Creepy Ass ‘Children’

“Hey you kids! Get off my lawn, and stay the hell out of my gardening tools!”

A couple nights back, Lady Pain and I settled down with Tom Shankland’s 2008 English infant apocalypse The Children (not to be confused with the 1980s flick of the same name), and got ourselves a creepy, effective little nailbiter for our troubles.

There’ve been plenty of “bad seed” and devil-baby movies in the past, but this one’s not what you’re used to. A handful of ostensibly normal wee ones begin to use the skills they often employ to manipulate adults in daily life to deadly effect, tormenting their parents in a way far more distressing than anything you’re likely to see in a typical slasher.

It’s not that the methods of dispatch are particularly upsetting, but the assured way that they play on adults’ feelings for them is what makes this one so effective. The commentary on “enlightened” parenting (we don’t hit children here), though a tad heavy handed, is also a perfect example of the way the New Horror uses violence and arresting imagery to address larger real world issues. The camera work and its use of nature shots in the dead of winter are particularly effective here.

Sure, Shankland explains the children’s violent streaks away with some mysterious illness that’s infecting the tykes, but this is the only cop out of the movie, and probably instrumental in keeping this production safe from the censor’s ax. It no doubt also helped dampen the protest against the scenes where the adults start fighting back against their deadly offspring. The long buildup to the final showdown may limit The Children’s rewatchability, but this one’s definitely worth your time.

‘Let the Right One In’: Bloody Brilliant

The Morning After

Still racing to finish The New Horror Handbook, but I had to weigh in on Let the Right One In now that I’ve finally had the opportunity to see it.  Good heavens, where to begin.

Yes, it’s been hyped to death; yes, it’s been all but hailed as the Second Coming of horror films. And I’m afraid that, cynic though I am, I absolutely adored this movie.

People occasionally ask me what I mean by “the new horror,” what this blasted book is all about. Now I finally have one solid movie to refer them to.

Granted that adoration didn’t exactly come to me during the screening itself, though I liked it well enough at the time. No, it was more of a slow burn kind of thing — one of those flicks where you keep ruminating on it on the drive home, at breakfast the next morning, and for the next week thereafter.

There are several horror movies where you identify with the characters, or at least like them well enough that you don’t want to see them hurt by the movie’s Big Bad, but if they do get hurt, meh. This is the first movie I’ve ever seen where I actually grew to love the characters, including what by rights should’ve been the Big Bad — the vampire Eli. And it has one of those endings that makes you want to jump out of your seat and howl “Yes!” Sober!!

Product of Sweden that it is, there is the strong compulsion to say that this is the movie Bergman would’ve made had he gotten around to dabbling with the undead. The truth is that’s not very wide of the mark. The much-talked-about cinematography doesn’t exactly live up to the hype — how could it? Yet it does what it’s supposed to do — it manages to make the Stockholm suburb look as drab and depressing as it does the main characters Oskar and Eli radiant.

One can already feel those who are working on the US remake distilling the easiest to understand bits and siphoning off the subtle complexities for the slop bucket. Best to see the original any way you can — the DVD is rumored to be coming out sometime in March — before the Diabolical Power of the Remake compels you to renounce the original. And make no mistake, it is original. Hurry before the next cinematic regurgitations come sluicing down the pipeline.

‘Noriko’s Dinner Table’: Chew On This

The Morning After

Japanese director Sion Sono needs to be given a strong infusion of capital and immediately isolated from any contact with Hollywood. Not only has the man successfully merged the art house flick with extreme horror, he has done more to pinpoint the plight of the modern middle class in two films than the world’s philosophers have managed to do in the last 50 years.

Together with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sono has spearheaded a subgenre this Handbook’s dubbed existential horror, starting with his 2002 cult hit Suicide Club. In this breed of chiller, serial killers and supernatural entities take a backseat to ennui, social disintegration and alienation — the depiction of which Sono all but mastered in Suicide Club.

Though dubbed a prequel to that film (and marketed as Suicide Club 0 in the French market), Noriko’s Dinner Table is more of a “lateral” work than a prequel or a sequel, despite a timeline that embraces both what came before and after events in that film. (Though a 2005 film, it didn’t get a proper North American DVD release until this year’s Tidepoint edition.)

While it will further irritate fans of that earlier work by never quite answering the core questions it poses, it also will intrigue just about anyone willing to give it a chance. For those who complain about being bombarded by “dumb” cinema, be careful what you wish for.

Feeling trapped by parents who fail to see her and her sister as anything but two member of a happy family, teenager Noriko strikes up a friendship with a Tokyo girl online, and flees to that metropolis to find a more meaningful life. Her friend turns out to be Kumiko, the young ringleader of a bizarre group that hires itself out by the hour as a proxy family for lonely people. Seeing it as an opportunity to reinvent herself, Noriko joins the madness.

However odd the premise sounds, it is that much more poignant when seen on screen. A neglectful father like Noriko’s own hires her and Kumiko to play out an emotional reunion. Later, the pair joins three other “players” — two “parents” and their young “son” — to enact a tearful deathbed farewell for an old man who is clearly fine, but only wanted that catharsis, with the players presumably standing in for family members who couldn’t be bothered to show him that kind of love.

And before you ask, the answer is yes — all of this joins the original plot threads of Suicide Club at some point in the film. To reveal anymore here would be criminal so soon after its May 2008 release in the States. Suffice it to say that Noriko’s Dinner Table is well worth the $22 Amazon is asking for the disc, or at the very least, a rental. (Surprisingly, Netflix already has it.)

The only gripe I have with this film is the packaging, which features a blood-spattered Kumiko. While it’s a move one would expect when catering to horror fans, this movie would be even more rewarding for viewers who have no experience with Sono’s back catalog and simply watch it with no preconceived notions of what is to come. Like Miike’s Audition, the dramatic structure is such that nothing particularly horrific happens until you’re a good way through the film. It’s a small gripe to be sure.

While nowhere near as frenetic as its precursor, Noriko nevertheless pulls back the curtain a bit more on the former’s philosophy and, like that movie, offers up puzzles nearly as confounding. In an age where film plots have gone from being spoon fed to audiences to flat out mainlined, this quality makes this particular cinematic experience all the more precious.

‘Karaoke Terror’: Unexpected Song

The Morning After

I've never been one for sport. But after last night's viewing of Karaoke Terror, I think I now understand a thing or two about the feeling of seeing a promising play end in defeat.

I should hasten to add that this is not a bad film, just a vastly different one than the trailer would lead you to believe. It is NOT another Suicide Club or Battle Royale, and I suppose it's a bit unreasonable to expect anything to fill those big shoes. The tragedy here is that it very easily could've gone toe-to-toe with those modern classics if only it had adhered less to the source novel by Audition scribe Ryu Murakami and more to the quirky traditions of modern Japanese cinema itself.

The plot: A group of young men who band together to stage impromptu karaoke sessions by the sea are pulled into a war of attrition with the Midoris, a group of middle-aged women who themselves spend a fair amount of time in karaoke bars, after the women seek revenge for the killing of one of their own by one of the boys. (Best to plot this one out on the back of a soggy karaoke bar cocktail napkin.)

The somewhat gory revenge attacks between the two groups escalate as each side claims a new victim. As the death toll mounts, the survivors rediscover the joys of life itself, for however long they have left to indulge in them.

Karaoke Terror is a farce somewhat in the vein of Battle Royale's early "education" scene, with an ending bound to rattle the cages of today's hypersensitive alarmists. There are quite a few laughs and several Japanese Golden Oldies sung by the cast as they go about their grim missions.

Is it an enjoyable film? Certainly. However, its lack of the underlying darkness that marked films like Suicide Club, and even All About Lily Chou-Chou -- both of which covered a similar alienation of young people -- makes it difficult to classify this oddity as a horror film.

Parting gift: The clip above is the first song in the Karaoke Terror trailer and the first in the film -- this from the original 60s-era artists: Pinkie and the Killers.

(And darn it, though The Blue Hearts song "Linda Linda" -- popularized in the recent flick Linda Linda Linda -- appears in the trailer, I'm pretty sure it wasn't anywhere to be found in the film itself. Playing some dirty pool there, film marketers.)