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

Lunar Engine: live acoustic EP

I don't usually post about my band here, but here is a freebee of an acoustic set from summertime Berlin.

Please help yourself to some downloads!

Lunar Engine Live & Acoustic at art.gerecht Berlin. by Lunar Engine

"...and dead in winter" - published

I am quite chuffed to announce my first venture into self-publishing. As a survivor of bad adolescent angst-poetry - a habit I have tried to drag out from the soul-sucking cosmic monster of ego and into some form of maturity and, damn it, coolness! - I have put together a collection of 50 verses/poems (whichever sounds best to you) and 12 black and white photographs in a collection called "...and dead in winter". Preview below. Cheers!

Cinema is dead. And too slow.

So having watched Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon", I inevitably flipped over to rottentomatoes.com to see what others thinks. Or, as I like to think of it: let's see if my opinion and thoughts on a film can take a pounding by those less and more in the know that myself (mixture of ego and an insatiable desire to learn seems to be my motivation). Sometimes, my mind gets changed a little; a lot of the time I wonder if I was actually watching the same film as the reviewer. Occasionally. what I consider to be wrong evaluations - extremes of negative or slobbering hype - can burst my appreciation of a film like a frog in "The Reflecting Skin". Recently, I was shocked to discover that a truly reaching, probably highly insightful and definitely important horror film like "Martyrs" had received very little respect and praise; and then that Jane Campion's "In The Cut" - which I found to be flawed but very credible and worth discussing - also received disgust and somewhat sneering dismissal. A gorgeous effort such as "House of Voices" also took a pounding - for why, I ask? Didn't the reviewer just see the same film I saw (you know that feeling)? Maybe I was wrong to thoroughly enjoy and respect it. Hell, it's enough to damage one's highly regarded self-opinion, or at least cast shaky ground beneath. Luckily, I don't expect my films or movies to be flawless, so that helps, but... No, those are good horrors/thrillers, and I know all I need to know to defend them.

But anyway, firstly, I am fully aware of being just another blogger with opinions, and I don't have academic credentials in film (I do in Literature and History, so I hope that counts for something), and no one pays me, so bearing that in mind, I'll continue...

SLOW!

... So a key complaint, when glancing over opinion for "The White Baloon", is that it is slow. Or, as I like to imagine it, adopting petulent wine: sllloooowwww. As in, Why is it so slllooowww?? I don't know, it's like the critics have barely seen a non-English language film. God knows what they would do with "Satantango" (and look here for an excellent discussion of Bela Tarr's film and the meaning of long, long takes and long, slow films). As far as grievances against films go, I don't give much credit that 'slow' is automatically a failing, that 'slow' is always negative by default, although the implication always seems to be that slow is problematic, if not derogatory. I usually see it as pacing. Often I find what others complain as slllooowww, I call stately. I find it absorbing; that the film is breathing; that there are spaces, often for contemplation, or simply to sit back and wallow in the visuals, in the story, in the suspense, etc etc. I often find that many 'deleted scenes' on dvd extras that are cut due to 'pacing' could quite happily have stayed in... Terence Davies' "House of Mirth" was a victim of this. These extra scenes, the quiet digressions, I often find give breadth, fuller context, meaning, characterisation, and so on. Not always, evidently, but quite often. I probably feel that Jarmusch's "Dead Man" is too long, but that is part of what is it, part of how it absorbs you; and I don't think it is too slow. Pacing is everything, and so many big films fail to trust more measured pacing. "Casino Royale": great pacing; "Quantum of Solace": not so much (although it's a lot shorter, it's too quick).

My friends used to have a running gag that the films I liked were probably Russian and involved three hours of watching a glass on a table.

FAST!

On the other hand, I have also been reading up on the film blogosphere on Oh noes teh death of cinema because of shaky-cam and fast-fast editing. Wintergrass' "The Bourne Ultimatum" seemed to kick this discussion off in earnest. I felt the third Bourne film a solid example of how fast editing and hand-held camera didn't have to necessarily be incomprehensible. Others disagree, but the rooftop chase and final fight that comes at the centre of the film seem to me to an excellent, precise use of contemporary fast-fast aesthetic without actually losing a sense of geography or action - I understood where each of the three runners were in relation to one another all along the chase. It was, I thought, a rare example of this, of attention to geography and physical proximity between characters, and the fact that it was done with contemporary rush-rush editing was more impressive. For the most part, I care little for fast-cut action editing because, well, that geography, context and coherent action all seem to get lost.

The very stateliness of cinema seemed to be under threat, detractor's of fast-fast, shall we say post-MTV, editing seemed to say. Some commenters stating they didn't even watch modern films anymore, that they were pretty much worthless cinema, etc. Of course this is patently not so because there have been a considerable collection of great films worthy of discussion of late, both arty and genre, some mainstream too. Some films use hand-held and mobile (won't say shaky, necessarily) camerawork wonderfully: "The Wrestler" uses mobile camera to follow and keep up with Mickey Rourke, to catch him at both his most unguarded and glorious, angry and benevolent. "28 Weeks Later" had some great prowling mobile comera. Rob Zombie's "Halloween", it seemed to me, had a mobile camera moving around to poke in the white trash grue to then suddenly settle of precisely composed, if lopsided, framing. Yes, I thought, that's what so much mobile camera doesn't think to do. It was both probing and random, then fluid and deliberate.

Too slow. I think that many conflate slow with dull. Dull is the generic, the stereotypical, the weakly conceived, the contrived, the underwritten, the barely trying. Dull is another misogynistic rom-com. Dull is another ludicrous action flick full of daft macho posturing. Dull is another indulgent arthouse film. Dull is... oh, one of the many rudimentary horror films I can't help but try out. Dull has more to do with context than speed.

I think that some may conflate too fast - or too shaky - as undisciplined, dumb, as trash, and not cinema. I thought "The Bourne Ultimatum" was a great sprint and not so stupid. I thought "The Quantum of Solace" was fun, but less cinema and more entertainment, whereas I felt "Casino Royale" to be both in equal measure. Sure, the fast editing of "Aliens versus Predator" was incomprehensible, and that was trash, and I didn't even bother with "Transformers". One of the granddaddies of fast-fast was "Natural Born Killers": no, I didn't think it had much to say, whereas the far slower "Henry: portrait of a serial killer" was a whole other world of insight. Something like "Van Helsing", which is fast, was dull as roadkill because it was just bad. And speaking of roadkill, "Death Proof" was dull because it was indulgent, badly paced and annoying because it was so busy pleasuring itself. "Cloverfield" - which is always going to be mentioned in such a debate - had a great premise but failed to mostly utilise it's found-camera footage convincingly; brilliant at catching glimpses of parts of the monster, but lousy at being consistantly credible (put down the camera and run, you idiot). It carried a lot of hand-held action around tediously executed character drama.

DON'T PANIC! ENJOY!
Myself, I prefer a slow-to-medium pace, which is surely evident from what is written above. Or rather: I like films to breath. I love to sit in a cinema and soak in something like "The White Ribbon". Oh, I may have issues with it, but pacing isn't one. I expect a film like that to take it's time, to keep on going, indeed, not to finish in what seem to be a timely manner. I thought "Idiocracy" was too fast, and wanted it to slow down for more funny digressions of the idiot culture it portrayed; it felt too slight, too short. Sure, sometimes you think, Get on with it! but that is less about pacing than narrative and reveals and simply good writing. I will happily watch mid-temp, middling films with quirks - not every film watched has to be monumental. Or Awesome. Awesome is the correct word, I believe.

To say that cinema is dead is surely to reject the pleasure principal of film, as both cinema (i.e., worthy, serious, exemplary, transcendant) and entertainment (i.e., fun, delightful, trivial, exemplary, transcendant). This, of course, it probably why I will not receive a job in "Film Comment", but I do not believe elevating any art form to the pedastal where elements of enjoyment and fun are lost is a worthy or humane pursuit. Because, you see, I write this blog in case my viewpoint entertains or *deep breath* helps to enlighten someone on a film; this is why I go to other's blogs, after all. To say that you reject modern cinema is, I believe, absurd and only your loss. It does not make you any further right about the canon either. To say a film is too slow usually means you aren't paying attention to what is actually wrong with the content. I don't care: I adore "The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford", because it is recent worthy cinema and it is stately, and I enjoy it for these qualities, amongst others. Its length, pacing and contemporary context are all part of that.

So: the best you can do is to accuse "The White Ribbon" of being slow? And: cinema isn't over - step down and look around a bit. Sure, a lot of mainstram movies - as distinguished from cinema - are generic, intellectually and morally myopic, but hasn't that always been the case? And mobile cameras are just part of the language of film-making now, and there shall be good and bad examples of how this is used.

And of course, you can always punish a film by not watching it. I, myself, have been successfully punishing 99% of American mainstream comedy for decades now. Oh, and "Titanic" too.

"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.

THX 1138

George Lucas, 1971, US

It does feel as if two quite different directors helmed “THX 1138” and “Star Wars”. Not so much that you can’t see where the Stormtroopers, comedy robots, gadgets, slightly detached and simplistic characterisations and the limited colour and hardware palette came from; but it is different enough that “THX 1138” feels like the work of a low-budget, b-movie arthouse auteur rather than inventor of the modern blockbuster franchise cinema. “THX 1138” looks made by a cult director who would go the other way and create further formally experimental genre pieces, rather than the great sweeps and crowd-pleasing pulp sentiment and action of Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vadar. There's even the hint of chill that defines David Cronenberg's earliest works. “THX 1138” also bears the kind of clinical, slightly visionary Dystopian qualities that can then be found in seminal science-fiction literature such as “We” and “Brave New World”, and films such as “The Andromeda Strain” and “The Forbin Project” through to “Code46” and “Eden Log”. With its eerie and disturbing future conceit, with brilliant design and a slightly abstract presentation, "THX 1138" has the appearance of mature, ‘hard’ sci-fi rather than pulp, although it is ultimately as much pulp as, say, “Logan’s Run” and “Planet of the Apes” and the like. Indeed, Lucas opens with a homage to early “Buck Rogers” films before introducing us to his Dystopia, as if to directly say: ‘we started with the passionate adventures of pulp, and we ended up with this.'

It takes a moment for us to even identify whom we shall be following. We are thrown into this world instantaneously by the means of distorted, overlapping dialogue tracks, mostly jargon relating to work; by surveillance and observation camera shots, as well as a gallery of shaven-headed monitors, workers and random civilians whom we can’t particularly distinguish. Walter Murch’s fantastic sound-design demands to be taken seriously as both a character in its own right and as the film’s true triumph: it is omnipresent, simultaneously disorientating and informative, verging on white noise. Lucas is bold in using an almost Brechtian use of disorientating sound track, clone-like appearance of actors, filtering events through other cameras. He is not an artful director - it's like plane prose telling a dense story - but he knows how to frame a shot and not get in the way.

One of the best early shots is that of the surveillance camera view of an accident at a plant in which explosions wipe out several running staff… the figures are distant, unclear, a little pixellated and distorted on screen, and this makes it all the more chilling and real somehow. Watch for the worker who shoves his colleague back into the danger area, shutting the door on him, only to be blown away himself: it is an action shot that achieves verisimilitude and extra horror, rather than thrills, by being viewed one step removed by the audience, via a screen within the screen they are watching.

Best of all, rather than a lot of exposition, or myth-making, Lucas conveys the details of this world through visuals and audio. It is a familiar Dystopian narrative - hapless THX 1138 is the rebel against an oppressed, desensitised society when his house mate LUH messes with his compulsory drug intake and they have forbidden sex - but it is made more abstract and fascinating by being interrupted by tiny interludes and to the incidental workings of the society around our bewildered protagonists. People watch a sports match. A police robot amuses a bunch of kids. People work, walk, step into booths where they make confessions to a Jesus-like picture… which are recorded and monitored, or simply stored away with millions of other confessions (a neat conflation of Catholicism and Big Brother). Even towards the end, Lucas pauses to introduce more details that flesh out the society: Donald Pleasance - as SEN - reminisces with some kids about how when he was a kid, education came in huge bottles rather than the mini-intravenous bottles the children have taped to their arms as they play. This is one of the film’s most successful visual achievements: we see the children as the appear at the top of an escalator, the “lessons” intravenously fed into their arms, conjuring up the image of hospital patients on a conveyer belt, churned out into society. The culmative effect of this visual and aural collage, as Chris Basanti says, is of 'a fractured tone poem".

Finally, we settle upon THX himself, and it is Robert Duvall. The film benefits immensely from a wise cast: Duvall and Pleasance especially know how to work this material. Duvall does much with a limited role, conveying a slow awakening of awareness and character. Pleasance does a neat line in borderline creepiness and befuddlement. Maggie OcOmie manages to squeeze in the film's real source of humanity in the brief time she is on screen as LUH. But performances are not the key to the film's success.

Elsewhere, Lucas creates a whole web of criticism: blundering bureaucracy, stolid police brutality (which has its own plot-free hologram-show for violence entertainment!); faux-passionate law and trial gibberish; the intelligentsia… it’s all here. As ever, police states and conformism are the umbrella targets. Although much of it feels timeless (in the era of the police taser, the police brutality sequences ring especially prescient), Dragan Antulov at Draxblog places “THX 1138” firmly as a result of the 1969s:

“The futuristic underground world is natural progression of everything which was wrong with Western civilisation in 1960s – faceless and bureaucratic state is as oppressive as those behind 1960s Iron Curtain, while the consumerist culture is as tasteless and worthless as in 1960s West.”

Perhaps the best gag is the subversion of the drug culture scare: in this world, it is illegal not to take drugs. Government prescribed and prone to make you a virtual working zombie, of course. All this is a fine elaboration on Lucas' original student short film, "Electronic Labyrinth THX 4EB": this earlier THX has some slightly psychedelic allusions: a slightly hippyish theme song, some flashing lights. 4EB runs through a world of white, concrete and steel, and the powers that be struggle to contain him from afar electronically. The key ingredients, including the ultimately startling and ambiguous final shot, are all present and correct, but the full drollness of this Dystopia is not quite in full view.

"THX 1138" is a very white film: the walls, the uniforms, the shaven heads. When THX 1138 goes across the cell with Donald Pleasance in tow, they are very shocked to encounter a black person. The only black people they know of are the masturbatory holograms of people of colour dancing naked to jungle rhythms and cracking wise on holo-TV. For the moment, let’s sidestep the Lucas' future problematic use of racial stereotypes for alien characteristics (looking at you, Jar-Jar Binks, Yoda, et al). The black man THX meets is a hologram, who has just wandered out of the virtual world to see what the real one is like. It’s a nice enough gag, but what it says about the technology of the world is hard to pin down: that technology has achieved sentience of its own? That the film has suddenly forsaken the realism of its hardware and technology and stepped into fantasy, perhaps? But it also hints at a world where, say, white privilege and prejudice has successfully eradicated people of colour and minorities, reduced them to ghosts. Indeed, the casting seems to bear this out, for it is seemingly populated solely by a pale and bald population. People of colour are relegated to holograms, personifying the baser needs of white people (e.g, sex and humour). But the hologram is not exactly the black comedy relief, thankfully, and in fact brings a warmth to the last act absent from the sterile world. Some end result of white man’s Puritanism and perhaps Conservatism is, then, the Dystopia that THX 1138 lives in.

It is also quite pithy about heroism. THX 1138 isn’t particularly a hero, or a rebel. He comes to his rebellion by accident, but once LUH messes with his meds and he ends up in the shared cell-space, it is pure frustration that initially drives him on. Lucas subverts the idea of the prison by making it ostensibly wall-less and endless white, simultaneously claustrophobic and agoraphobic. Pleasance’s SEN also has designs on THX 1138 and subverts the system to get them to share living space; THX turns him in and this is how they end up in the cell together. SEN talks of revolution and argues with other dissidents and criminals about rebellion, society and what they will do and what it all means. They philosophise and debate and yet do not do the simplest thing, which is what THX ultimately does by getting up and walking out on them. This leads to escape. Thereafter, he seems to run and carry on simply to see what happens. Meanwhile, lagging behind, SEN simply gets a taste of the world beyond and retreats back into what he knows, paralysed by the thought of real adventure and escape.

It is here that the most evident touching-up effect in Lucas’ 2004 Director’s Cut restoration of “THX 1138” appears: Pleasance stumbles upon a CGI bug - which chatters in one of those comedy-like alien noises that Lucas so loves. The CGI seems out of place, a rude anomaly in a retro-classic - but it is not gratuitous, for the bug does at least have purpose: encountering the bug makes SEN back away from the possibility of braving the unknown. Elsewhere, the updated special-effects fall mostly seamlessly into the film, fleshing it out, showing that when a director goes back to tinker and insert the next generation of special effects technology into an old work, it doesn’t necessary need to look like a jarring graft job. 

When I watched “THX 1138” the first few times as a teenager, much of the dark humour was lost on me; at first, for me it was all about a scary prospect of a future society. Now, it is the satire that truly satisfies, and it is this that makes this a film that rewards watching numerous times. ‘THX 1138’ is full of haunting stark visuals and clinically chilling demonstrations of a technologically fixated authority, one that is bureaucratically flawed, as befitting of the best Dystopian science-fiction. The design, aesthetic and agenda are consistent and compelling. For all its starkness, it is loaded with fascinating details and deadpan humour. Unintelligible trials, impenetrable technical jargon, creepy and blundering police robots, workers casually making errors and not taking responsibility for them... In the end, THX1138 escapes simply due to police force budgetary limitations. It is a wonder how the genuinely satirical eye that conceived “THX 1138” disappeared by the time the inane philosophies of “Star Wars” came around. 'It is also interesting that Lucas cannot maintain the grim "1984" tone throughout the movie," John Brosnan writes [1]. Indeed, it is as if Lucas wanted to get this serious stuff off his chest before returning to “Buck Rogers” and getting on with space opera. And, of course, we now know which led to the money.

[1] John Brosnan, "The Primal Screen: a history of science fiction film", (Orbit, Lonodn, 1991), pg. 156

Drag Me To Hell - rerun

Watching "Drag Me To Hell" again I am struck at how thoroughly it works as a portrait of a woman - Christine (Alison Lohman) - apparently traumatised by an eating disorder and self-esteem issues (first review here), . This, of course, is manifest in her delusion that she is being gypsy-cursed and hounded down by a Lamia demon; a delusion compounded by her unfortunate trust in a bunch of con-men mediums and experts in the occult. She wants to be free from mouth-fixated demons and they want her cash.

With a second viewing, it becomes apparent that the Raimi's know exactly what they are doing, because all the clues and cues are there - how the demon appears at stressful moments when reflecting on how she used to be overweight or confronting food; the many down-the-throat violations also tell us a story. Indeed, the banquet of continuity and logic issues make total sense, and only sense, when in the context of Christine's delusions.

And, which I missed the first time, the subtle clues that her boyfriend especially knows that she has mental health issues. "She needs help," he says when her mother says that Christine is sick. Upon a first watch, I thought the fact that boyfriend's mum comments that Christine is sick was just an indication of her bitchiness, but second viewing seems to hint that, well, she knows something, and so does her son and that's why she doesn't approve of their relationship and it's not all about class.

That the film situates the manifestations in Christine's latent and not-so-latent prejudices and class anxieties is also thorough and pretty bold. She's not exactly likeable, but she's in trouble; she is not particulary deep, but she feels real enough. Particular note has to be made of Lohman's performance too and, as ever, the effects work is exemplary.

My initial review shows how I started off a little lukewarm, but coming back to "Drag Me To Hell" reveals that this may be the cleverest Raimi film so far. It is like a Jacques Tournier/Val Lewton film made by Looney Tunes. I can take or leave the slapstick violence, as incidentally enjoyable as it may be, but as a comedy-horror about failing mental health, this has the weight of subtext that truly elevates horror, and shows what horror can do like no other genre. Here's the cliche: demons of the mind. It also means that "Drag Me To Hell" is bona fide tragedy, and for that I like it more than ever.

People call it a classic, but I am no longer about to quibble that so easily, although my reasons may differ.

A Swedish Love Story

A SWEDISH LOVE STORY / EN KARLEKSHISTORIA
Roy Andersson, 1970, Sweden

What is distinguished about Roy Andersson’s portrayal of adolescent love is the respect, the unwavering reverence with which he treats the romance of his young protagonists. We may be amused at their affectation of supposed adult ‘cool’, with their leather jackets and mopeds and miniskirts and attention to make-up and posing, but these are also the core of their evolving characters. There is no denying the confidence with which they carry themselves. It is impossible not to recognise ourselves in them: furtive looks, raw feelings, tenderness. When Par (Rolf Sohlman) receives Annika (Anne-Sofie Kylin) at his family’s country home, he can barely stop smiling to be around her. These are agreeable protagonists, not immediately approachable or conventionally affable, for we will never be allowed access to their full inner-workings; but they are fully rounded characters.

Andersson’s debut wears very little friction between the loose influence of Czech New Wave naturalism and the clearer, infamous stylistic formalism of his later films (""Something Happened", "Songs From The Second Floor", "You, The Living"), although the opening does inform us that this is theatre with the rise of a curtain. Andersson’s obsession with detail serves his young couple well, not only in their dress sense and mannerisms, but also their less guarded mannerisms and casual body-language (e.g., the random way Par clucks his tongue nonchalantly after having been caught romancing in Annika‘s bedroom). It also generates a wholly convincing milieu for them to live in and explore: from nursing homes, clubs and the streets, to Annika’s bedroom and the country retreat. Rarely do films feel so of a time and place without feeling dated.

Andersson’s respect for his protagonists is served further by technique: after a split between the couple due to Par’s humiliation and near unbearable shame at being beaten by another boy, the break-up is resolved in a glorious scene where Par mopeds across the yard back into Annika’s arms. The scene uses a melancholic swell of music, strings that manage not to turn the evident melodrama of the moment trite, but rather serious, heroic and moving. The moment creates a dry humour in evoking those big scenes of reconciliation that resolve so many romantic narratives: he is James Dean, Elvis, whoever, awkwardly jumping off of the moped to rush back to her. But more than this, when they are reconciling, the music swells to drown out their spoken intimacies and the camera steps back from close-up to wide-shot to allow them their privacy. It is a moment of sublime cinematic generosity and regard for the characters.

But once they are at the country home, Andersson retreats from the couple completely and we are left with the adults. Throughout, we have been shown the adults as a counterpoint to the young romantics, apparently to reveal what a loveless adulthood becomes, to show what the teenagers are not, or even what they might become. No, we don’t really believe they will become their parents, but the possibility remains. The adults are tediously angst-ridden and distraught, melodramatic and childish in a way Par and Annika are not. Annika’s parents are trapped in an apparently loveless marriage where the mother sobs and the father is given to pompous declarations of bitterness. With Par’s parents being more settled (regardless of their concerns about ill grandparents and business in a time of economic strife), the dramatic focus falls on Annika’s parents, in particular her father’s self-loathing and boorishness. He is driven to distraction by a sense of failure, his temper and a desire to see his indifferent daughter deliver vengeance on the world on his behalf. This focus seeks to trump the Swedish love story who are conspicuous in their absence - Par and Annika have snuck away to be intimate - and the adult histrionics are crass and far less involving than the delicacies of the teenagers. Earlier, a scene involving installing a pair of swing doors in the house is almost farcical in the way the family turn it into a confrontation of the value of the action and the meaning of life. But later, there is little of the satirical, mocking qualities to the last act, as typical of Andersson’s subsequent films; yet the party hats and bibs provide some welcome surrealism, although this too is slightly at odds with the preceding naturalism. Ultimately, there is the feeling that a wrong-turn has been taken, as if the narrative has wandered into another Bergman-influenced film of broken angst-ridden families, leaving the love story somewhat stranded and an aftertaste of dissatisfaction. Like Par and Annika, we really had little to learn from the adults.

Nevertheless, this remains a towering, beautifully made tribute to first love, to the main protagonists and the range of feeling and intelligence held by youth. A rare film that sees its main characters not so much as puppets and ciphers ruled by narrative, but as the personification of the raw, rare and vital intimacies of adolescent discovery and character; and in that way, and more than that, as people in their own right.

Kick Ass

Matthew Vaughn, 2010, USA

When "Kick Ass" first came out, Mark Millar And John Romita Jnr’s comic was an instant phenomenon. The film came out seemingly when the comic had barely finished. That is, barely finished volume one. It’s concept is simple: what if a comic book nerd took it upon himself to dress up and fight crime in the real world? He tries it out, gets hospitalised a couple of times, has some success when his fighting a bunch of thugs gets filmed and uploaded to Youtube. In fact, he becomes an internet and cultural phenomenon. At this point, there is much blood and guts, some lowkey adolescent humour and wish-fulfilment fantasy and not just a dash of self-loathing. "Kick Ass" looked like it may have something to say. And then the story introduces Big Daddy and Hit Girl and Red Mist and organised crime. The comic moved into "Batman" and "Daredevil" territory. Big Daddy was a "Punisher" like vigilante figure with a pre-adolescent ninja daughter. The defining image of "Kick Ass" became not so much "Kick Ass" in his ski suit, but Hit Girl covered in gore from head to toe.

Which you are not going to see in the film adaptation. Announcements of the film adaptation came early in the comic’s first run (reprints with variant covers were catnip for collectors and fooled others into buying editions they already owned) and my first thought was, How the hell are they going to do that? The fact that Matthew Vaughn’s film - writing with Jane Goldman - is not the total compromise that might have been expected is remarkable. Even the fact that a mainstream film going by a mildly swearing title seems remarkable (that, along with "Inglourious Basterds", has Hollywood ever offered such a mild-sweary-title season?). It surely indicates how the ultra-violence and taboo-breaking of the alternative art scene has gone mainstream. So maybe Dave Lizewski - a.k.a. Kick Ass - is older than I imagined from the comic, and as played by Aaron Johnson he is surely more American every-nerd, and far less ugly and manipulative than his comic book counterpart. But Hit Girl is still an eleven-year-old super-psycho. So: sure, we get a hoodlum being microwaved, but the film simply leaves out much of the hand-on super-gore, and it inevitably has to. Hit Girl barely gets a bloody splatter upon her. We don’t get the nasty "Kick Ass" torture session, complete with his testicles being frazzled. And also, rather than the bloodbath finale of the comic, we get a thrilling and funny and totally comic-book showdown, complete with bazookas and jetpacks. It goes for broke and quietly detaches itself from the potential realistic ties the initial concept promises. So, yes, the film is toned down, but the fact that it is a huge mainstream success is - to repeat myself - remarkable.

The truth is that it was obvious halfway through the first volume that "Kick Ass" really had nothing profound to say about the little guys dressing up and playing at being crime fighters. You shook it and it was hollow, so that it’s phenomenon was based upon the shock-value of under-age killers and buckets of gore and bad taste. It is more "Sin City" crossed with indie coming-of-age tale rather than for fans that really, really want "The Dark Knight" to come true. Rather than engaging with the problematic murderous consequences of vigilantism, with all the grey areas and troubled morality, "Kick Ass" fuelled itself on Dave Lizewski’s good intentions and how cool the unstoppable slaughter-machine Hit Girl was. Recent Batman is frequently more focused on the difficult ethical shadows that he moves in than the ostensibly more realist "Kick Ass". In actuality, Romita and Millar conceived the Big Daddy and Hit Girl storyline first, and then stepped back for the Kick Ass story, which does create some critical distance, but serves mostly to accentuate Lizewski’s loser qualities and envy of real hero-murderers. It left me queasy in never once noticing or questioning any humanity of the bad guys. They were comic book bad guys, useful for humour and body count.

The film adaptation bears all the good and bad points of the comic and holds with the trajectory of becoming increasingly fun but less poignant. What we are in fact left with is good old guilty pleasure exploitation entertainment. Not as clever as it thinks it is, the comic "Kick Ass" remained compelling, mostly for the WTF factor. But not only that, because it also had a couple of neat twists that you may not have been expecting. These twists are lost in the film because the adaptation has so much more bad guy back story: so we know that Red Mist is a villain from the start (and he doesn’t get turned on by torture either, making him a genuine sadist), because we know the bad guy plot to nab the good guys (as dubious as that ‘good guy’ status may actually be); we see Big Daddy and Hit Girl overcome early so that the comic’s surprise that they have actually been caught is also gone. The narrative surprises, therefore, are lost in adaptation.

The film makes up for this with lashing of bonus humour and a comic book aesthetic that stays on the right side of drowning out story. Thankfully it also eschews much of the tedious angst that hobbles Peter Parker and the characters of "Heroes" (the kind that is meant to make them more human, but actually makes them repetitive and wearisome). The first fights Kick Ass engages in both have their moments: in the thrill of the moment, Kick Ass gets knifed and we feel very much thrown back in the real world for a moment; in the second, he shames the thugs into giving up, which is the last time the film will recognise the complexity of confrontations. The fight scenes are thrilling, kinetic and visceral, shocking and fun. Considering how Manga Hit Girl is, Vaughn films and edits in a way that manages to keep her killing sprees all looking within the edges of plausibility, using her size and light weight for her advantage in running up bookcases and slipping under the range of adults. We go with it.

As everybody now know, this is Hit Girl’s film. Everyone else is good - I am fond of Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s geek style (and vengeful geek style hopefully helps nudge him out of the typecasting he has to struggle against since McLovin') and Nicolas Cage puts in another bizarre performance - I always imagined Big Daddy as more Henry Rollins, but Cage turns him into a vengeful comic book artist gone psychotic. But it is Chloe Mortez that makes Hit Girl her own, exceeding what is on the page. She invests Hit Girl with a sweetness and humanity that the comic doesn’t touch. And so we go on to forget how troubling the character concept is and celebrate its outrageousness and Mortez’s dazzling performance. Why shouldn’t girls have some fun and trump the guys for once?

As a piece of superhero geek-and-gore vigilante excess, "Kick Ass" is an instant hit. It is a sunnier version of the comic book source, and a damned site nicer to its put-upon would-be hero. these are not necessarily bad changes. It manages to have it's cake and gorge itself too. When Hit Girl uses night-vision, one can also feel themselves playing the tie-in game. When our heroes are tortured and are about to be executed on television, the audience are glued, and when the TV pulls the plug, everyone just moves over to the internet stream. No one seems bothered by watching, and in fact they seem incapable of not watching, apparently only able to process horror as taboo-breaking entertainment, and apparently never able to pull themselves away from entertainment. It is surely too much to read this as a criticism of the very audience watching. Shock IS entertainment, "Kick Ass" persists, but it doesn't go too deep. And that is exploitation cinema and so somehow it pulls it off. Unencumbered by moral reflection and letting go of the reality shackles early on, it’s a funny, thrilling and totally winning guilty pleasure.

Schock

SHOCK / SCHOCK
Mario Bava, Italy, 1977
a.k.a.: "Beyond the Door II"

It is surely one of the great unsolved mysteries of cinema why Italian shockers feel that free-form funk-rock is the sound of horror. Take the rather good opening tracking shock through a currently deserted house in Mario Bava’s "Shock": we know this is a horror film, so we naturally expect that this will be a place of fear and frights… but the decidedly jamming music accompanying this shot means we should perhaps play air-bass and shake our stuff. Maybe there will be wine and some little cheesy treats to signify European decadence. The impression is often that the score of another film has accidentally walked onto the set of what we’re watching. When this achieves a wonderfully bonkers effect, this is usually Ennio Morricone; when it is contradictory, it is usually some members of Goblin that are responsible. The soundtrack here is by Libra and is, perhaps aside from the theme, for the most part good, atmospheric and experimental in the best way.
Which goes for "Shock" in general. The funky theme song and some slightly stilted dialogue promise the kind of anything-goes, random plotting and narrative that characterise many Italian giallo and horror films, but "Shock" soon tightens up to something more straightforward and haunting. This time, the mishmash of cash-in features actually increases its range and curiosity value: the post-"Omen" creepy/psychic/possessed kid; an apparently haunted house; a woman with amnesia, recovering from a breakdown and increasingly on the verge of another; some psychic supernatural action; a mild giallo murder mystery. Sometimes a film can shake together a pastiche of regular genre motifs and reach for something more, transcending its obvious derivations and generating some originality and fascination. The best b-movies do this. Bava was influenced by Stephen King, but come the end it is equally "The Shining" and Roman Polanski’s "Repulsion". The story also goes that "Shock" was directed by both Mario and his son, Lamberto - but Lamberto never managed anything so otherworldly and surreal on his own.


Although there is probably not enough sustained ambiguity as to whether there really is haunting-possession going on or if it is all in Dora’s mind (Dora being played by Dario Argento’s wife, Daria Nicolodi), "Shock" manages to have its cake and eat it too. It cannibalises all of its influences and builds up a quite a disturbance with a little hysteria and strong nightmare sequences which have the flavour not only of "Repulsion", but also of Ingmar Bergman. Moments such as the plane crash induced by the haunting has more in common with the Seventies psychic phenomenon horrors (e.g., "Patrick", "The Medusa Touch"). There is some surprising subtlety: left unpunctuated by overdone melodrama, a moment such as the child simply telling his mother he has to kill her is left unnervingly un-confronted. Occasionally, Bava truly transcends, as when a love-making scene seems under the touch of a ceramic hand (a masterful shot); or when Dora seems to be caressed by otherworldly ecstasy and forces, her hair flowing as if underwater (apparently filmed using a revolving bed, a simple but mesmerising trick). It is these touches that make "Shock" memorable and distinctive, taking a handful of genre tropes and bringing them altogether with . Throw in some oedipal disturbance on this tale of domestic breakdown, psychics and ghosts and it is quite a full package.

It should be a mess, but the different strands keep pulling at mystery and the unpredictable so that the genre tropes are kept mostly in the air and pulled together with offbeat atmosphere, hanging upon the finely realised, memorable set-pieces. There’s no gibbering finale, just an over-long breakdown, some revelations and the inevitable deaths and a creepy open end.

Fearnet's 10 Greatest Horror Movie Music Themes

Fearnet has a great, note-perfect choice of "10 Greatest Horror Movie Music Themes".

Myself, I am crazy about John Harrison's score for "Creepshow". Also: "Phantasm", "The Amityville Horror" (instant shudders from that music!)... and continuing that choir-like trend, "Children of the Corn".

I don't enjoy the "Friday the 13th" films, but Jason's musical cue is definitely a winner ("Kill!" "Ma!")

I also have a huge crush on Fantomas' "The Director's Cut", in which Mike Patton and esteemed friends re-interpret a bunch of film themes to crazed and wonderful effect. A number of choices are horror-related, not least "Ave Satani".