* * *
A wedding videographer who has a sideline in brutal killings starts filming his murderous exploits as a documentary.
Starring Kevin Howarth, Mark Stevenson, Antonia Beamish, Christabel Muir
Written by James Handel, Julian Richards
Produced by Zorana Piggott, Julian Richards
Duration 79 minutes
Found footage. The V/H/S franchise is keeping the fire of this sub-genre burning, to mostly successful effect, but by and large it feels like a style of filmmaking whose time has passed.
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT popularised found footage in the modern era, of course, back in 1999, but few were able to recapture that magic. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and CLOVERFIELD did well in 2007 and 2008, but while the former birthed a franchise, the peak was brief and (with some exceptions) the decline swift.
Found footage actually draws its origins back to the epistolary novel: your Draculas (good) and your Frankensteins (didn’t like it) that were structured around characters' correspondence or diary entries, or from newspaper clippings. The desired effect is to make everything seem ‘real’ and thus more involving.
But there is a danger that the reverse will happen. Any time we enter the world of a movie, we know we are being asked to suspend our disbelief – to enter a dream-like state where we take things as they come. In removing the sense of artifice, the found footage approach can in fact create more artifice; be a distancing effect rather than an engrossing one.
Because without any of the traditional manipulative cinematic techniques (precise use of editing, lighting, staging, scripting, etc.), there's the risk that we never reach that suggestable state. And so, what looks like an amateur pointing his camera at random things happening in front of him may only ever end up feeling like an amateur pointing his camera at random things happening in front of him, an experience as incapable of engrossing us as a relative's boring video of their two weeks in Camber Sands.
Although not in the found footage style, for me the same principle applies to those one-take gimmick movies. They take me out of the story, forcing me to step back and admire the filmmaking rather than the film. The odd sequence can work out OK, but I was left deeply unimpressed with the feature-length ‘oners’ BIRDMAN (2014) and 1917 (2019) – both of which actually had several disguised cuts. The latter was especially misguided – rather than an immersive experience of the horrors of war, it turned the protagonists’ odyssey into a tedious trek, without the breaks and rhythms that good editing and pacing provide. Hitchcock’s ROPE is an example of the gimmick that actually does work – and the big man had fewer ways to cheat back in 1948.
(I’m similarly unimpressed with all the lauded one-take action scenes which litter the genre nowadays, such as in the overrated JOHN WICK films. All I see is how well Keanu has rehearsed for something the ends up looking like a video game cutscene, with none of the grace, tension or beauty of an expertly edited Peckinpah, Cameron or Woo.)
But back to found footage. Some of those films are actually very good. BLAIR WITCH didn’t do much for me, but I’ve been meaning to revisit it. The aforementioned CLOVERFIELD does a great job of combining high-quality SFX within a lo-fi aesthetic, and CHRONICLE works, if you’re into that sort of thing. And I can’t neglect to mention CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980), one of the best ever horror films, period. REC (2007) and TROLLHUNTER (2010) also deserve your attention.
And, I’d say, so does THE LAST HORROR MOVIE – just about.
At first, the viewer is made to feel that they’re watching the wrong movie. An opening sequence takes place in a distinctly American diner, with a stereotypical slasher setup: a waitress closing up on her own is stalked and attacked by a maniac. It’s clearly not found footage, as was advertised.
Then we cut via a fuzzy screen to a British man addressing the camera from his grubby West London flat, admitting to taping over the diner slasher – which was the ‘real’ movie that we the viewer rented. He goes on to promise that what he’s about to show us will be much more horrific.
This is Max Parry, a serial killer, and he’s going to tell us about his exploits – he estimates he ‘does’ eight to ten people per year, between stints as a wedding videographer. More than that, he’s going to show us.
So, it’s basically as if after Henry and Otis from HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986) filmed their home invasion they decided to carry on bringing the camera along and started to enjoy the documenting as much as the killing. It’s also like the Belgian MAN BITES DOG (1992), but without the accompanying film crew (Max just has a protégé ‘assistant’ to film him).
THE LAST HORROR MOVIE isn't as good as those two, lacking their power and insight. Max is far too smug and cocky and doesn’t really convince as a homicidal maniac – the idea persists that he’s doing his whole video project as one big prank. The film tries for some thematic depth by calling out the viewer for their bloodlust and complicity, but is not nearly as incisive or witty as Austrian director Michael Haneke was with the same message in his FUNNY GAMES in 1997.
Nevertheless, it does have its moments.
There’s a queasily suspenseful sequence where we're led to believe that Max is luring a young boy away to be his latest victim, but it turns out the lad is his nephew and he’s only bringing him home to his mum/Max’s sister. A montage of bludgeoning kills cuts comically to Max tenderising some steaks with a mallet. Max runs up to a woman while she’s doing the laundry and stabs her repeatedly, and then while she sits there bleeding out he passionately explains to her, "We're trying to make an intelligent movie about murdering while doing the murders... we’re trying to do something interesting!"
That last example is more thematically rich than chastising the viewer with "so why are you still watching all this unpleasantness, eh?", presenting as it does an artist whose frustration to create something meaningful has driven him to murder – similar territory to Abel Ferrara’s DRILLER KILLER (1979).
If THE LAST HORROR MOVIE had had more of that kind of thing, and less oily smugness delivered straight to camera in extreme close-up, then Max's exploits might have been compelling and disturbing enough to put him up there with HENRY’S Henry and DOG'S Ben in the pantheon of narcissistic killers with a camera. Pity.
Three stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? Max actually explains this towards the end,
in a nice meta twist that I won't spoil here, all the while pondering whether his over-analysis
makes him "sound like a wanker". Cough-cough.
What would a movie called THE FIRST HORROR MOVIE be about?
Universally, that would be THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI (1920). For me personally, it
was probably ALIENS – not strictly horror, I know, but pretty scary when you're
eight years old.
Previously: THE LAST THING HE WANTED
Next time: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
No comments:
Post a Comment