name and that he receives the kind of praise and worthiness that surely needs to be taken down a peg or two. [1] I dig McCarthy. But Challinor is very right on the issue of the moral challenges of the novel: namely, that if you are looking for that, "The Road" cops out. What follows, then, is my acknowledgement of Challinors correct deconstruction of "The Road", or at least its lofty status, and also my defence, rationalisation and allowances of the novel as a fan. I am hoping not to lapse into excuses.

I like that Challinor puts "The Road" in its proper context - science-fiction, if not horror - and grades it accordingly. Challinor's opening is a fine slice of iconoclasm:

"If you'll pardon the blasphemy, Cormac McCarthy's The Road is not a very good book. It is not an uncompromising vision of the Apocalypse; it is not a brutally realistic vision of the end of civilisation; it is not more frightening than the most frightening horror story; it is not more convincing than the best science fiction; and it is not a brilliant allegory of parenthood in the dangerous twenty-first century."

And here we shall differ, because I think it is and remains a good book, despite the flaws. Challinor's key argument seems to me to be that it does not go far enough; or rather, does not go far enough to warrant it's reputation of incomparable bleakness. Whenever a true moral dilema comes up, McCarthy throws in something new to divert the true test of the father's "goodness" and paternal love. He never really has to decide should I kill and eat another human being to keep myself and my child alive?

To me, "The Road" is a little by-way off of the true uncomprosing, brutally realistic vision of the Apocolypse and one of the most chilling horror stories and allegories ever: Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead", which I consider to be one of the greatest slabs of horror and humanitarian writing in genre fiction. Yes, I am going to add ever to that too. I have a hard time imagining how McCarthy might have stumbled onto "The Road" without at least someone having mentioned "The Walking Dead" to him. But it is then not so much the plot and its convulutions that generate the truth of the grim reputation of the novel so much as the context, conceit and sparseness of prose that create the harshness. It is in the atmosphere and execution. The feel of the novel alludes to the worst happening to the father and son at any moment, even if the magic of storytelling intercepts at just the right moments to pull them back from the brink. This aftertaste of a crumbling natural world and civilisation holds up long after the convenience of discovering a bunker stuffed with food (which, of course, is a moment designed also to provide our protagonists with a moment of reprieve and civility: for the father, it is the memory of civility and for the son a fleeting introduction. It is meant as a contrast to the outside world, evidently, and the episode would perhaps be successful at this if the father was faced with scenes that truly test his humanity. Just how hungry are they? We don't see them at the stage of eating algae or dry leaves for sustenance, for example). The mood triumphs.

Challinor does not believe that the boy would be the herald of the virtue in a world overrun by cannibals. Challinor on the scene where the son chastises his father for the way he treats a thief that tries to steal from them: "A child in a highly dangerous post-apocalyptic landscape, with only its father to rely on, would join its father in humiliating and murdering the thief, and give the corpse a good kick in the face to show it just how good the good guys can be." But, indeed, not every scenario has to be that way, surely? Not every child needs to be barbarous to make a point, and surely the challenge McCarthy sets himself is not to have a barbaric child, and the quest his father undertakes to keeps him from that barbarism. But I would say that Challinor presents an unassailable argument as to why McCarthy fails this challenge: as he puts it, something always comes along to circumnatigate the father away from the truly messy choices.

Again, I see no need to turn every child into a stray from "Lord of the Flies" in such a scenario, and I can swing with the idea that, with only his father's evangelical stress on being "the good guys" and keeping him away from any other survivors, the son may well find himself the bearer of conscience and the desire for a better world that came before... especially when: something always comes along. I would also suggest that the paradox of children is that they are as innately sweet as they are barbaric, and that some fall more one way that the other due to character, environment, influences, etc. They are naturally as fascinated with being good as they are with bad behaviour.[2] Under the sole, stifling influence of the father, why should this not be so for the son?

My conclusion is doubtlessly not going to satisfy detractors, and probably not some fans either, but in light of Challinor's accurate squewering of its Achilles' Heel, I read "The Road" more as a fairy-tale. A fairy-tale in its rendering of the son as a "pure" character, as the father as a knight of sorts, both travelling in a world of monsters. A fairy-tale in that something always comes along, that convenience and coincidence always strike where most appropriate (like in those good old canonical classics!). Challinor feels it fails as an allegory, but I don't think it fails consistently or completely. For just a moment, I doubted someting would come along at the end. Of course it did and anything else would feel unbearable or take a longer novel to resolve. A more devastating ending would have the son falling into cannibalism - either as victim or feaster. As it is, he has to rely upon something always coming along which, for myself, I do not believe is such a cosy coda. But I believe it works as fairy tale, although detractors may see this as excuse-making and fans may see this as a challenge to its lauded verisimilitude.

As Challinor states, you have to go to, say, Harlan Ellison's seminal "A Boy and His Dog" to find the real moral dilemma of this scenario faced. This ground has been well covered before in science-fiction and horror, and by McCarthy himself. I propose that what was seemingly new and transcendant about "The Road" for many was that they had not read the key genre fiction that mattered, that had gone before... if they read genre fiction at all. "It's a horror novel!" I would tell people, because I read in "The Road" something that I have seen evident in mainstream cinema: the appropriation of horror motifs and excesses that had previously been found only in cult and b-rated cinema. I can see "The Road" as a crossover success, from the lowly sewers of the horror genre to the bookshelves of the literati. The literati, of course, ought to slum it a little if they liked this stuff. I recommend "The Walking Dead".

So Challinor is right, but I am a fan and, making allowances or not (as you must do with any work of fiction) I believe "The Road" still stands as an important work of post-Apocolyptic speculation, for its atmosphere, prose and crossover status if nothing else.

~~

I recommend Phillip Challinor's anthology "Radical Therapies". The first story, "The Little Doctor" in particular is a fine example of how he deals with ethical challenges.

~~

[1] I do not like Picador's new packaging of McCarthy's novels. The cover is a stack of words: the novel title stands out, surrounded by lines extolling the brilliance, importance, etc., of said novel. In the case of "The Road": "a work of such terrible beauty that you will struggle to look away." I will? Really? Jesus, that's a tall order and deserving of a kicking. Challinor's review certainly cleans out the works to get some perspective back into viewing the book's weaknesses and strengths. Blurb has replaced art and design on the cover. It is as if you can simply congratulate yourself and take yourself out for a celebratory meal just for buying it.

[2] I recently watched "The Girl Next Door" and was struck how the film and Jack Ketchum's source novel credibly presents a throughly good character faced with the potential of his own ability and complicity in torture and inhumanity. His goodness is innate and wins through, but not in a way I consider to be trite: characters of Goodness can be wearisome, but they do not always have to be so, for they can represent natural moral awareness, empathy and rightness of action. I believe it is possible to see the son in "The Road" in this light also, and that such a character does not necessarily have to be the representation of natural childhood cruelty; one might also argue that that might have been the easy characterisation and certainly the novel would have fallen into into the exploitation/horror genres more visibly.

My "favourite" horror films of the last 5 years... (2005-2010)

Having been given this challenge by a friend of mine, I was surprised to find I got my list up pretty quickly. The list soon overran, but let's go with the primary ten first:

"Let The Right One In" (2009)
"Martyrs" (2009)
"[.Rec]" (2007)
"The Descent" (2005)
"The Orphanage" (2007)
"Ils/Them" (2007)

"The Mist" (2008)
"The Road" (2009)
"Hansel & Gretel" (2007)
"Halloween" (2007)

And then/Honorary mention:
"Wolf Creek" ("2005")
"Vinyan" ("2008")
"The Hills Have Eyes" (2006)
"Dek Hor"
"28 Weeks Later" (2007)

What do I divine from this list? That 2007 was a bumper horror year. That I really dig the grimy neo-realism of the Twenty-First century extreme horror wave. That a lot of "video nasty" era trimmings are now mainstream. That I really like the fairytale horror aesthetic too. I'm not big on happy endings either. ...Also: I think I missed some good Asian horror and probably a bunch of under-the-radar b-horrors I missed also, the kind you would stumble upon in the golden era of the highstreet video store.

I believe that "Wolf Creek" was also better than its detractors say. Half the films in the list above have key problems, but few films don't. I have seen "Hansel and Gretel" accused of a thin story (not really), and "28 Weeks Later" has calamities triggered by dumb character behaviour, but... well... sometimes a film is good enough for allowances and forgiveness to be given. For example, "28 Weeks Laters" injects a welcome seriousness and attention to mounting fear that push it beyond its formula; plus an opening that may well bustle for "fantastic opening sequence" position with "Dawn of the Dead" (2004).

"28 Weeks Later" comes from my 'fun horror' pile, and I note that there is not enough from this pile that made the list; modest films that I felt transcended its format through execution and gusto (No, I wouldn't count "Zombieland" and "Shaun of the Dead" appears to be 2004; "30 Days of Night" (2007) is enjoyable enough but ultimately evaporates upon reflecction). This "fun pile" has little to do with humour and more to do with the enjoyment of genre tropes well presented. "The Mist" starts and runs as fun and - though there are plenty who did not like it - that ending shoves it off the deeper end into something far more troubling and vital. More fun: The "Orphanage" scores for having a couple of scenes that genuinely gave me the scares and having a genuinely heartbreaking explanation at the end... like "Hansel and Gretel", it overcomes weaknesses through beautiful execution and simple allegiance to the ghost story, moving into pure storytelling. "Hansel & Gretel" could very well be in a tie with "Dek hor", an equally creepy/sweet and beautifully executed ghost story.

Not since "The Blair Witch Project" has hand-held camera felt so vindicated and brilliantly utilised as in "[.Rec]", a point-of-view stance that dragged the viewer deeper and deeper until backing itself into a corner of the genuinely nightmarish. It also allowed for wonderful long takes. An excellent formal approach at the service of the genuinely scary unfolding zombie tale (and you can keep your "Cloverfield"). "The Descent" had a similar shrinking into a nightmare-space trajectory, and ended up a bizarrely emotional experience, seeming from out of nothing more than the standard monster movie dilemmas - something so few manage.

Blahblahblah "torture porn", etc. "Martyrs" and "Ils" took few prisoners. Both felt infused with genuine social awareness, commentary and outrage - especially "Martyrs", whereas contenders such as "Frontiers" felt forced and probably hollow and "Shaitan" felt ultimately undernourished. Both "Martyrs" and "ils" were scary for different reasons.

"Haut Tension" felt like a good con trick, but a con trick nontheless, but director Alexandre Aja scored better with me with "The Hills Have Eyes"; perhaps not as 'clever', but a more straightforward, gruelling, silly and grimy remake of the Craven original that holds up well as a nasty piece of gore-and-scares.

My feelings towards "Halloween" remain: it will stand future scrutiny.

Yes, I am calling "The Road" a horror film.

I suspect "Vinyan" could well find weakenesses in one of the top ten and take it's place; upon reflection the film reveals strength and strength and odd places for the ghost story (yes?) that feels pretty damned original and authentic.

As a mixture of post-modern horror and pure story, "Let The Right One In" is sublime. The horror genre at the height of its abilities. I need say no more.

THE ROAD

1: "the text…" 1:
According to director John Hillcoat, Cormac McCarthy felt that the voiceover in the film adaptation of his novel "The Road" was "indispensable".[1] It isn’t. It is another example of superfluous narration that gives the impression of behind-the-scenes concerns that the audience does not get the set-up without it spelt out to them. And this is a tricky set-up. The world has fallen apart, nature is crumbling, burning, dying all around and humanity has been lost. There are people, but humanity is in very, very rare supply. Into this world, a couple have a boy, a child who has not known the civilisation, wildlife and bright colours of the world that has been before. This world is full of falling trees, ash and cannibals. The woman cannot bare to live in such a world, and the man is left to spend his days desperately defending his son and preparing him for the worst. Which includes teaching the boy to shoot himself should it become necessary.

McCarthy’s novel is a true horror novel, terrifying in its depiction of a human race in its death throws of paranoia, distrust, violence, cannibalism and desperation. This then is the last brick separating a person from the inhumane: cannibalism. The "good guys" are those that don’t resort to it, but the good guys are in rags, increasingly frail and ill and dependant upon sheer luck and suspicion to get through. These too may not be enough, or ultimately right. Pretty early on, McCarthy indicates that this is a world where the worst will happen. The fragility of the boy and the fears of the man are upsetting and scary, reminding the reader of their mortality and helplessness against overwhelming threats. McCarthy does not write with the density of, say, his Border Trilogy, nor really with the stripped down efficiency of "No Country for Old Men". Rather he whittles his sentences down into prose-poem, a skeletal dance of vignettes and stark repetitions. But father and son argue, and through this we see that the boy is one of the last carriers of conscience. Conscience and kindness are the ultimate salvation McCarthy offers in a Godless, imploding, violent world.

This prose contains an illusive magic of grim poeticism and precision that does not carry over into voiceover. Hillcoat creates some stunning end-of-the-world visuals with isolated cabins, dead docks with tomblike ships, endless bleak roads and end-of-nature scenarios such as the man and boy caught in a falling forest, or the bleak litter-covered beach drained of colour. There have been so many faux-poetic and unnecessary narrations aspiring to what McCarthy achieves on page that when spoken it feels the same, and ultimately unnecessary. All the brutal beauty of the words are conveyed by the film visually, and that is as it should be.

2: "as the world eats itself…"
It probably looks just as you imaged as a reader. Ironically, in rendering beautifully stark vistas successfully, this may actually be one of the keys to Hillcoat’s adaptation’s weakness. It stands alone as a great and uniquely downbeat film to come from the Hollywood machine - typically and predictably, they seem to have had problems knowing how to market it - but somehow the grey visual splendour and the somewhat sentimental musical cues by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis compromise much of the ruthlessness of McCarthy’s original text. The majority of reviewers find the film lacking in comparison, but isn’t that usually the way, nine times out of ten, with adaptations? There is much damning with faint praise, as with Phillip Kemp:

"Still, [McCarthy’s] tone, that elusive tone, is absent. If the film misses the resonance, the sad deep anger of McCarthy’s work, it’s a creditable shot at it; but for one of the most powerful and original novels of the past decade, creditable doesn’t quite cut it." [1]

But there is so much that rings right in the film, and taken aside from its inspiration, it’s such a grand achievement in itself that it is hard to see how it might have been improved upon. It is one of the definitive post-apocalypse/post-civilisation texts ever written. Just as McCarthy deprived his modern westerns like "All the Pretty Horses" of pleasurable machismo and vengeance fantasies, and just as he stripped "No Country for Old Men" of the same plus the thrill of a showdown, in "The Road" he deprives the end of the world of the survivalist thrills and big special effects so common in, say, Hollywood disaster epics. All this is to force the action of the novels to give way to the metaphysical and the increasing interrogation of violence; of its justifications, its effects, its catharsis and randomness, to lay it naked. In "The Road", there is very little else but the fear of what people will do to one another in order to survive. And then, later, you realise that it is more about what someone will do to protect the ones they love.

It also shares much of the same feel and despair as Robert Kirkmans’ seminal zombie-survival magnum opus "The Walking Dead", possibly the most genuinely traumatic graphic novel/comic serial ever written (and illustrated by Charlie Adlard). With landmark texts such as Richard Matheson’s "I Am Legend" and Harlan Ellison’s "A Boy And His Dog", there are a lot of open horror and action motifs. But it would surely backfire for Hillcoat to have upped the horror ante - we have seen Romero’s living dead and ‘crazies’, after all - or to have spiced up the thrills with Mad Max homages. You can keep your "2012", "The Day After Tomorrow" extravaganzas. Kemp feels the unforgettable cellar of horror is bungled by Hillcoat, but again I would suggest that Hillcoat understands that McCarthy wants the horror of it, but not the Horror Genre gruesome delight of it, which would veer dangerously into neglecting the humanity of the skeletal cellar victims. It is the screams that come soon after this seen that are unforgettable. (Then again, the flare gun death is sure to burn itself into your memory).

3: "and the end of the world…"
McCarthy is barely even interested in the bigger picture; well, he is in metaphysical terms, but what remains brightest here is in reducing the struggle for humanity to what is essentially a two-man chamber piece. We don’t need to know the back story as to why everything is turning to dust. There are brief side-characters. There is a great fireside conversation between the man and Robert Duvall as Ely, an old man, but many of the encounters become distressing by succumbing to violence, distrust and humiliation. The flashbacks try to open things up a little, but they feel mostly like intrusions into the pale austerity of the rest of the film. Mostly, it is for Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-MacPhee as man and son to carry the film, and they do. Mortenson is convincingly haggard, with the trademark flare still in his eyes, and although Smit-MacPhee never looks emaciated enough, his baffled vulnerability and fledgling defiance are palpable. The rapport is convincing and if you are going with the story, your heart is sure to be broken.
Hillcoat says:

"Cormac said that it’s a book about human goodness. It’s frustrating when people label film as bleak because the bleakness is just a backdrop. Unfortunately, everyone seems to focus on the backdrop. … The gestures towards hope that the film makes, the finding of the Coke can, the frolic in the fountain are that much more special because of the tremendous obstacles that the characters are up against" [3]

Well yes; the obstacles are that very bleak backdrop which renders those moments "more special"; they do not exist without one another. It is one of the wonderful mysteries of this story that it is as cathartic and emotionally rewarding as it is, despite or/and because of the dark context. But it seems Hillcoat has surely missed the irony in choosing the finding of the Coke can as a moment of hope - really? A potential symbol of the very civilisation that potentially brought about the end of the natural world? Perhaps the definitive symbol of American capitalist branding decadence? But I am surely being facetious: Hillcoat is sure to mean that the Coke represents a world of flavour and colour that has been lost. Myself, I prefer the moment where the boy stares at the mounted head of a stag: although little is made of the moment, we can fathom for ourselves that he has never seen such a thing before and the fascination it must hold for him. No, that is not a moment of hope, but it seems to me to perfectly capture the void between the boy’s world and everything the man knows to be lost. It’s a quietly powerful and upsetting moment and is surely the film at it’s unforced best.

It may not exceed the novel, but "The Road" is an excellent rendition. An besides, it does not have to: it has to stand by itself, and it does. Once taken aside from the daunting original text [4], Hillcoat’s film will undoubtedly stand the test of time as one of the most uncompromising and humane of American films.
***

[1] Jonathan Romney, "The Wasteland", Sight and Sound magazine, February 10, volume 20 issue 2, pg.76
[2] Phillip Kemp, "The Road", review, Sight and Sound magazine, February 10, volume 20 issue 2, pg.76
[3] Jason Wood, "Ashes to Asphalt"; Curzon magazine, issue 18, January-February 2010; editor: Nadia Attias; AquatintBSC, pg. 31
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[4] I am a McCarthy fan, and I read often how important "The Road" is, how remarkable the prose is, that it is one of the most relevant novels of the decade, etc, and very little of this would I disagree with; or at least I do not care to find much fault with it. Again: I thought it an excellent work of horror and humanity. But my friend Omar has written a hilarious and accurate parody of McCarthy’s style in "The Road", one which also reveals how its repetitions, cadence and economy are vulnerable to readings of pretension, ponderousness, and cul-de-sac progression. I don’t agree, but the satire is also sharp and amusing. I wish to share some of this here, because I dig it, with Omar's permission: full text here: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=392354316&blogId=454606104

Review of Cormac McCarthy’s: The Road

On The RoadThe man picked up the little book. He read it. It was slow. Very slow. Slow as falling ashes. It didnt matter how big they made the fonts. Or how wide the margins and gutters. Or how large the spaces between the lines. It was long. Very long. And slow. Like ashes. And as he trundled his way through the little book he thought This is a piece of crap. What does trundle mean? the little book asked.
I dont know.
You dont know.
No.
Is it a good word?
It cost a lot of money.
A long time ago.
A long time ago.
How much?
Twenty five cents.
Was that a lot?
That was a lot.
For a word.
Okay.
Okay.

And he trundled through the little book.
You said that word again.
I know.
Its okay.
Okay.

And he kept trundling through the little book. Even turning the pages was slow. Slow as death. Slow as ashes on your face. Time was slow. It was especially slow when reading the little book. But he kept trundling through the little book because two friends recommended it the same week. Not that he thought it would ever get better after the first ten pages. He knew it wouldnt. He wasnt seeing it through for hope but curiosity. And as he trundled through the pages they seemed to turn very quickly but very slowly at the same time.
You keep saying that word.
I know.
Im scared.
Yes. I know.
Do we have to keep reading this?
Yes.
Because were the good guys?
Yes. Because were the good guys.
I want to quit.
Youre scared.
Yes.
Dont be scared.
Okay.
Okay.

And as the man trundled through the little book he realized there was something deliberate about it. It was almost like the little book was going to curl up and die every few pages. But it didnt. There was always a little miracle. The little book would suddenly stumble over a few thousand words. Perhaps hidden in a cellar. Perhaps in a kitchen. And then he would feed the little book and give it a bath. But even a little trudgerous almost titillation couldnt save it. Trundlous.
Sorry.
Trundlous.
Its okay.
Okay.

Deliberateness was hiding there. It was in the short sentences. In the occasional twenty five cent word. In the deliberate spelling and punctuation errors. In the obvious spelling mistakes someone missed. In the tedious repetitive sentence constructions. In the formatting. In the word count. Yes. The word count. It seemed like the little book was only trundling along to reach a word count. A promise. Maybe to an editor. Maybe a publisher. Maybe a lawyer. Or wife. Or debt collector. Or film maker. Anyway the man soon realized he couldve written this turkey himself in a weekend and he was insulted. Very insulted.
Youre exaggerating again.
Yes. I am.
You promised not to do that.
Okay.
You wont do it anymore.
I wont do it anymore.
You promise.
I promise.
Whats a turkey?
Whats a turkey?
Yes.
An ugly bird.
Theres never going to be anymore are there?
I hope not.
Im scared.
Dont be.
Okay.
Okay.