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| Alluring vampires |
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| Hideous zombies |
I shall begin my rant with The Evil Dead, which has got low budget written all over it. The same bookcase lands on a man several times. The cabin is substantially bigger on the inside. The zombies die by turning into Plasticine while plastic flies crawl over them. The screenplay is truly dreadful. The acting is such that it's more believable when they're being zombies.
Not only is it cheap, but it's also nasty. A woman is raped by a tree. Really. Another woman is stabbed through the heel with a pencil. Several bodies are badly mutilated. The nastiness doesn't even make sense. Why are the trees aroused? Why is the first thought that comes into your head when you're possessed to attack people with stationary?
There is some glimmers of hope though. For a start, without The Evil Dead, there would be no The Cabin in the Woods. The films are practically identical. There's a trapdoor that randomly opens at a key moment, a mysterious book which summons all kinds of strangeness, an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere and five students who will all die in horrible ways. The only difference is that The Cabin in the Woods is a knowing spoof and has a Truman Show cleverness about it, I have a nasty feeling that the makers of The Evil Dead were trying to be serious.
However, as our hero is attacked continuously by his now hilariously demented possessed friends, I began to find the film quite fun, and (dare I say it) I was hoping that he wouldn't be possessed or eaten. The swinging chair that continuously knocked against the cabin at crucial moments was a nice detail, and in some places the suspense was managed quite well. In fact, by the end, I sort of understood why it was a cult hit.
But, horror is just around the corner, quite literally. There's a remake. And this time it's got fangs. As I began to watch the trailer, I was warned that it was for mature audiences only, and by the end I agreed. The possessed now lack the silly make-up that made the original like some surreal cheese-induced dream rather than true unpleasantness. One of them cuts their tongue in two with a knife (why?). And then it dawned on me that in its day, The Evil Dead was nastiness for the sake of nastiness, and all that's happened is that its been adapted for a desensitised modern audience. But on the plus side, the acting looks a lot better (the soppy scenes where Bruce Campbell fails to mutilate his girlfriend were laughable and had zero emotional impact in the original).
And so I turned to Lost Boys: The Tribe, in the hope of reviving my faith in the horror genre. The Lost Boys made vampires rock and roll, and I admit, probably played a large part in spawning the Twilight films. But it was the natural progression for vampire films. Dracula embodied the fear of shady foreigners, and expressed a subconscious desire to break away from traditional moral constraints. Now, it's about remaining in the wild days of one's youth, and taking teenage bad behaviour to savaging unsuspecting women on beaches.
To be completely honest, I can hardly remember the original, I watched it years ago. But what I do know is that it wasn't as bad as this lack-luster sequel. It was made twenty years on from the eighties original, and two hugely annoying siblings move to a town with an unusually high vampire population. Through sheer carelessness (never accept a hip flask from a shady man with silly hair) both end up being vampires as well. The acting is utterly terrible. Angus Sutherland makes a reasonable job at being surfer-vampire-dude Shane, but even he isn't totally convincing. Corey Feldman is hugely irritating as the utterly silly vampire hunter Edgar Frog, who I remember as being much less strange when he was twenty years younger. Gabrielle Rose is amusing as Aunt Jillian, but she gets so little screen time that she has no hope of counter-balancing the dreadful acting smothering the film from all corners.
There's gratuitous nudity (you lose count of how many women flash their breasts at you by the end) and pointless sex scenes. A lot of it feels awkward due to the poor acting. The climax is completely disappointing, the supposedly invincible vampire tribe are defeated within minutes. The whole thing makes you wonder why they bothered. In one of the reviews I read, an angry man talks of the film "raping his childhood", much like one of the trees from The Evil Dead.
But, as ever, there are glimmers of hope amongst the sheer dreadfulness. The best line of the film is when Nicole is repulsed by her thirst for blood because she's a vegetarian. And to be honest, the screenplay isn't that bad and the directing is actually quite good, with some sleek, arty shots.
In the end, you can forgive both films for being dreadful because at heart neither are meant to be taken seriously. It was naive of me to assume that I would get a decent film out of evil tree demons and adolescent vampires. Despite this minor setback however, I shall persist with the horror genre, and see if there is anything to be salvaged from within the gore, nastiness and amateurish acting.
TO BE CONTINUED....
The Evil Dead: 3/10
Lost Boys: The Tribe: 2/10
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