Just in time for Halloween, it seems as though Popcorn Frights is going all-out for round two, this time running the streaming festival themselves. For the first day, we get a long-lost killer bear slasher from the '80s with a cast of future A-listers, the latest from Bret Easton Ellis, a monster movie, a Jewish twist on supernatural horror, and a trip back in time to the late '70s.
To start...
Grizzly II: Revenge (1983)
Not rated
Score: 2 out of 5
A sequel to the cult-classic 1976 movie Grizzly, this film is known in horror fandom for two things: boasting an A-list cast comprised of both then-established names like John Rhys-Davies and Louise Fletcher and future stars like George Clooney, Laura Dern, and Charlie Sheen (who play the three opening victims), and never seeing the light of day until now. The reason why is simple: it was never finished. During production, after principal photography was finished but before they did the special effects shots they had planned with an animatronic bear, producer Joseph Proctor ran off with the remaining budget and disappeared; since he would later go to prison on two separate occasions for fraud and tax evasion, you can probably guess what happened to the money. For decades, producer Suzanne Nagy tried to get the film finished, and finally pulled it off over the last few years by using stock footage of grizzly bears for the attack scenes. In all honesty, I didn't regret watching it. It has a lot of problems that go well beyond its troubled production, most notably its disjointed plot and its lack of really interesting characters save for one, and the lack of what likely would've been the saving grace (if the behind-the-scenes stories about the effects they had planned are any indication) hurt it even further. But as an artifact of low-budget '80s filmmaking with a great real-life story behind it, it is a must-watch for fans of cult cinema, even if it's not a particularly good movie on its own merits.
Just as the first movie was a pale-faced Jaws ripoff with a bear and more blood, the plot here is very reminiscent of the Jaws sequels, particularly The Revenge despite being made four years prior. We start with a poacher shooting a grizzly bear, which causes her cub to develop a burning hatred of humans. Once she grows up, this "devil bear", as the French-Canadian hunter-trapper Bouchard calls her, starts mauling people to death in a national park, starting with campers before moving on to the hunters sent to take her down. Given that a massive music festival is being held in the national park where there's an angry, murderous bear running around, this is a problem.
It is obvious straight away that this movie is a Frankenstein patchwork of scenes shot in 1983 and more modern footage filmed within the last few years, the difference in visual fidelity between the lush establishing shots and the grittier-looking (if still remastered) rest of the film being just the start. The score jumps between something that sounds like it was recorded in the '80s and something that sounds like it was pulled from a "stock music" catalogue for action/horror movie trailers. Modern cars are seen in some of the overhead shots of the festival's parking lot, in between shots of very '80s-looking festivalgoers. Given the... unique circumstances of this film's production, I don't begrudge the producers for doing this, but I won't go so easy on this film's disjointed structure. To put it bluntly, it felt as though the movie had three separate storylines going on at the same time, one concerning the park rangers and scientists seeking to stop the bear from killing people without necessarily killing it in turn, one concerning a separate group of poachers who want to bag an enormous trophy (and serve as obvious cannon fodder), and finally, one concerning the festival, which provided some of the film's most energetic scenes in the form of the concert footage they filmed but which otherwise has little to do with the rest of the movie, save for one of the people working backstage being the daughter of the head park ranger (and who doesn't even get put in danger during the climax). It wasn't just the kills that were missing from this movie, but also a lot of narrative tissue connecting these three storylines, with only the central one of the park ranger Nick Hollister and the biologist Samantha Owens feeling like it had any weight to it. Even with the efforts made since, this movie felt unfinished, bearing all the marks of its production.
That being said, the movie does still have its charms. John Rhys-Davies was the standout in the cast as Bouchard, a French-Canadian hunter-trapper and very larger-than-life figure who's obsessed with Native American culture and is easily the most entertaining person in the film. If this is gonna be a Jaws ripoff, then Bouchard is its Quint, somebody who knows more than everyone else about taking down bears and makes sure that you know it too, his ego and boasting feeling quite justified given what he pulls off. Also, one area in which the film's lack of special effects shots worked to its benefit was in its chase scenes, where it made heavy use of Sam Raimi-style monster-vision cameras to show us the bear's POV as she runs after her prey. The payoff when the bear finally snags her victims was often deeply unsatisfying, feeling like the TV edit of itself as the camera cuts away before we see anything, but the chase sequences had a nice slasher movie feel to them that went a long way to keeping me having some fun with this film.
The Bottom Line
Grizzly II: Revenge was never truly finished even if they did manage to piece something together in the end. That said, for fans of cult cinema, it's worth watching at least once just for the history behind it and to catch some now-famous actors in their early roles who wouldn't be caught dead in a movie like this today.
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Second film comes from Bret Easton Ellis, and if you know what he's famous for, you're already guaranteed certain expectations.
Smiley Face Killers (2020)
Not rated
Score: 4 out of 5
If you don't know who Bret Easton Ellis is, I could sum it up with the words American Psycho and be done right then and there. One of the more notorious enfants terribles of '80s/'90s Gen-X literature, Ellis' stock in trade is satirical explorations of the decadence of upper-class culture, the rich brats at the center of his stories often living out violent, misogynistic, hypersexual fantasies. The graphic content of his books, and of the movies adapted from them, made him a lightning rod for controversy from the word "go", as a number of critics suspected that his characters weren't necessarily the only ones living out sick fantasies in his writing. Smiley Face Killers, billed as being based on true events, is his latest, and it is fully within his wheelhouse: a very dark, nihilistic thriller about a seeming paragon of young masculinity and privilege having his life turned upside down. It builds a dark, moody atmosphere, the violence hits hard when it arrives, the villains are creepy, it's stylish as hell, and while the plot is thin, it does capture the feeling of slowly going mad.
The plot is based on a controversial theory surrounding several drowning deaths in the Midwest from the '90s to today, that they were actually murders committed by a serial killer or group of killers. Moving the setting to California, the plot here follows Jake Graham, a handsome and frattish young college student who finds himself being stalked by a mysterious hooded figure who starts messing around with his life. Jake, who is on psychiatric medication, experiences a textbook case of gaslighting as the killer slowly convinces him that he's losing his mind, all while his friends start to wonder if he's gone off his meds The manner in which Jake's stalkers' plot ultimately plays out is a rather creative method of murder, all things considered: slowly drive somebody insane and isolate him from the people around him, then murder someone and pin it all on him.
And the movie sells it remarkably well, too. Director Tim Hunter lends a very stylish feel to what could've otherwise been done as a conventional teen slasher story, letting the viewer wallow in Jake's life as he slowly goes on a downward spiral. The way the camera frequently lingers on a shirtless and half-naked Jake in particular feels downright homoerotic, especially with some of the comments made by some of his friends. It all paints a portrait of Jake not as the kind of vanilla hunk who's usually the male lead in modern teen horror films, but as a man who, while sympathetic overall given what he goes through, has a lot of less likable qualities to him, qualities that come out as the killers' manipulation causes him to turn against his friends and his girlfriend. Ronen Rubinstein does a great job playing Jake throughout his downward spiral, from the start through to his growing insanity to the abuse he suffers towards the end, his character ultimately going to some very dark places. Crispin Glover, too, is nearly unrecognizable as the leader of the killers, making for a chilling presence under heavy makeup effects as he slowly stalks Jake and ruins his life.
As is to be expected from an Ellis story, there's also a ton of violence, and it can get brutal. This movie is not shy about the gore, showing us pieces of brain dripping from a man's cracked-open head, a woman having her lower jaw separated from the rest of her head by an axe, and more. The stylish thriller tone of most of the film means that, when the blood does start to spill later on, it comes unannounced and hits much harder than it would in a conventional slasher gorefest, especially because this movie offers little indication of a happy ending for anyone involved. There are moments of humor, but they are often pitch-black, most notably an encounter at a convenience store during the third act where things seem to go awry for the killers before quickly escalating. The tone of this movie, almost from the very first frame, is as bleak as it gets, letting us know that Jake is in for a terrible ride even if he somehow makes it out the other end in one piece.
The Bottom Line
A dark, nihilistic thriller from a man who's made his name with such, Smiley Face Killers isn't Ellis' best by a long shot, but it still makes for a twisted time at the movies.
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Next up, a good old-fashioned monster movie.
The Retreat (2020)
Not rated
Score: 2 out of 5
The Retreat, unfortunately, was not necessarily a good old-fashioned monster movie. Attempting simultaneously to be a movie about a wendigo and a psychological horror film about a man who may or may not be turning into one, it missed the landing on both counts despite solid production values and creepy imagery. The monster wasn't exactly scary once we got to see it in full view (which was often), the acting was often subpar, including from the protagonist, and the story got convoluted quickly and soon lost my interest. There's not a whole lot else more to say than that.
Our protagonists are a group of men who head into the Adirondacks during the winter to celebrate the bachelor party of one of them, Adam. After a brief discussion of the wendigo myth, Adam and his friend Gus head into the woods to talk, Gus being a bit disgruntled over the fact that Adam is marrying his ex-girlfriend. Then a wendigo shows up to eat them, and Gus fights back against it, only to come to the following morning to find Adam dead in a similar manner in which thought he had killed the wendigo. This laid the seed for an interesting idea that I've never really seen before, in which the wendigo myth, of a person turning into a monster after resorting to cannibalism to survive, is used as a metaphor for romantic jealousy between friends, with Gus thinking that Adam stole his girlfriend and thus taking his life, presumably to get her back. Where the movie fails, however, is in the follow-through. Had the movie remained relatively straightforward and focused on this metaphor, it could've turned Gus into an interesting villain, one whose jealousy is juxtaposed with cannibalism as he turns against his friends and seeks to take everything from them. However, what it truly wants to be is a mind-screw in which we can't be certain of what Gus is seeing as he slides into either insanity or his transformation into a monster, and on that front, it failed. Without spoiling anything, it felt as though the filmmakers decided to make a movie about the wendigo myth, people going to a cabin in the winter woods for a party, and possible insanity (complete with a therapist who may or not be real) after playing Until Dawn, without really understanding why that game's story actually worked; yes, it had twists and turns, but by the end, everything was relatively straightforward and we know exactly what we saw, leaving the game to focus on the thrills and chills. Here, the ambiguity produced only confusion rather than mystery, as we are given few anchor points for Gus' journey, only a series of events for most of the movie that may or may not have happened, which contradict each other such that we can't say that all of them happened, and which we can't really pin down either way.
This film's own thrills and chills made up the bulk of my enjoyment with it. As Gus goes on his downward spiral, we get a lot of creepy moments as we can't be fully sure whether or not what he's seeing is real or a product of his broken mind. A strange figure with massive antlers, always cloaked in shadow, seems to constantly be watching over him. The music felt like it came from a film with a much bigger budget, and always lent an unsettling feel to the proceedings. A lot of mileage is gained from the setting, taking place mostly in the remote wilderness in the dead of winter. The main weakness, however, came with the actual wendigo. They clearly tried to make the wendigo a scary-looking figure, but while the effects work was solid, it still feels like a man in a suit, its motions looking just a bit too natural and human for it to come across as an inhuman, mutated monster. I was not particularly scared of the wendigo, a big problem in a monster movie like this.
The Bottom Line
A fairly hokey film whose ambitions outstripped its grasp, The Retreat looks good but has little to recommend otherwise.
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The fourth movie of the day was a uniquely Jewish horror story, and quite possibly my pick for the night.
The Vigil (2019)
Rated PG-13 for terror, some disturbing/violent images, thematic elements and brief strong language
Score: 4 out of 5
Let me put it this way. As I was watching The Vigil, there were moments where I decided to turn on the action-packed video game Watch Dogs: Legion at the same time. Not because I was bored, but because I was watching this movie around 11 o'clock at night and was worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep properly. Don't let the PG-13 rating fool you: this movie is freaky as hell, a dark supernatural ghost/demon story in which the unique cultural touches lent it flavor rather than exoticism, and which knew how to scare my ass off right out the gate with all manner of creative scenarios.
Our protagonist Yakov is a young Orthodox Jewish man who is tasked one night with serving as a shomer, keeping watch over the recently deceased Mr. Litvak after the last man they hired got scared and decided not to do it. Yakov needs the money to pay his bills, and as far as he's concerned, $400 for five hours sitting around with his phone is a great deal. Well, he's only five minutes into his task when he starts noticing freaky, unnatural stuff happening around him. Turns out, in life Mr. Litvak was haunted by a dybbuk, a malevolent spirit that followed him for most of his life and ultimately claimed his soul, and after his death, it jumped over to Yakov, who now has only one night to get rid of the dybbuk before it is attached to him forever.
The big gimmick here is that this is a supernatural horror film rooted in Jewish lore rather than the Christian lore that serves as the basis of so many films in this genre, specifically utilizing the idea of the dybbuk. It's not the first film to do so -- in fact, a long time ago I watched and reviewed a film called The Possession that was based on the same -- but whereas that film mainly gave Jewish set dressing to what was otherwise a fairly conventional riff on the classic demonic possession story, this goes all-in. From the start, we are immersed in Orthodox culture in such a manner that the opening scenes feel like they could have come from a drama about the community, the fact that a large chunk of the dialogue is in Yiddish being just the start. It's a film in which various cultural assumptions are taken for granted, letting the viewer in on what some of them mean but otherwise presenting them matter-of-factly. Yakov, the audience POV character, is a man who is strongly implied to be more culturally Orthodox than anything, taking part in the rituals mainly because he was raised in the faith, and it's through his lens that we get immersed in this culture. It's a great lens, too, as Dave Davis has to more or less put on a one-man show for most of the film, and he does a great job selling both the darkness in his backstory that the dybbuk exploits against him and his struggle against the supernatural forces that surround him.
Cultural authenticity would've meant little, however, if the rest of the movie weren't up to snuff, and fortunately, writer/director Keith Thomas certainly knows what he's doing behind the camera. Right away, the dybbuk is a force that means business, ruthlessly tormenting Yakov with everything around him from the corpse he's watching over to his cell phone. The scares are all high-quality, helped along by an atmosphere where, until the very end, there is little respite from the chaos even if it seems as though nothing is currently happening on camera; the question is the things lurking just off-camera, in the shadows of the house where Yakov is watching over Mr. Litvak's body. When the effects do arrive later on, they are all very well done and mostly practically, from a very creepy design for the dybbuk (especially in the flashback to when Mr. Litvak first encountered it, where it took the form of a Tsarist Russian officer) to a hallway where screaming souls are trying to escape from the walls, delivering a solid payoff to what had been built up. The film hypes up the dybbuk, and it makes you believe the hype, hitting hard by flinging the viewer into hell right alongside Yakov. By the end, there is no doubt that Yakov has been shaken by his experience, in no small part because I was shaken.
The Bottom Line
The Vigil is a terrifying supernatural horror film anchored by both its unique perspective and simple, rock-solid filmmaking chops. Even as someone who wasn't Jewish, I noped the hell out by throwing on a video game as I watched, a testament to its quality.
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Finally, a light palate cleanser in the form of a "kids on bikes" retro throwback...
They Reach (2020)
Not rated
Score: 3 out of 5
With They Reach, just looking at the poster lets you know exactly what you're in for: a throwback to late '70s/'80s horror movies and kids' adventure movies in the Spielberg/Amblin mold, or more specifically, in the mold of how Stranger Things homaged that same material. As Summer of 84 showed at the 2018 festival, it's a style that can easily go wrong, getting lost in a maze of retro references at the expense of a quality plot or three-dimensional characters. They Reach, fortunately, has a bit more going for it than that, its gender-flip on the basic story not only keeping it fresh but also lending it more than a bit of the feel of a good Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode as well. At times, the vintage style and references can feel a bit too on-the-nose for their own good, but overall, it works as a lighthearted monster movie, thanks to its solid cast and willingness to put them in peril.
Set in 1979, our heroine Jessica Daniels is a tomboyish teenage girl who's into science and engineering, unlike most of her female peers in her podunk Michigan town. One day, at an antique shop with her dad, she picks up a tape player that turns out to have been last used by a team of exorcists, and as a result contains a demon within -- a demon that is awakened when she accidentally bleeds on the tape player. The thing hasn't just released a demon, it's opened a portal to Hell and unleashed an army of them, targeting Jessica's friends and family, and now, she must make use of her science skills and team up with her closest companions to find a way to stop the demons now running roughshod over town.
A big reason why Stranger Things and It succeeded, and why the aforementioned Summer of 84 didn't really work for me, came down to the kid characters. Many of the '80s classics being homaged were as much coming-of-age stories as they were monster or adventure flicks, with the good ones building casts that felt like real adolescents in their virtues, foibles, and worldviews and the lesser ones feeling like they were written by people who had long since forgotten how kids normally behave. This movie, fortunately, understood how to make its kids feel like real kids. While the specific pop culture references and visual iconography did eventually reach a point of "we get it, it's the '70s", the characters kept the story firmly anchored in the real world, not least of all Mary Madaline Roe as Jessica. They all felt authentic as nerds who don't fit in with their small town and spend their days making their own fun out by the train tracks, and I bought the bond that they shared with one another, such that, when bad things started happening to them, I genuinely feared for them and was impressed that the film was willing to "go there". Jessica in particular was interesting on a subtextual level, as her journey demonstrated how a lot of the tropes of the nerdy boy heroes of '80s kids' adventure movies can suddenly take on feminist undertones when you apply them to a nerdy young girl instead, and the film certainly recognized as much in Jessica's interactions with her father. It may be relying heavily on the visual shorthand of films that came before it to represent adolescent/teenage life, but there's a reason it's become visual shorthand to begin with, and this movie does a good job playing the hits.
On the monster front, this movie also delivered. When it wasn't pulling the viewer back in time to the late '70s, it was offering up suitably gnarly special effects that brought almost comical quantities of blood, and while the tone starts out lighthearted, it gets about as dark as any horror movie from the time period that it's homaging. The kills are impressive, the demons look nasty and feel like a true threat to the heroes, the direction does a great job teasing them for most of the movie before going all-out in the finale, and the manners in which the main characters fight back can get quite creative. My Buffy comparison wasn't just because of the plot of "teenage girl and her friends vs. the forces of darkness", at least not entirely -- this film struck a similar balance of earnest character interaction, some lighthearted moments, and supernatural bad guys who serve as a genuine menace. As a result, when their lives were put in danger, it felt earned, less like the film was trying to shock me by killing off a kid and more like it was trying to show me that nobody was safe, not even the protagonists.
The Bottom Line
It's not an especially great movie, but for fans of retro-styled horror, you can do far worse than this. They Reach wears its influences on its sleeve almost to a fault, but it has some real heart beneath all of its '70s references.
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