BLOOD RAGE (1987): A GORE-NUCOPIA OF THANKSGIVING MAYHEM!

Don’t listen to that blowhard Eli Roth. Despite his self-aggrandizing fake trailer for Thanksgiving sandwiched in between the two mini features that comprised Grindhouse, which he purported to be the first to exploit the previously unexploited turkey day, Blood Rage (aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods) had beaten him to the punch by roughly twenty-five years. And what a twenty-five years it’s been. Long considered an obscure title, available only in compromised hack jobs found on VHS and DVD releases, the true, intended, and uncut version was finally unleashed last year by Arrow Video in all its “that’s not cranberry sauce!” glory. And it is a sight to behold.

Blood Rage offers everything the hardcore slasher fan could possibly want: a gimmicky but forgivable premise, a charismatic but quirky killer, tremendous violence, a nice helping of T&A, an array of flying limbs, and not a single unwelcome minute of stagnation. Blood Rage moves at a clip, only hanging around long enough to commit bodily mayhem against its cast before zipping to its “seriously, what is this?” ending, cutting to black, and rolling credits.

In the subgenre of the slasher film, it’s easy to love many titles strictly via irony. PIECES, for example, is an absolute favorite, as well as The Mutilator, but I could never in good conscious call either of them actual good films. But Blood Rage is different. So different. On the Blood Rage scale, I give it five out of five cut-off hands holding a beer can. Because, you see, one film is not less good simply because it’s striving toward a different goal. JAWS is not less of a good film because The Godfather exists. Mad Max does not pale in the majestic shadow of Mad Max: Fury Road. Blood Rage is as good at killing teenagers as Quint is at captivating a crew with his wartime stories, or Sonny Corleone is at personifying agonizing death, or the Doof Warrior is at rocking out on a flaming fucking guitar. In fact, Blood Rage is better at what it wants to do because it exists in an entirely uncategorizeable box – an entity unto itself, and only itself. 

And I love being able to say that.

Its plot, such as it is (or ain’t), is so sinfully simple and rife with logic errors that it transcends ineptness and becomes charming. A family receives word that their so-called psychotic family member has escaped an asylum and could be heading their way, but…no one cancels Thanksgiving dinner. 

No one cares. 

No one looks alarmed. 

Not a single person says, “Gosh, maybe we should drive our functioning cars to safety.” 

In the land of Blood Rage, it’s don’t worry, be happy. There are no cars that don’t start, there are no phone lines that are cut. People just…willfully choose to stay in the place where the murderer seems to be heading, without concern. And it’s glorious, because someone’s HEAD gets hacked in half and you can see his entire BRAIN. That’s Blood Rage, people.

That’s what you’re getting, and like a slice of pumpkin pie after a big turkey dinner, it’s delightful. 

What Blood Rage gets right, effortlessly, is its willingness to be fun. The premise alone lets the audience off the hook in the sense that they’re not left wondering for the entire film just who it is behind the mask that’s cutting of everyone’s knees and faces, inevitably leading to an underwhelming conclusion bound to satisfy only a fraction of the audience. At no point is Blood Rage‘s audience left to theorize about the mysterious identity of the killer responsible for all the carnage.

It’s Terry. The one in the striped shirt. He’s…right there. 

The acting’s about the caliber you might expect from a low-budget slasher film made in the early ’80s but not released until the late ’80s. It’s doable, passable, and certainly entertaining enough. Plus Ted Raimi appears as “Condom Salesman.” He has one line: “Condoms?” (I think. Memory’s hazy on this one; I think Blood Rage broke my brain.)

Maintaining the slasher film tradition of featuring one lead actor who makes you say, “Wow, he/she’s in this?”, Blood Rage features the unexpected appearance of Louise Lasser, who began her career in many of Woody Allen’s earlier films, and who most notably appeared in Requiem for a Dream as Ada, friend to Sara Goldfarb, who eventually breaks my heart as she sobs uncontrollably on a city bench. Her role hovers somewhere between normal and Mrs. Bates, suggesting that she’s mostly grounded, but also a bit too…attached to her sons. But she plays it well, and her crazy role is just one of many crazy things that make Blood Rage so crazy good. The scene in which she sits Indian style on the kitchen floor in front of her open refrigerator and begins eating Thanksgiving leftovers with a depressed look on her face because her crazy son has escaped a lunatic asylum and may be on his way to kill her and everyone else – so what else can she do? – is the stuff of cinemafantastique. 

Blood Rage is the movie that unaware slasher fans never knew they needed. Everything about it is pure and lovable – even the detestable violence and gore that our mothers would absolutely despise contains an intangible charm that’s become ingrained with this oft forgotten era of horror. For a film about a psychotic teen cutting down his friends and family with a machete in violent ways, it’s the most harmless slice of escapism yet that hails from the golden era of hack’em-up cinema. Its intentions are as innocent as the on-screen killer is murderous, but they both want the same thing: to cover everything in blood, and to make every minute of it as enjoyable as possible. And both succeed, so hard. 

If you consider yourself a fan of old-school slashers, have never seen this, and are still on the fence, then give me a break – YOU NEED THIS. Cut from the same mold as My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, Intruder, and the entire Friday the 13th franchise, Blood Rage demands to be part of your yearly Thanksgivings or else you’re just a big turkey ha ha. 

Blood Rage is hereby awarded:

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Reprinted from the Daily Grindhouse.]

HANGMAN (2017)

From the opening moments, you can just feel that Hangman is going to suck. Before you catch a single lousy performance, or a sampling of overwrought directing, the sense of mediocrity to come is innately palpable. You could call this snap reaction either snobbish elitism, preconceived notion, or uncanny intuition. I don’t care — whatever. Regardless, it’s not going to turn Hangman into anything other than the tired, silly, and twenty-years-late ripoff of Se7en that it’s obviously vying to be.

Not a single name in the cast gives you that hope of, “Hey, this could be good!” Karl Urban’s name is not synonymous with quality. Nor is that of Brittany Snow, who Prom-Night-remaked herself into the mainstream before ending up in almost exclusively quiet VOD releases (unless it’s a Pitch Perfect sequel) because she’s simply not a strong performer. And then, of course, there’s Al Pacino. Ironically, he and his counterpart, Robert De Niro, have been considered kindred spirits throughout their entire time in Hollywood: the actors (both of whom appeared in The Godfather II) became linked not just because of their cultural lineage and tough mafia guy personas, but because of their brooding intensities and dedications to their craft. (That Heat came along later and brought them together yet again, resulting in simply one of the all time greats, solidified this bond between them.) But, like De Niro, Pacino has been rubber stamping everything that’s come his way.

Hangman is no exception, and it’s really odd to see Pacino slumming it in this particular flick, being that it offers zero intrigue or uniqueness; there’s no obvious draw for him, and offers him absolutely nothing new. Was it the chance to play a cop, even though he’s already played a cop seven times before? The chance to play a homicide detective who regrets his past choices while hunting a serial killer? He did that in Insomnia. Another homicide detective chasing down a gimmicky serial killer? He did that too, in 88 Minutes. So why return to this well? The chance to, what, work with the venerable Karl Urban — the guy from Red? Or maybe he just wanted to vacation in beautiful Atlanta. No, wait — I’ve got it: it was the chance for Pacino to try on a southern accent that doesn’t sound at all convincing. And speaking of unconvincing, Pacino is flat-out bad here. Obviously, he’s made bad films in the past — name me one actor who hasn’t — but even in any of those bad films you can conjure, at least Pacino was good in them. In Hangman, he’s bad. It’s like he knew right off the bat that Hangman was doomed — in the hands of a workman director eager to show off every film school trick, and being released by a studio who needed to fill their February slot in the Redbox at the local ACME — so why bother putting in a good performance?

Hangman is every bit cop movie that you’ve come to expect. And if you’re hoping that it has that scene where a homicide detective shows up to a crime scene and asks the coroner examining the body, “Whaddya got?,” well, you’re in luck. Everything about Hangman is dull, and generic, and simply uninteresting. The only thing it tries to do that’s the least bit different is add a journalist into the mix who basically rides along with our detectives from crime scene to crime scene to obtain research and insights for an article she wants to write. And that I’ll totally buy. What I won’t buy is that this journalist follows the detectives directly into danger — into houses where suspects are hiding, where blood was spilled and where her ignorance could very well contaminate evidence, and where she actually puts herself in harm’s way to help catch a suspect. There’s nothing believable about this — and if this does actually go on in the real world of law enforcement, we have major problems.

The film only momentarily comes to life when the killer is prominently introduced in the last act (and to give Hangman credit, it at least takes another page out of Se7en and introduces a new character instead of hamfistedly and impossibly revealing the killer had been a main member of the cast). The killer, as played by the underrated Joe Anderson (The Grey), has awful motivations and his link to one of the main characters is hazy and unconvincing, but Anderson still manages to shine through all that and bring to the table something resembling an actual performance — which is more than can be said for anyone else in this garbage.

Potential viewers, you’ve seen Hangman a hundred times already — all of them, even the worst of them, much better than this. 

In fact:

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I  T    B L O W S

TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: BORDELLO OF BLOOD (1996)

Bordello of Blood is bad bad bad. There's no getting around it.

The anthological nature of HBO's Tales from the Crypt series allowed a rare leg-up over its television show colleagues: besides maintaining a basic skeleton design for the show (and I don't mean the Cryptkeeper! heeee haaaa haaa haaa haaa haaa!!), every episode was allowed to start from the ground up, building a brand new story with a brand new cast every week, while also inviting different writers and directors with different sensibilities to make the show as varied as possible. Looking to EC Comics' 1950s run for inspiration, the stories were either faithfully or loosely adapted, but all maintained the tongue-in-cheek nature, the macabre set-pieces, and the ironic but predictable twist. Because of this, some episodes of the show turned out much, much better than others. 

And that's okay! The show was designed to appeal to as wide of a horror-loving audience as possible, and just like any other audience types, they all have their preferences. Some prefer an approach of the horrific, others more cheeky and campy, while sometimes it's a combination of both. Tying it together, always, was a touch of seedy erotica and a nasty/funny conclusion that usually saw the main hero/heroine (aka the villain) receive their just desserts, either poetically or literally. Much like the comic books that preceded it, the television series were morality tales. Sometimes the heroes escaped unscathed and sometimes they didn't; meanwhile, the villainous almost always suffered, and that was part of the joy. If someone were flat-out unlikable, it was only a matter of time before they were taxidermied and mounted on a wall, or cut exactly in half with a chainsaw.

Which brings us to the abysmal failure that is Bordello of Blood - one of those "bad episodes" of Tales from the Crypt - and not because the story's design wasn't fully in line with the Tales from the Crypt aesthetic. It did, after all, feature unscrupulous characters, sexiness, bodily explosions, monsters, and cheeky humor. No, it fails because there are very few likable people in the cast. Let's start with Dennis Miller, who apparently rewrote all of his dialogue (which made several scenes incomprehensible, considering that the other actors against whom he was acting were forced to recite their dialogue as originally written), and who tries to make every single thing that spews out of his mouth funny or sarcastic in some way. And not just in-general, every-day funny, but Dennis-Miller funny, which equates to overbearing, exhausting, and not at all funny. 

In Miller's defense, so little about Bordello of Blood works that he's just one more body adding to the huge pile of not-working. Corey Feldman is on screen long enough for you to dislike his human version, and then flat-out abhor his vampire version, which is so over the top and stupid that I'm mystified he's mystified he couldn't find work for five years following Bordello of Blood's release. Erika Eleniak gets by with a marginally acceptable performance, but at times her disdain for the material definitely shows through. Angie Everhart, who gave what's become a legendarily terrible performance in her first acting role, does seem to be trying, but ooh boy, so little of what she does actually translates well to the screen. Tales from the Crypt often relied on hot and handsome actors and Bordello of Blood is no different, but sometimes those hot and handsome actors could act. Everhart could not, and maybe she still can't. (Apparently she was really, really nice on set, and that's all that matters.) 

The only one in the cast doing anything worth watching is Chris Sarandon, slumming in what would be one of his final theatrical film appearances. The enthusiasm and energy he injects into his Reverend Current is utterly wasted, and deserving of a much better film. The sequence during which he kills a room full of vampire prostitutes with a holy water super-soaker, causing them to explode into guts, bones, and fire, also deserves to be in something far more deserving. The fact that it's Chris Sarandon doing it makes it ten times as awesome.

Likely due to the production's necessary reshoots, the editing of Bordello of Blood is extremely awkward at times, suggesting the film were being stapled together rather than fluidly designed. Not helping this theory is the unsubtle distinction between Eleniak's real hair and the obvious wig she's forced to use during certain sequences. For a film born out of mistreatment of the Tales from the Crypt brand (story writer Robert Zemeckis basically blackmailed Universal into buying this script), it's no surprise that the final product is a chore to sit through.

Universal Studios had originally intended on creating a Tales from the Crypt-based film trilogy, beginning with the very successful Demon Knight (almost continuing with the Tarantino/Rodriguez collaboration From Dusk Till Dawn before Tarantino asked for too much money), and ultimately concluding one film early with Bordello of Blood, a film that even its star, Dennis Miller, ordered his audience to avoid while it was in theaters. That it was a box office bomb assured further tales spun by the Cryptkeeper would be relegated back to television screens, which is a shame, because the brand has carried a lot of weight since the comic book's introduction back in the 1950s and has been sitting dormant way too long.

And it's all your fault, Bordello of Blood. Thanks for nothing.

Bordello of Blood is atrocious. Even those who like the film have to admit it ain't at all that good. Fun and gory violence and a story that really does smack of that ol' EC Comics aesthetic aside, so little of it works that it's almost amazing it ever saw the light of day - and from a major studio, no less.   

TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: DEMON KNIGHT (1995)

It was the summer of 1995. I was about to enter the fifth grade, but by then I was already a total horror junkie, much to the chagrin of my very worried mother. Efforts on her part to prevent my delving into the horror genre were met with refusal, dismissal, and probably a lot of whining. By this point in time, I'd worked my way through the entire Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises and was halfway through Hellraiser. But such viewings had to be done in secret. Should my mother throw open the door to our finished basement and descend the stairs to put in a load of laundry, I had to quickly shut off the tape of whatever horror VHS I'd been secretly watching and pretend instead to be watching one of those courtroom television shows or whatever happened to be on during that 3:00-5:00 weekday block. I was fooling exactly no one with this maneuver, but she was likely satisfied by my attempts. In her mind, at least I knew I wasn't supposed to be watching it.

My parents decided they wanted to take an overnight trip during that summer, sans kids, so my brother and I were dropped off at my uncle's for the weekend. It was a pretty cool and relaxed affair - my uncle's ideas on what were suitable movies and TV shows for kids were a bit more liberal than my mother's - so when my cousin announced she would go to the video store and rent some movies for us, I jumped at the chance.

"Can you see if they have Demon Knight?" I asked. Chronologically, I don't remember what came first: my devotion to HBO's Tales from the Crypt television series, or my obsession with collecting the 1990s' reprint run of EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear. I just knew that Demon Knight was out there in the world on blocky VHS, and I needed it in my eyeballs, stat.

"There's nothing bad in that, is there?" my uncle asked, merely out of obligation.

"It's about dummies," I lied. (Although it was kind of true. There was a dummy in there, after all.)

And so my uncle gave my cousin the nod of approval and off she went. She later returned with a pile of junk food and a big plastic VHS rental case for Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight.

And we all watched it together: my uncle, my brother, a few cousins, and myself.

What followed was ninety of the most exhilarating minutes of my life, as my straight-edged, non-horror-loving family sat in total slack-jawed shock that little unassuming me was into such ghastly things: body mutilation! heads being punched off! clomping dummy jaws! electric sex! a room filled with tits! Dick Miller!

The room was astounded that such a movie even existed in their world; and had it not been for me, in what circumstances would they have ever laid eyes upon it?

Never. 

But what permeated through that room for one of the silliest, ghastliest, most taboo-shattering communal experiences ever to happen among unsuspecting family members was tantamount to how the theatrical experience must've been prior to the invention of the cell phone.

How crazy would this movie get?

How far would it go?

Is that Lowell from Wings?

Nudity already?

The horror genre has been a big part of my life, and there are certain titles I will always hold in higher regard than others, for they were my gateway films. They were the titles that made me realize horror was my life, and no matter how good or bad they got, I would love them in equal measure.

Demon Knight is one of those titles.

Never had there been such a successful leap from small screen to big by the time Demon Knight wrenched free from its 30-minute constraints to unleash on audiences a full feature film of demonic debauchery, gruesome violence, the blackest of gallows humor, and wobbling dummy heads. Nothing was lost in translation. The chaotic sensibilities of the show, the unashamed look at violence and pulpy storytelling, and the nudity - oh, heavens, the nudity! - all survived that trip from television screens to theatrical exhibition. Demon Knight has everything: unrestrained violence, thrilling action, sexual titillation, excellent performances, and C.C.H. Pounder throwing up directly on the camera. Who wouldn't love this?

Director Ernest Dickerson, who only had two films under his directorial belt at this point (he'd been a longtime DP for Spike Lee), seems like he were born to take on the horror genre. (Well, sort of.  He's also responsible for Bones - the awful Snoop Dogg urban horror film, not the awful forensics show for white people.) Dickerson's visual design is fully informed by the comic book aesthetic: blues for dusky interiors, browns for the war flashbacks (the staging of which seems heavily inspired by the covers of Frontline Combat, EC Comics' lesser known imprint), and let's not forget the neon green demon blood. Nearly every frame of Demon Knight is decked out in bold and vibrant comic book colors, tending to favor blue more than anything else. Brief flashbacks to the Christ crucifixion, or the marauding demons with their glow-in-the-dark eyes creeping around like raptors while set against the blue/black desert night sky, enforce his talent for capturing compelling images. He also chose a hell of a cast. There are no signs of the typical executive producer throwing his cast-preference weight around (more on this during the Bordello of Blood review). When William Sadler plays the hero and a pre-Titanic Billy Zane plays the villain, you know these were actors chosen specifically by the director for their talents and their appeal. They weren't chosen because of their box-office draw or their recognition among audiences. Additional names like C.C.H. Pounder, Thomas Haden Church, Charles Fleischer, and a pre-fame Jade Pinkett (Smith) confirm that the best possible actors were chosen for their roles, and not for their marquee value. And that's amazing, because that hardly happens anymore.

Demon Knight, to this day, remains an absolute favorite. The perfect flick to play on Halloween, or late at night when the whole world is quiet, Demon Knight is one of the funnest horror films to come along throughout the entire horror movement. Only when horror films turn the tables on their viewing audiences and take on a full-meta approach (Scream, The Cabin in the Woods) are when it seems safe for these audiences to admit they had fun at the theater. But there were no self-awareness gimmicks needed to tell Demon Knight's story. It didn't need to be in on the joke to be fun. Based on grisly comic books from the 1950s, Demon Knight isn't ashamed to be what it is, and doesn't hide from its point of origin. It exists only to be thrilling and entertaining and titillating, and that's exactly what it does. Don't even fight the smile that forms at the corners of your mouth when watching it. Don't act like you're above seeing demons drip glow-in-the-dark neon blood all over the ground as they shriek and smash in all the windows. When Billy Zane is out in the desert doing his best Beetlejuice impression and calling his soon-to-be victims "fucking ho-dunk, po-dunk, well-then-there motherfuckers!," just ENJOY IT, because this film was made for all of us.

Films like Demon Knight barely exist anymore. And when they do, they're called "throwback" and "homage" and "grindhouse," because of the rarity in which they come into being. Tales from the Crypt is a solid brand with a built-in appreciation, and so it's a shame that the second attempt at bridging the gap between television and features would be with the miserable Bordello of Blood - a film so heinously bad that it would spell the end for Crypt-branded features. While there has been an ongoing attempt by M. Night Shyamalan to reintroduce Tales from the Crypt to a new generation, so far nothing has manifested, so all we have is what's come before: the comic line, the British feature adaptations, the HBO series, and then its subsequent features. There's a lot of good in that legacy, and some not so good. Demon Knight is among the best.

THE WARD (2010)

(Spoilers for The Ward can be found throughout. Read with caution.)

Listen, after 2001’s Ghost of Mars, John Carpenter’s previous theatrical feature, we all wanted to love The Ward. We wanted it to be worth the ten-year wait. After all, it was directed by a living legend who has been consistently five years too early for all the concepts he's introduced to the genre. Many of his most heralded films received lukewarm-to-middling reviews at the time of their release, but slowly and steadily began to be recognized for the genius (or just downright fun) little tales of beautiful nastiness that they were. Halloween received ho-hum reviews for several months until a positive one by The Village Voice turned it all around. The Thing, now rightly hailed as a classic and a defining moment in the horror genre – having inspired filmmakers as diverse as Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Del Toro, Eli Roth, and so many others – was vilified upon its release. Critics called The Thing a porno of violence and accused Carpenter of filling his movie with irredeemable set pieces. David Ansen of Newsweek called it "an example of the New Aesthetic - atrocity for atrocity's sake" while Alan Spencer for Starlog contended that "John Carpenter was never meant to direct science fiction horror movies. He's better suited to direct traffic accidents, train wrecks and public floggings" (IMDB).

Despite his consistent post-Thing filmography, Carpenter openly states that his remake of the Howard Hawks 1951 classic nearly destroyed his career. It forced him on a path to grin and bear safer studio projects before fleeing back into the world of independent filmmaking, thanks to a distribution-only deal with Universal (which resulted in both Prince of Darkness and They Live, both considered among the master’s best).

So, the question remains: How will The Ward be looked upon in ten years from now? Will people’s general indifference and disappointment toward it subside? Will it be elevated and looked at with a new pair of eyes? Well, considering the director’s own and aforementioned Ghosts of Mars is still considered the dung pile most said it was in 2001, the jury can and will be out on that for the next decade.

But here’s the thing about The Ward, people. It ain’t that bad. It really, really isn’t. Yes, the script could have been stronger and a bit more unique. And yeah, it would’ve been nice to have a better twist ending than, “oh, she’s a crazy split personality.” Many negative reviews for the film have pointed to the script as the main reason for the film’s failure. And I will not sit here and try to convince you otherwise. No, the script is not very good. It's a convoluted amalgamation of J-horror, typical slashers, a bit of the ol' torture porn, and psychological thrillers. But I really take offense to the claims that The Ward is point and shoot; uninspired looking and almost TV-movie in scope—that Carpenter’s ever-dependable look and feel were completely absent from the film.

Guys, when I read those claims, I really have to wonder what fucking movie it was you watched.

After the movie’s initial opening, in which we see Amber Heard’s Kristen fleeing through the woods after having burned down a house, we cut to the psychiatric institution where our characters are committed. And the camera slowly pushes down a long hallway, inches off the ground, as background music echoes off the wall. We’re not even five minutes in, people, and it sure feels like a fucking Carpenter movie to me.

Except for the director’s most unheralded movie, In the Mouth of Madness, he’s never made a movie that actually fucked with your mind—that showed you only pieces of the overall puzzle as you sat back and tried to make sense of it all. And that’s precisely what The Ward is: a puzzle, being slowly put together by Kristen. While the destination may be all-too-often traveled, at least the intent is to shock and surprise you.

As to the claims that the film lacks energy and enthusiasm from the director (one report actually had the audacity to claim he was directing the movie from his trailer), I can only point to the impromptu dance the girls share in the common area of the hospital. The sequence is directed with, at first, such an infectious sense of enthusiasm that you can’t help but smile as you see these girls trying to exorcise themselves of all the bad mojo hanging over their heads and just, for once, get some enjoyment out of life; and that’s of course before the scene quickly takes a turn for the worst, showing in brief, nearly-subliminal images the ghoulish face of the ghost that is haunting them all. It’s a new bag of tricks that Carpenter is trying out, and I, for one, welcome the change. Much as I’d like for him to consistently churn out the types of movies that he made in the ‘80s, well…that would be boring after a while, wouldn’t it? Don’t you want to see growth from your filmmakers? Don’t you want to see them leave their comfort zone and try something new (at least, new to them)? That's up for debate. He could announce tomorrow the long-mooted Escape from Earth and people’s boners would shoot through their computer screens, but he tried revisiting Snake Plissken once before, didn’t he? And that didn’t turn out all that great.

Plus, I could think of worse ways to spend 90 minutes than watching Danielle Panabaker run around in that Daphne-from-"Scooby-Doo" outfit.

"Mind if I titillate?"

Carpenter, his old age having caught up with him, is no longer the jack-of-all-trades he used to be.  Instead of editing, writing, producing, scoring, and directing, he has, in recent years, opted only to go with the latter, leaving everything else up to his colleagues. And yes, that has changed (not destroyed) the look and feel of his films. But not in any way that makes them less deserving of our attention. They're different, but not inferior. They reflect a Carpenter in his golden age. They reflect a man who doesn't want to entirely throw in the towel, but just wants to make it a little bit easier on himself. He's put in the time, had his battles with studios (Universal) and ego-maniacal actors (Chevy Chase). He's earned the chance to take it easy. If we want to experience a great Carpenter screenplay, there's always Halloween, and if we're jonesing for an iconic score, there is always The Fog.

Speaking of music, Mark Killian's haunting, ethereal, and unusual score for The Ward picks up where Carpenter left off, who'd scored his previous (and probably last) film Ghosts of Mars. But Killian knows what makes Carpenter's music so effective: It's simple, to the point, but ever-present.

If nothing else, The Ward should be considered a potential conduit to getting Carpenter back behind the camera for more features. Apparently (and disappointingly) The Benders has been appropriated by Guillermo Del Toro, man of a thousand announced projects, and I don't know what's going on with Darkchylde, but Carpenter is ready and willing to get back behind the camera, should the circumstances be right.

Lazy script or not, inconsistent or not, The Ward brought our director back to us. For that, I’ll always be grateful.

DEEP INTO HIS WORLD: REVISITING 'THE CELL' (2000)

The Cell is a film that not a lot of people seem to like. References to it over the last few years have mildly spiked in conjunction with the introduction of the critically beloved but little seen NBC series Hannibal, as the two share breathtaking images of unrestrained beauty married to that of the macabre (one particular Hannibal character's fate seems lovingly lifted directly from the former). Every so often you may accidentally catch someone expressing enthusiasm for this horror/science-fiction/serial killer thriller aptly described as "The Silent of the Lambs meets The Matrix," but more often than not, no one has all that much positive to say about it.

Universally derided Jennifer Lopez plays Catherine Deane, a child psychologist employing an experimental approach in her work: her ability to enter the mind of her subject in an effort to examine his/her reality and attempt to study the visual representation of her patient's cognition to determine the root cause of her patient's illness.  This procedure takes its toll on Catherine, both physically, in that it exhausts her and forces her to such stimulants as marijuana (run!) to come down, as well as emotionally, as despite how cutting edge the machinery is, it just doesn't seem to be helping her current patient, a young boy named Edward. That this technique isn't helping with his illness certainly isn't sitting well with Edward's parents, who begin threatening to pull him from the project altogether.

Meanwhile, you've got Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio), a serial killer who likes to kidnap women and murder them, and then basically turn them into dolls. Hot on Stargher's trail is Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn, in an ever increasingly rare dramatic performance), a detective intent on hunting down the madman before he claims another victim. Their paths soon cross and Novak locates Stargher at his home, but it's too late, as it would seem Stargher is now comatose, having suffered what would seem to be his last seizure. And it's really too late because Stargher did manage to kidnap one more girl and place her in his inescapable cell apparatus, which over time fills with water, causing the victim to suffer and eventually drown. With the only one person knowing the location of this apparatus now in a coma, Novak requests the help of Catherine and her team to enter Stargher's mind and determine how to find this cell by sifting through the many layers of his madness.

As for The Cell being summarized as "The Silence of the Lambs meets The Matrix," this kind of generally lazy pull-quote that a critic concocts hoping to be quoted in subsequent marketing efforts is actually right on the money. You take a hunt for an infamous serial killer and marry it to this strange abstract world where everything seems possible and there are no physical rules to keep everything in place, and The Cell is exactly what you'd get. Many critics faulted this mash-up, not because of the approach, but because of the ol' "style over substance" bit, for which a lot of films get attacked. Too much Matrix, not enough Lambs. And that's a fair critique. Even the most ardent lovers of The Cell have to admit that its visual merits far overshadow and outweigh its thematic ones.  Not only does the film definitely tote the admittedly fantastic visual effects, but except for the mind-suit gimmick, it doesn't do much with the serial killer route beyond what we've seen in this genre so many times before: the killer was abused as a child, has sexual issues, and for the most part retains no semblance of genuine human emotion.

While one should always stress the importance of content over context, sometimes said context can just be so expertly performed that it can capably carry its weak content across the finish line. And that's ultimately what The Cell kind of is: a flawlessly designed and presented horror/thriller with a story strongish enough to complement it, but one still weak enough to prevent the finished product from being celebrated across the spectrum.

J. Lo and V. Vau (sorry) both turn in pretty standard performances, the former finding herself playing a role she's never played before, and likely won't again. Personal opinions of her "celebrity" aside, she manages to pull off a pretty tricky role, especially in the film's final moments when she's been dolled up as Stargher's demented queen.

But the real star is here director Tarsem Singh (The Fall, Self/Less), who became famous for directing the music video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion." His visuals on display are tremendous. He manages to create entire landscapes that are both twisted as well as beautiful, revolting as well as sad, and some of them will flat-out mystify you, such as the bodybuilder (a past victim, though based on a true story) that comes to life only when needed to do Stargher's bidding, or any of the several bizarre set-pieces, some of which are recreated from infamous and abstract art pieces (mostly notably the horse vivisection, inspired by the art of Damien Hirst, and the painting "Dawn" by Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum). Whether original constructions or inspired by elsewhere, all of these images come together and form a demented and disturbed visual tapestry akin to literally a living nightmare.

If you were to accuse Tarsem of being more creatively engulfed by the idea of constructing this strange world rather than exploring the thematics of the serial killer aspect, he would have agreed with you:

You know, the serial-killer thing didn't interest me at all... At the turn of the century, a studio would make any film that had a serial killer in it. I just said, "Okay, so that's the nutshell I need to put it in? It's fine." In the '70s, everybody was making disaster movies. If I'd made The Cell in the '70s, it would have been about a burning building, with a guy having a dream on the 14th floor. I'd make it because of the dream, the studio would make it because of the building burning. Same thing here—I looked at the script, said "Oh, serial-killer thing—I don't give anything about that. Okay. Put that on the side. And inside his head… wow, clean palette."  

Then I came up with all this shit which was called overindulgent, masturbating on dead bodies or whatever. I just said, "All I'm saying with this is, don't laugh at this character, okay?" And that's it. That's what it took.

(Source: The AV Club.)

The Cell made enough bank the year of its release for New Line Cinema to consider it a success, and to ensure a very terrible direct-to-video sequel (though it would star Frank Whaley and take several years). Despite its commercial success and mixed love from critics, Tarsem did not jump right into another studio project, but instead bankrolled The Fall, an independent feature shot in countries all over the world over a span of several years. It was also pretty fantastic, and far more interesting and satisfying than his next big studio project, The Immortals, which starred a pre-Man of Steel Henry Cavill.

Tarsem has gone on record saying of all the genres he's worked in so far, he enjoys thrillers the most, and hopes to do another sometime soon. Here's hoping that's true.

READY PLAYER ONE (2018)

Steven Spielberg has never made an out-and-out bad film. I’m not sure the celebrated filmmaker is capable of that. I’ve certainly seen plenty of his films that don’t agree with me, ranging from the newer (War Horse) to his classics (I’ve given Close Encounters of a Third Kind so many chances), but I’ll never say they’re poorly made or seem workmanship in their presentation. While I’m not about to drop the internet-douchey slam of “worst Spielberg film ever,” I will say Ready Player One is probably the director’s emptiest — one that embodies the same kind of spectacle and world-building that many of his previous films sought and achieved, but with very little of its heart, or even over-sentimentalism that he’s been accused of in the past. Though one might argue Ready Player One’s entire construct is based on over-sentimentalism, given that it’s entirely an ode to ‘80s pop culture bent on nostalgia, this same kind of warmth doesn’t really come through any other aspect.

Ready Player One crams every possible ‘80s reference into its running time (at least, I’m assuming, the ones Warner Bros. had legal ownership of or access to — the nerdiest of you may have noticed that Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees appeared as his Freddy vs. Jason iteration, which is a film owned by Warner Bros. and not current franchise rights holders Paramount Pictures). And while it’s neat to see your lead hero (Tye Sheridan) driving the DeLorean from Back to the Future and later lovingly homaging its director by obtaining “the Zemeckis cube,” these feelings of awww just don’t last. Nostalgia is great for luring in an audience, but it’s not enough for telling a standalone story. 

The nostalgic bits — the appearance of the aforementioned Jason and his colleagues Freddy and Chucky, along with Robocop, King Kong, Duke Nukem, and so many more — work on that reactionary fanboy level. And the much ballyhooed sequence set in the Overlook Hotel from The Shining works in the same way. Once that familiar Penderecki soundtrack creeps in, and our characters start traversing the very faithfully recreated hotel, it’s easy to want to squee. Jack Torrance’s typewriter! The bloody elevator! ♫Midnight, the Stars, and You!♫ But once Spielberg and screenwriters Zak Penn and Ernest Cline (also the source novel’s author) put an axe in the hand of the suddenly leaping Room 237 bathtub ghost and CGI starts demonically morphing her face, you also get the notion of just how wrong it all feels. Now, I’d never claim to be an authority on what Kubrick would or would not have approved. Spielberg and Kubrick were friends in real life, whereas “all I know is what’s on the internet” (Trump, 2016), and the Beard believes Kubrick would have good-naturedly approved the homage. Still, he skirts his faith in that belief by having Olivia Cooke’s Artemis say, “That’s the point. It’s not supposed to be exactly like the thing you like so much.” I’m not quite buying that, and the feeling of wrongness remains.

Ready Player One isn’t a terrible film by any stretch; in fact, it’s a light, fun, and breezy way to kill 90 minutes. But once the spectacle of the whole affair wears off, you’re struck with the realization that you could have skipped watching it and gotten the same experience simply by sifting through the film’s IMDB Trivia page for all the references the film contains.

Bonus! Some screengrabs from the flick featuring our favorite horror villains are below:

FIRST REFORMED (2018)

From its very first minute, First Reformed, from the longest-working man in show biz, Paul Schrader, is never not engaging. The filmmaker responsible for writing Taxi Driver, Hardcore, and Raging Bullmay not have made a film this engaging since 1997’s Affliction. It’s also very unusually made, with the director choosing a 4×3 aspect ratio, a direct call back to a primitive era of film, and very very rarely moving the camera. Except for the gorgeous opening shot, which slowly tracks from the bottom of red-brick steps to the front doors of an old Dutch Colonial church, every shot is static, and they can go on and on without a break in action or dialogue. Oftentimes, if someone calls a film “point and shoot,” that person means the film lacks identity or style, and that the director is workman-like without a sense of making the story come to life with visual flourish. First Reformed purposely goes for the point and shoot aesthetic, but Schrader uses the style to maximum effect, manifesting Father Toller’s growing indifference, isolation, frustration, and severe battle with his faith.

Speaking of, Ethan Hawke has gone from being an actor that I was too quick to dismiss to one of my absolute favorites. Interviews with him (like the one included on this release) show him to be a very pensive, thoughtful, and likable actor who enjoys genre-hopping in an effort to play different kinds of characters in different kinds of situations. For a long time I held high that his work in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy was his best, but then First Reformed came along and left me in total awe of his talent. It’s his work in this that’s made me realize the actor doesn’t receive nearly the amount of accolades he deserves. His work here is staggering, and an absolute career high. The archetype of the priest struggling with his faith isn’t a new concept, but when you’ve got Paul Schrader behind that archetype’s tweaking and finessing, turning him into a somewhat of a Travis Bickle character, it absolutely opens up the character into something new. 

In a sense, First Reformed is a fantastic companion piece to Schrader’s Taxi Driver: two men, at odds with society, become seduced by the idea of shaking up that society and putting an end to the evil and sickness that plagues our world at large. Travis Bickle drives taxi cabs and Father Toller presides over thinly attended masses and is forced to serve as a surrogate tour guide for his famous Underground Railroad church, but both men suffer the same disillusionment and horror with their world and both men, perhaps not all there, want to do something about it. The film also contains aspects of Calvinism, to which Schrader subscribes, and which also appeared in a more obvious form throughout Schrader’s Hardcore. Given its religious themes, one might assume that Schrader is lampooning or satirizing religion at large, but that’s not really the case here. Schrader, instead, is telling a story similar to ones he’s told in the past and imbuing a lot of shared themes of loneliness to the point of mental detriment, but this time it just so happens to be a priest. That sounds like Schrader side-stepping a larger potential, but just the opposite: he’s smart enough to not take the easy bait.

First Reformed is very unusually made, and its very pro-environmental message, even though it has a great deal of reason to be there given its story, will probably turn off some audiences, as they don’t mind being preached to up to a certain extent. First Reformed willfully and purposely ups the preaching levels, and for dual purposes: to enhance and justify Father Toller’s descent into radicalism, and to enforce upon the viewing audience: we’re very very close to being eternally fucked. First Reformed will scare you in more than one way, and regardless of how you feel about the film by its end, it’s a long-term unshakeable experience.

Paul Schrader is 72, and has just delivered among the best films in his directorial career.

A WHOLE DIFFERENT ANIMAL: ‘ORCA’ (1977)

By now, JAWS is a Hollywood institution. It not only birthed the summer blockbuster, but, like any popular new idea, it inspired countless knockoffs – a trend that continues to this day. Putting aside the more infamous examples, like the Italian-lensed Cruel Jaws (yes, this is real) and Enzo G. Castellari’s The Last Shark aka Great White, both of which saw their U.S. releases halted by JAWS distributor Universal Studios due to obvious reasons, the “animals-run-amok” subgenre wasn’t actually confined just to sharks. Following the unparalleled success of JAWS, every kind of animal that could reasonably run amok ran amok, regardless if those animals had legs or not.

Even those animals (or insects) that weren’t obvious amok-runners still got their own one-word titles through which to generate “terror”: Grizzly, Frogs, Slugs, Bug, Ants, Gi-Ants, Squirm, etc.

Even automobiles got in on the action, like 1974’s Killdozer and 1977’s The Car.

It got pretty ridiculous.

Addressing the great white in the room, Orca, on its surface, could easily be written off as one of these JAWS bastards. It even takes the name of Quint’s doomed sea vessel for its title. Obviously, the similarities are profound. Sea-based killer animal? Check. Crusty, hard-drinking boat captain tasked with killing the beast? Check. A crew assembled with people of differing philosophies toward the animal and how it should be dealt with? Check. An entire town’s financial stability affected by the maniacal animal? Oh yes. And like JAWS, Orca also gets a huge boost from its musical score – Ennio Morricone’s absolute all-time best, in fact.

Long dismissed as just another JAWS clone, Orca is worthy of much more respectable appreciation – forty years after its release.

While out on a routine sharking expedition hoping to land a big payday for a local aquarium, Captain Nolan (Richard Harris) and the crew of his vessel, the Bumpo, get an up-close and personal encounter with an orca whale during a shark attack. Impressed with the size and savagery of the whale, Nolan switches targets, deciding that the capture of a male orca – alive – would fetch a much bigger payday. But after botching this capture and accidentally killing the targeted orca’s pregnant mate (which miscarries on the Bumpo in a devastating sequence), the orca becomes incensed, ramming the vessel and then stalking the murderous captain all the way back to shore – and beyond – intent on ruining his life by any means necessary. Even from the frigid ocean waters, the orca inexplicably begins to wear down Nolan in every feasible means – physically, mentally, financially, existentially, and philosophically. (If Hannibal Lecter were an animal, he would be an orca.) Soon, Captain Nolan is left with no choice but to take back to the sea and engage in a battle to the death with his massive opponent.

Yes, Orca follows a lot of the same familiar JAWS beats, and though it pales in comparison, Orca is much better than its reputation or immediate sketchy filmic colleagues would suggest. (The opening sequence, which sees the orca kill a great white shark in a violent battle, is a not-so-subtle dig at its legendary predecessor.) Based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Arthur Herzog, what sets Orca off from its unintended brethren is the amount of sincerity with which it was made, with much of the credit going to director Michael Anderson (Logan's Run) for maintaining a level of seriousness and weaving a palpable sense of regret throughout what would otherwise be your standard animal-revenge thriller. Orca is inherent with sadness and despair, from the quiet haunted life of Nolan to the vicious capture of the pregnant orca, right down to the icy finale which sees the crew being led to the unforgiving crushing ice caps and brutal cold of the Strait of Belle Isle. Not a single time during the film can the sun be glimpsed or does daylight look bright and warm. Colors are muted, and at dusk, barely present. Nolan and his crew live a shiftless life, existing only in those strange lands where their fishing work takes them. No one has any roots to speak of – the only relationships they have are with each other. All of this is purposeful; Orca isn’t out for the same kind of adventurous thrills as JAWS, nor is it only interested in cheap but entertaining exploitation thrills like Alligator. Though the furious orca kills quite a few people, it’s not done for titillation like the usual sharksploitation flick. As each character sleeps with the fishes, you feel conflicted, even if these characters have shown off their ignorance toward the dangers that their profession can have on the ecosystem. Like real people, they’re flawed but not villainous, and none of them are particularly heroic; in fact, Nolan only gets up the gumption to resolve the conflict he’s inadvertently created because the town where he‘s temporarily docked blackmails him into doing it – even refusing to sell gasoline to the crew attempting to retreat from their sins. (Heroism!)

Aiding Orca’s effectiveness is the slightly dangerous tone exhibited by ‘70s-era Italian thriller and horror films, which always had their own look and feel, and which were heightened in every sense – regardless of genre. Exploitation films were just a bit more exploitative. The infamous “cannibal horror” period was rife with filmmakers pushing boundaries – so much that murder charges were brought against Cannibal Holocaust director Ruggero Deodato in response to the too-convincing fates that befell that film’s characters. This sensibility would spawn the giallo sub-genre – one that gleefully focused on the exaggeration of sex and sensuality, fluid and poetic camera movement, and, most famously, very specifically choreographed and violent murder sequences. The presence on Orca of Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis, a major figure during this time (and who remained so until his death; he’d go on to produce several films in the Hannibal Lecter franchise), and the largely Italian crew – from the script writers to the production and art designers – inadvertently rode that over-stylized subset of Italian filmmaking, which enhances Orca’s sense of danger and unease; it comes across as similarly loose-cannoned and willing to push the boundaries of good taste, even though, except for the upsetting whale capture scene in the first act, Orca is fairly restrained. (Though this is not at all applicable to Orca, Italian productions were also occasionally unkind to animals, which also enhances the unsettling usage of Orca’s special effects. More on that in a bit.)

Richard Harris’ Captain Nolan is a heavy figure. The fisherman lives a life of isolation, having seen his pregnant wife perish in a car accident caused by a drunk driver – one that’s already taken place before the opening credits, but which can be unnervingly glimpsed through quick flashbacks complemented by the unsettling shrill shriek of an orca. The film draws parallels both obvious (the tragic loss of a burgeoning family) and subtle (obsession leading to self-destruction) between Nolan and the orca that hunts him, and which he then begins to hunt. As life took away Nolan’s family, so Nolan took away that of the orca. They become one and the same — two lost souls navigating a cold and barren seascape; satisfying the avenging beasts within them is the only thing offering them forward momentum.

The death scenes, too, are executed differently. Unlike JAWS, where the shark attack scenes were suspensefully predicated by John Williams’ famous low-end piano and Spielberg’s paranoid shots of the water, the death scenes here are quick and brutal, and over before you realize they’ve happened. The orca lunges with a shriek, takes his target, and disappears beneath the depths. It’s not at all about suspense this time around; it’s much more focused on shock – how, at one moment, you can be sitting safely on the bow of a ship, and at the next, you’re immediately disappeared as if you never existed. Again, a film that clearly exists because of what’s come before is still making an effort to distance itself through different stylistic choices. Yes, both films feature an aquatic killer as the main threat, but each is going about it as differently as they can while remaining in the same genre and delivering, ultimately, what the audience expects.

For its time, the special effects are quite good. Granted, some of the visual tricks, like superimposing together scenes of orcas breaching the ocean’s surface, show their age, but the practical effects are extremely lifelike to the point where certain shots look downright disturbing. Charlotte Rampling sitting on the beach next to the corpse of the orca that Nolan kills during the opening moments and seeing it rock and sway in the coming and going ocean tide offers it a very sad reality. (Production on Orca was even momentarily shut down following outcry from animal rights groups after someone glimpsed a life-sized orca prop being trucked into the shooting location.) A brief shot of a pummeled great white shark floating lifelessly in bloody waters, too, looks alarmingly real. (It wasn’t; all underwater shark photography was captured by ocean conservationists Ron and Valerie Taylor, who famously obtained all the real shark footage used in JAWS.) Honestly, there are times when Orca’s best special effects even look better than some of the troublesome effects from JAWS – and for a film that would go on to inspire a multi-billion dollar franchise and a theme park ride (RIP), that’s not dismissible praise.

It’s fair to admit that Orca would not exist without JAWS, but it would also be unfair to disregard Orca as a lazy cash-grab. It has its own identity and purpose, and its own less traveled path for getting there – one might even argue that it has much more in common with Moby Dick than that aforementioned stillness in the water. Richard Harris once stated to have found the characters in its script far richer and more complicated than Brody, Hooper, and Quint, and that its label of being a mere JAWS rip-off was offensive. Charlotte Rampling, who works steadily to this day, continues to look back on the film with pride. Affirmations like these are important to preserving and fairly examining Orca’s legacy. This isn’t a case where actors, who go on to more prominent roles in wider reaching films, look back on their horror past with embarrassment and dismissal. A good film is a good film, regardless of its genre, unfair reputation, and especially regardless of its inspiration.

THE DEAD LANDS (2016)

Watching The Dead Lands brings two thoughts to mind:

One - It's time to revoke James Cameron's membership to the Credibility Club. After his mind boggling endorsement of the bad Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the worse Terminator Genisys, along with The Dead Lands, it's become clear the man has spent way too much time huffing unobtainium.

Two - It's refreshing to discover that even A Really Long Time Ago, B.C., when people wore leather strings up their asses and got their hair did like Milli Vanilli, youths still made derogatory comments about their enemies' mothers. It's nice to see we've barely progressed as a society except for the fact that we now wear full-on ass-covering pants.

Well, sort of. 

The biggest elephant in the room as it pertains to The Dead Lands is the existence of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which manages the impressive feat of not being that good while still being far better than The Dead Lands. Though Apocalypto takes place among an entirely different tribe on an entirely different continent, what that film presented, the same as what The Dead Lands presents, is a bad tribe being total dicks to a good tribe, and so a young man from the good tribe has to basically stand up for the good of his people, become a man, and kill people in violent ways. Along the way, half-naked tribesmen are mutilated, a couple jokes are made, and you revel at how long someone can run through the woods without breaking both ankles and getting eaten by an anaconda.

Somewhere within The Dead Lands resides a good idea, and that has entirely to do with the shaky "friendship" between Hongi and "The Warrior," a spitting image of the 1995 version of Mortal Kombat's Goro, but with the normal amount of arms. The idea of this man existing in the woods and reveling in the legendary stories exchanged about him and his so-called godlike powers and strength, only to meet him for real and see that he's a mostly human guy just kind of pissed off but really good at taking lives, makes for an interesting concept. The problem is not nearly enough is done with this, and the only real sense of characterization offered to him is that hey, he's just like us, in that his wife/girlfriend/cavemate is constantly breaking his balls.

It's honestly difficult to comment on the effectiveness of the performances, as 99.9995% of audiences watching it will have never before heard spoken Maori in their lives; it will essentially sound like gibberish - what you're watching is grown men wearing next to nothing doing fancy weapon spins, wagging their tongues, and "emoting" their dialogue in such a way that it sounds like everyone has been sipping way too heavily from the nectar of the gods. But at the same time, it's evident The Dead Lands was well intentioned, and likely a bitch to shoot. This isn't the type of film one makes over a series of weekends with friends. From learning uncommon languages, kneeling half-naked in pond water for hours on end, wearing thick layers of skin puddy, and sprinting through the woods in bare feet, it's clear that director Toa Fraser put a lot of effort into his film - not even James Cameron can say that anymore - but it's unfortunate that it didn't result in something just a little better, and with its own identity.

The visual presentation is the exact opposite of human shit smeared on a skull - it looks quite lovely. Extreme detail is captured in every shot, especially the intricate tribesman marks etched into nearly every face. The jungles of New Zealand are adeptly captured, with the opening smoke-filled chase sequence looking among one of the film's best. The image captures a lot of color from the entirely exterior-set story. 

If you’ve acquired a DVD or Blu-ray of this flick on a whim but decided at any point during play that the film just isn't doing anything for you, consider putting on the alternate English dubbing track. It's hysterical. From the flat, hollow, and tinny sounding audio recordings to the sneaking suspicion that one twenty-year-old voice-over actor was utilized to dub every character -- even trying on a "weathered old man" voice whenever speaking for an elder member of the tribe -- this track may provide a brief detour into a land of additionally amusing ineptitude.

Just because The Dead Lands utilizes a very unknown language, takes place somewhere between dinosaurs and Donald Trump's spawning, and throws around terms like "fate" and "the gods" and "honor," don't think you're going to be getting some kind of high-art masterpiece created to make film festival audiences tweet their tears. The Dead Lands is not that. Instead, it provides a somewhat pedestrian story with an intriguing/conflicting on-screen pair -- a half-naked-man buddy comedy with far less jokes -- and presents reasonable but wholly vapid entertainment. If you're really into tribe-on-tribe victimization and men shitting on skulls/licking shitty hands, then The Dead Lands is totally for you. If you're not, try watching Avatar again. Or something better.