Top 5 Friday: Final Girls

All horror fans know that one of the most important ingredients in a good slasher movie is the final girl. A good final girl goes through an emotional change through the carnage, using her resources to make it to the final showdown against the chainsaw-wielding villain. It's been noted, most specifically in pop culture, that the final girl is sexually repressed and displays more masculine traits that set her apart from her more emotional, feminine friends as they get dismembered left and right. After viewing as many horror movies as I have (both good and bad), I started to think of which horror movie heroines effectively made the transformation from helpless victim to hardcore avenger. In no particular order:

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell)-Scream

I can't have a list of final girls and not include Sidney Prescott of Scream fame. She is the main target of a knife-wielding maniac obsessed with the conventions of horror movies for three (soon to be four) whole films. Throughout the movie she goes from feeling sorry for herself to actually stabbing, shooting, and slicing in order to get her life back.



Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)-Halloween

Michael Myers' estranged little sister is the quintessential final girl. She conveys all of the qualities that the ideal final girl should: she's responsible, virginal, and tough. She is one of the few horror movie victims that wins the audience over through the danger she puts herself in so that she can rescue her friends and the children she babysits. By the end of the movie, she's forced to stop running and face her fear of "the boogeyman" head on.


Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)-Alien

Ripley proves to be the final girl that inspired them all throughout the Alien series. She's androgynous, perceptive, and her ability to keep her head in a crisis keeps her alive.



Erin (Jessica Biel)-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Say what you will about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, but it was an enjoyable romp through the rural hell of Leatherface and the Hewitt family. Jessica Biel played Erin, a young woman on her way to a concert with some friends before they ran into some trouble in the form of a cannibalistic maniac with a chainsaw. She manages to be the first and only survivor of Leatherface's wrath through sheer strength and her ability to fight back.



Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp)-A Nightmare on Elm Street

Going up against a nightmare-haunting demon isn't exactly easy, especially when your dad and boyfriend continually let you down. Nancy has to take matters into her own hands to defeat the sadistic Freddy Krueger. She is perceptive and doesn't depend on anyone to help her which makes her a perfect final girl.

Granted, everyone looks for different qualities in the famous final girl. So what final girls would you put on your list?

"Piranha 3D" Clip Banned From Comic Con

You don’t even have to be a horror fan to know that the genre relies more heavily on gore now than ever. With the overwhelming success of the never-ending Saw franchise and movies like Hostel, Wolf Creek, and anything by Rob Zombie, excessive blood and torture have obviously proven to be what people want to see.

Well, maybe not everyone. The 9-minute uncensored footage from Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D was prohibited from being shown at last week’s San Diego Comic Con 2010. Instead, the scenes were shown downtown to a very impressed crowd of gorehounds. Naturally, the clip was released online through BloodyDisgusting to even more acclaim from fans.

The clip introduces us to the piranhas in all their vicious, bloodhungry glory as they chomp into spring breakers’ flesh left and right. The piranhas aren’t the only things taking people out in the clip that envokes the amused dread of a Final Destination disaster.

You can view the clip here.

Before viewing this clip, I had very little interest in seeing this. Okay, none whatsoever. I love Alexandre Aja, but the trailers for this movie did nothing for me. The CGI looks awful (still does even in the clip, but I hear it’s supposed to be a bit more polished for the theatrical release), and I wasn’t sure how serious it was taking itself. After seeing all of the mayhem in the clip, I think I may catch a matinee showing. It looks intentionally campy and fun rather than corny like the trailer led me to believe.

Piranha 3D boasts a pretty well-known cast with Elisabeth Shue (Hollow Man), Ving Rhames (Dawn of the Dead), Jerry O’Connell (Obsessed), Dina Meyer (Saw I-IV), Eli Roth (Inglourious Basterds) and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future I-III). It hits theaters on August 20th.

Top 5 Friday: Movies to be Remade

I know, I know. Remakes get a LOT of flack. The very mention of a new director even touching a classic practically makes fans foam at the mouth. Lucky for me, none of the movies on my list are necessarily considered "classics" in the realm of Poltergeist or A Nightmare on Elm Street. I believe that there are definite circumstances that call for the ill-fated remake. A lot of remakes fail because they're mirroring an already perfect movie. Why watch Rob Zombie's Halloween when John Carpenter's already exists. However, some movies are just plain bad and have ideas that can be expanded and improved upon. Here are my ideas for movies that didn't quite work the first time and could probably profit from a remake:

It

Stephen King's Pennywise the Clown is probably one of the most frightening literary antagonists to be created in a Word document. A movie about an evil that can manifest your worst fears should have been a lot more horrifying, brutal, and well, scary, than It was. Granted, It was a miniseries and it ran on basic cable network ABC. I don't think even the longest of movies could convey the book's depth and characterization, but a new miniseries airing on a more appropriate network like HBO or Showtime would come pretty close.


Intensity

Yes, another adaptation but hey, I don't only watch movies. I'm literate too. Dean Koontz's Intensity is one of my favorite books. If It is the only book that's managed to truly scare me, then Intensity is the only book that's managed to make me hyperventilate while reading it. Too bad the movie didn't have the same affect. The movie is about the game of cat-and-mouse between a psychopath and a young woman over the course of one weekend and originally aired on Lifetime. Alexandre Aja's High Tension comes close to what this movie should have been, even going as far as to have a nearly identical first half as the book did. Intensity just doesn't have the source material for a made-for-TV movie; it needs have a hard R-rating and violent script that does the book justice.


The Slumber Party Massacre

Oh, 80's slasher movies. You were the best of movies, you were the worst of movies. The Slumber Party Massacre falls into the latter category. This is one of those movies that is so utterly awful that it transcends its terrible nature and becomes somewhat enjoyable. Somewhat. The plot is pretty basic: high-school girls get butchered by an escaped lunatic with an affinity for power tools. Throw together a cast of pretty faces from Gossip Girl and maybe a cameo from a starlet of The Hills and a good advertising campaign and it could be a hit. The movie's tone would have to be tongue-in-cheek like Scream or the much-better-than-it-should've-been Sorority Row and I think it would make a fun viewing without stumbling into SBIG territory.


The Hunger

Bashing Twilight is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, so I'll just say vampires are in right now. The Hunger is Tony Scott's directorial debut that stars Catherine Deneuve as a vampire whose human lovers age rapidly. David Bowie plays her lover who seeks help from a doctor (Susan Sarandon). Deneuve and Sarandon share a steamy seduction scene that made it a cult classic. The movie as a whole is kind of weak on plot and character but very heavy on mood and atmosphere. With society's obsession with youth and the current vampire trend, a remake of The Hunger would take a bite out of the box office and manage to put an edgier feel to the original.

The Funhouse

Carnival settings and clowns are always creepy, and in the right hands Tobe Hooper's 1981 film about four teens locked in a funhouse with the deformed son of the carnival's owner could be downright terrifying. The original is unsettling, but it definitely takes its time to get going. Slow pacing doesn't bother me if it has a point or builds suspense, but here it just kind of dragged. Once it really got going it was great, but it just took too long to get there. The Funhouse would be great with a modern perspective filled with more tension.

This post was actually kind of hard to do because so many movies have already been remade or are in the process of being remade now. So what do you think? What movies would you like to see remade and why?

Good Bad...or Just Plain Bad?

Have you ever sat through a movie so terrible that you would rather keep watching it just to see what new lows it hit instead of turning it off? I'm not talking about blatantly horrible movies (here's to you, M. Night Shymalan), but ones that fall into the notorious "so-bad-it's-good" territory.

Since a lot of my friends are home for the summer and life has slowed down a bit, I decided to have a get-together at my house to catch up and watch bad movies. Since I am a college student and on a very tight budget, I turned first to my DVR in search of movies so bad that they would provide endless entertainment value. Naturally, my remote was immediately drawn to the SyFy network (which seems to have gotten so much worse since they changed the spelling of their name) and was met with the Holy Grail of second-rate, shoestring budget movies.

My search got me thinking about what separates a movie from flat out bad to so-bad-it's-good. After watching Hydra and Black Swarm with a group of my friends, I came up with a list of what makes the ever elusive trainwrecks that can provide just about as much entertainment as Hollywood blockbusters with half the budget and no-name actors.

-A Ridiculous Concept
Sure, numerous movies in the genre already have this but what makes a SBIG (so-bad-it's-good, my own creation) different? On top of a concept that already begs to be laughed at (mutant ants taking over a small town or rabid giraffes terrorizing a zoo), the execution has to be just as comical. If I already don't take the general plot seriously then it makes for a good time watching it. Movies that present a concept that's been done before, but better, just turn out bad. A knock-off serial killer movie on a shoestring budget and terrible acting is just going to be bad because I've seen that type of movie at its best; I've never seen rabid giraffes before.

-Horrible Writing
Inconsistency, thin characters, laughable dialogue. These are all vital characteristics of the SBIG. The writing has to be absolutely atrocious. Not mediocre, not average, but completely terrible. So-so writing just makes a movie boring, because it's not quite bad enough to laugh at but it's not good enough to enjoy either. It's almost like the director of a SBIG employs the most borderline illiterate person he knows with a five-minute attention span and a laptop to pen his screenplay.

-A Group Setting
Friends are a very important ingredient involved in viewing a movie of such low caliber. Watching a movie like Angry Spider Monkeys from Outer Space would be torture to watch alone. I need someone to hear my snarky comments, and laugh with them about how such a movie came to fruition. A large group of people who have the same sense of humor you do make the SBIG the creation that it is. I would never watch a SyFy original movie on my own because I'd either fall asleep or slit my wrists, but with friends the experience is that much more satisfying because I can laugh at it instead of causing myself bodily harm.

These are just a few of the major qualities in a movie that's so completely awful, but still makes you watch it all the way through. What movies would you put in this category? Feel free to add what makes a SBIG movie to you.

"Devil" Trailer Premieres Online

The trailer for the newest M. Night Shymalan production has gone viral. I know what you’re thinking: M. Night Shymalan is still allowed to make movies after Lady in the Water, The Happening, and most recent failure The Last Airbender? Fortunately, Shymalan is only producing Devil while Drew and John Dowdle of Quarantine fame actually work behind the camera. Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night writer Brian Nelson penned the screenplay so there is some hope for the Devil yet.

The film is about a group of people stuck in an elevator, one of whom is actually the devil himself. Dun dun dun! The trailer actually isn’t as atrocious as you’d think one boasting “from the mind of M. Night Shymalan” would be. It’s tense, claustrophobic, and suspenseful. I would be lying if I said it didn’t pique my interest at the very least. However, we have to keep in mind that M. Night Shymalan is still attached here so we shouldn’t get our hopes too high. Since the original story is by him, I’d be willing to bet there’s some ridiculous plot twist that makes all the exciting stuff we’ve just seen null and void.

Having all of the action take place in an elevator is a risky move. This movie better have either a pretty short runtime or enough tension to disguise the fact that these characters are in a space the size of my walk-in closet for an hour and a half. Rigoberto Castanèda’s Blackout set the bar pretty low for elevator-based thrillers so hopefully Devil improves on the concept.

The Dowdle brothers proved to be competent enough behind the camera with their shot-by-shot remake of Quarantine. However, my real faith in this movie (miniscule as it is) relies on Brian Nelson’s writing abilities. Hard Candy was edgy and thought-provoking and 30 Days of Night presented real bloodthirsty vampires that don’t sparkle.

So what do you think of the Devil trailer? Will you be checking this out on the big screen, picking it up from 99 cent video on a slow Friday night, or bypassing it altogether?

"Predators" Hunting Season Begins

In 1987, "Predator" was released and instantly became a sci-fi horror classic. Since then it has spawned numerous video games, comic books, and sequels. Nimròd Antal's "Predators," the newest addition to the franchise, hit theaters this week and like most sequels it fell short of the mark.

"Predators" doesn't miss the mark quite as abysmally as 2004's "Alien vs. Predator" or the ill-advised 2007 follow-up "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" but it does manage to fall into the trap of depending too much on fans' faithfulness to the series rather than good writing and tense action.

The movie does have its good points. The set-up of a group of murderers trapped together on a foreign planet and forced into a murderous game brings thoughts of a sci-fi "Battle Royale" or an improved version of the lackluster "The Condemned." Except instead of fighting one another to the death, these fugitives and assassins have to go up against something much more dangerous. The Predators. And this would be fine if we actually saw the Predators, or if the Predators were as tough as Laurence Fishbourne's mentally unstable character would have us believe.

The cast is another strong point in the film. Boasting well-known actors from the big and small screen like Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishbourne, Danny Trejo, and Topher Grace, "Predators" has a strong pull. If only the script gave these actors something to work with. Cheesy lines and expositional dialogue take the viewer out of the tropical jungle our characters are trapped in and completely ruin the atmosphere.

A huge problem with "Predators" is the lack of tension or suspense. The Predators just don't seem frightening or foreboding at all, and I think this is because the characters are so two-dimensional. I know, I know. It's a summer blockbuster about aliens dismembering and decapitating people on a different planet. Who needs character development? Well, I do. If I don't care about the characters then why should I be afraid of the creatures picking them off?

As a movie itself, "Predators" isn't horrendous. Even as an addition to the inconsistent " Predator" franchise it's pretty solid. It also has just enough action, evisceration, and swordplay to please the most avid gorehound, but not enough to make your girlfriend sick. However, with the economy the way it is, $7.00 (and outrageous $9.50 if you don't still keep your student ID handy) is too much to spend on something lackluster. My diagnosis: wait for it on Redbox.