The Grouchy Editor

James Wan’s haunted-house movie Insidious will put you on the edge of your seat. In fact, if you are like me the film will send you rocketing from your chair and crashing into the theater ceiling like a test pilot who’s accidentally pushed the ejection button.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that, in addition to a skull fracture, you will likely acquire punctured ear drums, a ringing headache, and attention deficit disorder due to the DEAFENING sound effects Wan employs in conjunction with most of his “boo!” scenes.

Insidious, which insidiously apes the plot of Poltergeist, promises to deliver scares and it does, and that’s a simple rule of scary movies that so many of them, inexplicably, seem to forget.  Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman is correct when he says, “Insidious … has some of the most shivery and indelible images I’ve seen in any horror film in decades.”

But it’s a shame that I can’t honestly tell you whether my Flying Wallenda impersonations were due to Wan’s skilled filmmaking or to those shattering decibel levels.  At what point does a film cross the line from artful manipulation to physical assault?

The plot concerns a young couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) with three kids, one of whom mysteriously lapses into a coma.  When things that go bump in the night begin to plague the family, mom and dad pack everyone up and move to a new house.  But the freakish phenomena move with them.

Like most good horror flicks, Insidious is a director’s movie.  The actors are only required to look alternately worried and terrified.  The script might or might not get in the way of the fun.  Insidious screenwriter Leigh Whannell, to my way of thinking, attempts to explain things better left unexplained.  I mean, isn’t it frightening enough to learn that ghosts actually exist and are out to get you, without bringing in the obligatory “expert” (Lin Shaye channeling ghosts, a la Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist) to explain their cockamamie motivations?         Grade:  B

Director:  James Wan  Cast:  Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson  Release:  2011

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“Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.” – Woody Allen

Someone must have mentioned Allen’s quote to “Smith,” the sexually confused hero of the science-fiction/sex romp Kaboom, a movie as screwed up as its young protagonist.

Kaboom is what I’m calling a mumbo-jumbo movie, with equal parts claptrap and hogwash.  It chronicles the sexual misadventures of Smith as all manner of inexplicable, spooky things keep happening to him.  A mumbo-jumbo movie deserves a mumbo-jumbo review, so here you go:

Mumbo:  Watching this film is a bit like watching soft-core pornography:  The filmmakers realized that some sort of story was needed to fill in the gaps between sex scenes, so they tossed in every element from old episodes of The X-Files – murderous cults, voodoo, the paranormal, and … oh yes, the end of the world.

Jumbo:  Lots of skin on display here.  If you are a “boob man,” you will be happy.  If you are a “butt man,” you will be disappointed (see my low grade).  If you are gay or female, you might be pleased.  But everyone will, or should, barf at what passes for a plot.

Mumbo:  The direction is very ambitious, what with having to put on film things like hallucinations, dreams, and the Earth blowing up.  Too bad the special effects budget was nowhere near as ambitious.

Jumbo:  The young women in this movie are all condescending, world-weary, and sarcastic.  The young men are all childlike, stupid, or childlike and stupid.  Sound familiar?  Yes, indeed:  It’s yet another Judd Apatow movie.

Mumbo Jumbo:  There were two quotes in the film that I liked:  Stella – “It’s a well-known fact that dreams are just your brains taking a dump at the end of the day.  They don’t mean anything.”

And:  Smith – “You had something better to do?” Stella – “Uh, sucking a fart out of a dead seagull’s ass?”

There is also a scene in which a dumb, blond surfer dude attempts to fellate himself.  I guess he discovered a way to top Woody Allen, tripling his chances for a Saturday-night date.              Grade:  D+

Director:  Gregg Araki  Cast:  Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Juno Temple, James Duval, Andy Fischer-Price, Nicole LaLiberte, Kelly Lynch,  Roxane Mesquida, Christine Nguyen, Chris Zylka  Release:  2011

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Weird can be good.  As in some David Lynch movies.  Or when Lars von Trier goes on an angry rampage.  Or when David Cronenberg films … whatever the hell it is that David Cronenberg films.

But weird can also be frustrating.  As in, “I don’t understand this story, and it doesn’t seem as though the director does, either.”  Greek filmmaker Giorgos Lanthimos might grasp the meaning of his quirky drama Dogtooth quite well, but its lack of plot and back story make it the kind of film you might enjoy once, but probably not twice.

Here’s what we do learn in Lanthimos’ story:  An unorthodox (to put it mildly) family of five lives in an isolated yet comfortable home.  Father rules with an iron fist, mother enables father, and the three kids – two teenage girls and their brother – are not allowed contact with the outside world – ever.  Mom and dad “home-school” the kids, keeping them in line by feeding them an endless supply of elaborate fantasies, buttressed by the harsh reality that father does not spare the rod.

I suppose this dysfunctional clan is meant as an allegory of the modern family, or as a commentary on some warped aspect of Greek society, but it doesn’t really matter because all we really care about is this:  What manner of weirdness will we witness next from these odd, odd people?

There is a certain perverse enjoyment in watching them.  How will they celebrate the parents’ anniversary?  When the sisters begin sexual relations with each other, how long before their brother joins in?  Who is easier to train, the family dog or the kids?  Dogtooth is never dull.

Lanthimos has said he didn’t want to overly explain things to the audience with this movie.  That’s fine, but was there anything to explain?       Grade:  B-

Director:  Giorgos Lanthimos  Cast:  Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passalis, Anna Kalaitzidou, Alexander Voulgaris  Release:  2009

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The Resident calls itself a thriller, but you have to wonder just whom it intends to thrill.  Certainly not fans of whodunits, since the screenplay reveals who done it early on.  And it assuredly will not give kicks to gore hounds; aside from some hospital operating-room shots, there’s very little in the way of blood and guts.

I suppose “Young Women Living Alone” could be the target audience, although there’s nothing in The Resident that any girl who’s watched more than 15 minutes of the Lifetime channel hasn’t already seen.

No, my guess is that The Resident was green-lit in order to thrill the film’s producers, who might have been on set to witness two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank’s nude bathroom scene – not to mention her frequent scampers clad only in undies.  I say this because The Resident is so similar to the 1982 Morgan Fairchild potboiler, The Seduction.

According to a “reputable source” (Celebrity Sleuth; hey, I’m just reporting here), Fairchild was not happy with The Seduction’s money men.  After filming, Fairchild sued the film’s producer for $12.5 million for “insisting he be permitted to be present during the filming of all [her] nude scenes.”

In that film, sexy Morgan is spied on, peeped at, and creeped out by a seemingly nice young man, who turns out to be not so nice.  In The Resident, there is a really nice guy (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who turns out to be the anti-Prince Charming and who, like his predecessor in The Seduction, peeps a lot, sweats a lot, and creeps us out.

The Resident is not a terrible movie, just one that you’ve seen countless times before.  Watching it is a bit like taking a beat-up Ford to the carwash:  It gets the job done and you get what you pay for, but you are 10 bucks poorer and still stuck with the same old car.       Grade:  C

Director:  Antti Jokinen  Cast:  Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lee Pace, Christopher Lee, Aunjanue Ellis, Sean Rosales, Deborah Martinez  Release:  2011

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