This month’s short film, Ataque de Pánico! / Panic Attack, has been chosen less because the film is spectacularly original—which it isn’t—than because it comes from Uruguay, one of my favorite countries, and features the total destruction of that nation’s capitol city Montevideo, which is also one of my favorite cities. (I was there most of November, which explains why there were so few entries in this blog last month.) According to the BBC, Ataque de Panico! was made by Federico Alvarez with a budget of around 300 dollars and then placed on Youtube, where it quickly caused waves and garnered interest—so much interest, in fact, that Alvarez has supposedly now been contracted by Sam Raimi to make a full-length science fiction film with a budget of 30 million dollars. One hopes that the feature-length film will have a bit more depth than just robots attacking Uruguay, but no matter how it turns out I already know I’ll be going to see it. (Uruguay is not the most productive of countries when it comes to films, so I pretty much see anything from it if given the chance.) In any event, even if the film plot to Ataque de Panico! is a one-liner (“Alien robots attack Montevideo”), Alvarez shows a fine directorial eye in this little short and at least serves the events in a thrilling and eye-catching manner, building the suspense and terror to the only truly logical outcome possible.
“Adam, this makes no sense at all. I am a man of science, I believe in numbers and charts. Goddamnit, I wanna go someplace, where people die when they are sick, and don't sit in the yard eating cowboy toast when they have been shot through the head.”
OK, I’ll admit it: I’m a radical atheist. When I grew up, while everyone else had O.J. Simpson as their hero and role model, I had Madalyn Murray O’Hair—God rest her soul. As far as I’m concerned, God—under any name—doesn’t exist; The Bible is not the word of "God" but the word of a bunch of seriously questionable weirdoes, some more intelligent than others, that have hoodwinked a lot people to think that they had a direct line to "the Creator"; and Mary was less a virgin than the world’s first and best used car salesperson—which, in turn, expresses what I think when it comes to whose son Jesus was.
With this in mind, it's easy to understand why one of the worst cinematic experiences I ever had was Lar von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996 / trailer), which had me gagging in the theatre—although, in truth, I do like Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928 / trailer), from which Trier borrows the last shot in his film (of bells ringing in heaven). It is also the reason why I chose not to see Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ (2004 / trailer), despite it being recommended to me by numerous people as the best gore film of that year. (Were Gibson ever to remake Schindler’s List [1993 / trailer], however, I might go and see it.) OK, it didn’t stop me from seeing the depressing Uruguayan film El bãno del Papa / The Pope's Toilet (2007 / trailer), but in that case not only did the film’s country of origin outweigh the film’s topic when it came to piquing my interest, but the film proved to be subtly critical of the Pope's distance to social realities. Still, given a choice, if a film is about religion, I tend to leave it to others—much as I do lesbian porno films.
Thus, as one might surmise, had I known that Adam's Apples was a pro-religious track, it would have probably never found its way into my DVD player. But stuck as it was between two other horror films (My Bloody Valentine's Day [2009 / trailer] and Perkin's 14 [2009 / trailer]) on a DVD lent to me by a co-worker of the aunt of a friend of my neighbor’s sister, I naturally assumed it would be yet another celluloid fountain of blood. Well, for the most part I was completely wrong—and luckily, if you ask me, for religion be damned: Adam's Apples is a darn-tooting cool film! But then, perhaps that was to be expected, seeing that the previous film written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, the writer and director of Adam's Apples, was the off-the-wall Danish flick The Green Butchers (2003 / trailer). Adam's Apples tells the tale of a Nazi skinhead asshole—are there any other type?—named Adam (Ulrich Thomsen) who gets sent to the rural church of the county pastor Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen) for some community service. Ivan is all smiles and sunshine, incapable of seeing the bad in life—to the point of being seriously disconnected with reality. Outside the church is a large and fecund apple tree, and in an early exchange between Ivan and Adam about what the violent-prone Adam should do during his time there, Adam sarcastically states he wants to bake an apple pie. Ivan takes him for his word, assigning Adam an apple pie as his task, and from then on the tree seems doomed as it is befallen first by ravens, then by worms, and finally by lightening. Day in and day out Adam awakens to the noise of his picture of Hitler falling from the wall and the Bible sliding onto the floor and opening to The Book of Job with a thud. The more he is confronted with Ivan’s blind optimism, the more he is driven to destroy Ivan's view of the world. But even as he succeeds, the surreally black and humorous events that lace daily life begin to get to him, causing him (perhaps for the first time in his life) to question things... His skinhead friends show up on the scene not once but twice, the second time resulting in what should be a (bloody) tragedy, but wait! Miracles do happen... Adam's Apples is an at times politically incorrect but pro-faith film cleverly disguised as an insane horror farce. For much of the film, the viewer is as lost as Adam, unsure whether what is happening on film is really happening or whether someone slipped some hallucinogen in the beer. A well-acted black comedy, the events and dialog are often so dry and odd that one is unsure what the fuck the film is actually about; the occasional scenes of violence are not exactly timid, but with exception of one shocking scene, Adam's Apples is anything but a splatter film. Absurd, brutal, life-affirming, depressing, funny, surreal, weird—these and other such adjectives are applicable to more than one scene in the movie, often all at the same time. And as a result of the thorough strangeness of the film and events it shows, the occasional lapses in logic—no police, a skinhead who gets shot in the back a couple of times and still walks away, a huge church with a congregation of only the film’s characters, etc—end up hardly being noticeable. The last scene, which involves the shared enjoyment of Take That's version of "How Deep Is Your Love" does sort of take some of the fun away, but within the context of the film the event reflects the most logical conclusion. Redemption, after all, is there for those who want it. In short: Fans of filmic oddities like Delicatessen (1991 / trailer), Siam Sunset (1999) or Pep Squad (1998 / trailer) or will probably find this relatively excellent film right up their alley, but if you’re more The Ten Commandments (1956 / trailer) type, you might rather watch a lesbian porno flick.
If one discounts Kill Buljo: The Movie (2007), a dilettantish and unfunny Kill Bill (2003/04) parody that defies logic and patience, then Død Snø / Dead Snow is the directorial debut of Tommy Wirkola–and what a nice debut it is! Like so many wannabe filmmakers, Wikola tackles the ever-loved genre of zombies for his debut, but unlike most young whippersnappers, he tackles the less-popular sub-genre of Nazi zombies as found in such fun (but usually Golden Turkey) timewasters as Shock Waves (1977 / trailer), Le lac des morts vivants (1981 / trailer), Oasis of the Zombies (1981 / trailer), Night of the Zombies II (1981 / trailer), and Outpost (2008/ trailer). In fact, the basic concept behind the origin of the Nazi zombies in Dead Snow is surprisingly similar to that in Jean Rollin’s classic non-classic of celluloid junk Le lac des morts vivants, only instead of lying below the waters of a local lake in France, in Dead Snow the zombies lie beneath the snow of Norway. Luckily, Dead Snow shares little else with Rollin's legendary celluloid mistake and, instead, reveals itself in the long run to have much more in common with another zombie sub-genre, the zombie comedy. But unlike the other most recent zombie comedy—Hollywood's Zombieland(2009 / trailer)—Dead Snow places much less emphasis on witty dialogue and instead goes for blood-splattered gags in a comparable manner to that pursued by Peter Jackson in Braindead (1992 / trailer), the film poster of which is seen briefly on the t-shirt of some of the film's Norwegian zombie fodder. Dead Snow does not start out all that auspiciously. The usual unisex group of seven virtually interchangeable characters drive deep into the snow-covered backlands of the Norwegian mountains for a weekend of fun at a deserted cabin owned by an eighth (whom we see killed in the opening scene). Their inane blather—about classic horror films such as Friday the 13th (1980 / trailer), The Evil Dead I (1981 / trailer) and II (1987 / trailer), and April Fool's Day (1986 / trailer)—aggravates only a little less than the scenes of them having a good time on the snow or in the hut. Nothing new here, much like the later evening visit of an unfriendly local camper (Bjørn Sundquist) who both insults and warns his hosts of the dangers of the region only to wander back to his camp and promptly become the first victim to suffer the very disembowelment he foretold for the teen fodder. But for all the predictability of the film's first half-hour, Dead Snow begins to find its footing at the point when the handsome stud of the bunch, Vegard (Lasse Valdal), zooms off on his snowmobile to look for his missing girlfriend; after discovering the disembowelled camper, he soon has his hands full with undead Nazis and, in one the film’s many funny gore pieces, Nazi intestines. Back at the cabin things initially remain pretty mundane (the others drink and party and discover some Nazi booty) until a hilariously tasteless sex scene in the outhouse—you notice where his hand had been just before she puts it in her mouth?—and the zombies begin their siege.The ones that had sex are of course the first to go, and what follows thereafter swings between the tension of the hunt and a lot of great sight gags, funny exchanges and blood-drenched humour. The scene stolen directly from The Descent (2005 / trailer) wasn't really needed, perhaps, but aside from that slight mishap the bodycount in Dead Snow grows in enjoyable explosions of plasma and gore even as the film goes (successfully) for laughs. And, unbelievably enough, once the Nazis show up, the faceless young adults actually manage to develop enough individuality that the viewer roots for them, thus making the events a bit more involving as well. Dead Snow is not a breathtaking, genre-bending masterpiece, but it is some fine, perfectly seasoned gore cheese and as such more than adequately soothes the palate of fans of the genre. Full of viscera and oddball laughs, once you get past the lame start, the only thing Dead Snow lacks that would helped made it even better is a nude scene, something was once a guarantee in any European horror film.
Hard Rain is totally brainless eye candy, a well-made thriller that works in spite of itself. The script is a dramatic abortion with cardboard characterization that lacks all logic or believability, but is high enough on thrills and pace to hide many of the flaws—much like the scripts to Speed (1994 / trailer) and Broken Arrow (1996 / trailer), which also were penned by Hard Rain's scriptwriter Graham Yost. A definite plus is that none of the actors seem to take the film or themselves too seriously, and the fun they bring to the movie definitely goes a long way. Director Mikaal Salomon’s roots as a cinematographer are obvious in this film, his second full-length film, and his visual talent is fun to watch. In fact, his camera work is often so startlingly good that the viewer cannot help but sit up and take appreciation of the way the scene has just been shot. A good example of one such shot is the one that opens the film, when the camera pans down the mountain used in Paramount Film company logo, through the rain clouds and over hill and dale, down through the town in one long (computer generated) shot. Luckily, Salomon's talent goes beyond simple eye candy, as he is also able to time the film tightly enough to keep the rollercoaster ride fast, furious and fun. Like the actors, he too seems to know that while the script is shit the film is fun. A hybrid mixture of crime, action and disaster with a light dosage of romance, Hard Rain only finally truly insults the viewer's intelligence during the last three minutes, when they are forced to witness a totally banal and pointless "good news bad news" exchange between the hero and heroine as the semi-bad hero rows off for Belize. (In truth, a braver and more satisfying ending would have had all three paddling off for Belize and no "good news bad news" banter.) The long opening pan-shot pretty much sets the situation: somewhere in the Midwest—Huntingburg, Indiana we later learn—where a storm is raging and a damn is having its limits tested, Tom (Christian Slater) and his uncle Charlie (Ed Asner) are armored car drivers collecting the money from the various banks in path of the flood. When the van gets bogged down on a flooded road, Jim (Morgen Freeman) and his men try to rob them; two minutes later Charlie is a floater and Tom has disappeared, dragging the money bags behind him. He manages to hide the money, but the bad guys are hard on his tail. Eventually he ends up teaming up with the unnecessary female character and romantic interest (Minnie Driver as Karen) and, after greed goes to the head of the local sheriff (Randy Quaid) and his deputies, he ends up working with Jim, whose gang has gotten dusted. And then, just as one deputy has handcuffed Karen to a stairwell to rape and kill her, and Jim and Tom get cornered in a church, the damn breaks.... Sit back, turn off your brain and enjoy the ride. But whatever you do, don't think!
