Cast: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Emjay Anthony, Stefania LaVie Owen, Krista Stadler, Lolo Owen, Queenie Samuel, Maverick Flack
If Krampus is someone (or something) you’ve never heard of before now, then you’re probably not alone. He (or it) is a figure from Austro-Bavarian Alpine folklore, an anti-Santa who punishes those who’ve been wicked. Michael Dougherty’s movie isn’t the first to feature the creature – if you’re a completist you can check out Krampus (2012), Krampus: The Christmas Devil (2013), Krampus: The Reckoning (2015), and A Christmas Horror Story (2015) as well – but this latest incarnation is very different from all the rest in one particular respect: it’s less concerned with being a horror movie.
Of all the horror movies you’re likely to see in 2015, Krampus will always retain the distinction of being scare-free, relatively bloodless, and more interested in creating a mood it can’t fully sustain. It’s also keen to impress with its focus on the extended dysfunctional family that finds itself trapped in one home in the run-up to Xmas and besieged by the title character, his trusty elves, and a bag full of demonic toys. (These last elements sound great but hold that thought for a moment…)
The set up is simple enough: pre-teen Max (Anthony) still believes in Santa Claus, but the dismal, selfish attitudes of his mother’s sister’s family leads him to tear up his usual letter to Saint Nick and cast it to the wind. For this, a terrible snowstorm sets in, the other residents in the street disappear, and Krampus turns up to carry everyone off to whatever underground realm he’s come from. In the process, the two families who have little liking for each other learn to come together and defend themselves against the supernatural force that’s determined to make them suffer for being “naughty, not nice”.
What follows is designed to wring more laughs than scares or shocks from the material, and while the movie throws in a couple of sequences that are designed to leave the viewer perched on the edge of their seat, the threat is undermined by the makers’ determination not to upset their audience with too much blood and gore, or strangely, by making Krampus himself about as threatening as having your nails buffed. What is effective is a sequence set in the loft space where several of Krampus’s demonic toys attack Scott, Collette and Tolman, and it’s this that remains the movie’s stand out scene. But even then, the toys are too reminiscent of the puppets created by Full Moon Features, so much so that it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see Jester or Pinhead pop up at some point.
Elsewhere, Dougherty uses his cast to fairly good effect but makes several characters one-note or underwritten – Ferrell’s bitchy mother, Tolman’s perplexed-looking sister – while the budget keeps Krampus sidelined until the final fifteen minutes. His elves launch an attack on the house that seems more arbitrary than properly planned, and the inclusion of growing numbers of ugly snowmen in the house’s front yard is meant to be menacing but is more of a distraction. It all ends with the kind of narrative trickery that is more confusing than conclusive, and leaves the viewer scratching their head in bewilderment.
Rating: 5/10 – a valiant attempt to make a Xmas horror movie with a difference, Krampus lacks bite and a truly scary monster; needing a greater sense of peril to work properly, and less bickering between the characters, it’s a movie that runs out of steam far too quickly and never recovers from doing so.
Cast: Kane Hodder, Bill Moseley, Caitlin Harris, Olivia Alexander, Brandi Cyrus, Margaret Keane Williams, Robert Bogue, Sascha Knopf, Jake Robinson, Devon Spence, Kenneth Simmons, Catherine Blades
Anyone who read my review of The Vatican Tapes (2015) will, hopefully, remember my comment that “watching contemporary horror movies is a pastime perfectly suited for the unabashed masochist”. Having now watched Old 37 in the same week, I feel I ought to count myself as one of those armchair hopefuls, and the trauma of having seen two dreadful horror movies just days apart is prompting me to rethink seeing any more of them in the foreseeable future.
By now you’ll have guessed that Old 37 is pretty bad, but that description is just skimming the surface of how awful it all is. One very big clue is the name of the credited director, Alan Smithee, the pseudonym directors use when they no longer want their names attached to the movies they’ve made (directors who’ve done this include Dennis Hopper, Arthur Hiller, Rick Rosenthal and Stuart Rosenberg, and it’s the regular name used by Michael Mann when his movies are edited for TV). Here, the unhappy director in question is Christian Winters, and it doesn’t take long for the viewer to realise he made exactly the right choice.
From its opening in 1977 with bogus paramedic Jimmy (Simmons) being watched by his two young sons, Darryl and Jon Roy, as he kills the female victim of a road accident and then licks the blood from one of her wounds, to its modern day setting and close look at the life of teen Amy and her “friends”, who like nothing more than getting themselves involved in road accidents where someone dies and they refuse to take any responsibility, Old 37 takes so many left turns and diversions in its attempt to tell a coherent story that most viewers will probably give up trying to follow the “narrative” quite early on. The script, by Paul Travers and Joe Landes (and based on a dream Travers had), is frankly, a hodgepodge of scenes that barely connect with each other, and which at times can have no other reason for being there other than to pad out the otherwise meagre running time.
It’s too ludicrous in too many places, from the subplot involving Amy’s breast enlargement, where she appears to have the operation and leave the hospital on the same day (and in a tight-fitting top), to the adult Jon Roy (Hodder) wearing a mask over his lower face to hide a disfigurement, one that, when revealed, makes him look more goofy than horrific. One of the characters is burnt alive but makes a comeback later on, Amy’s mother proves to have an “inappropriate” boyfriend, the idea of “Old 37” is abandoned in favour of a revenge plot, and any attempts at credibility are suffocated at birth. The acting is atrocious, with special mention going to Moseley, who can’t inject menace into any of the threats Darryl makes, and Alexander as the acid-tongued Brooke, a role that grates from the moment the actress tries for bitchy but ends up as merely petulant.
Rating: 2/10 – with so many unforced errors in the script, and what remains proving the result of very poor judgment on the writers’ part, Old 37 is horrific for all the wrong reasons, and isn’t helped by some very poor performances; a waste of everyone’s time, and best avoided by anyone who’s even halfway considering watching this – no, really, avoid it.
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) / D: Christopher Landon / 93m
Cast: Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller, Joey Morgan, Sarah Dumont, Halston Sage, David Koechner, Cloris Leachman, Lukas Gage, Niki Koss
With Old 37 reinforcing the idea that low budget horror movies should be avoided at all costs (but not all of them, of course), it’s with a great deal of relief that Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse shows just how good a low budget horror movie can be. The difference? Well, actually, there are several. Here, the story – simple as it is – makes sense most of the time, and what narrative inconsistencies there are, aren’t so bad that they hurt the movie or bring the viewer up short. The performances are solid, and there’s a great sense of camaraderie between Sheridan, Miller and Morgan (and Dumont as well) that gives the movie an emotional core that isn’t always found in such movies. And Landon doesn’t allow the absurdity of the storyline to overwhelm the dramatic elements, keeping the more fanciful or gross out moments sufficiently in check (the trampoline sequence is a great case in point).
By mixing absurdist humour with lashings of latex and well-integrated CGI gore, the script – by Carrie Evans, Emi Mochizuki, and Landon – strikes a delicate balance between the two, as well as including a handful of heartfelt moments to offset the seriousness of the group’s predicament. It’s this “human focus” that aids the movie tremendously, and keeps the viewer rooting for the scouts and their stripper – sorry, cocktail waitress – comrade. There’s also the ongoing fate of their scout leader, played by Koechner, a dogged, determined man for whom the real downside of being a zombie is that he has even less respect than when he was alive/human.
While the quartet try to find the whereabouts of a secret party that Ben’s not-so secret crush (Sage) has gone to, the zombie hordes increase and in amongst the head blasting and the physical humour there are some nice visual flourishes, like the signpost that says Haddonfield is forty miles away, or the zombie whose T-shirt says YOLO. It’s little moments like these that add to the innate fun of the situation, and if you’re not amused by the idea of zombie cats (see above), then this really isn’t the movie for you.
The movie treads this fine line because between comedy and horror with relative ease (though some one-liners fall flat), and as the stakes increase for our merit badge warriors, the movie sees fit to put them increasingly in harms way, and to the point where you begin to suspect that one of them might not make it through either intact or alive. And when Augie (Morgan) reveals he’s put together a homemade bomb (“What are you, the Taliban?”), it’s at a point in the movie where a sacrifice wouldn’t be unexpected, and where the idea of only two of them getting out alive begins to hold some caché. Landon is good at this kind of narrative uncertainty, and gets the most out of both the script and the cast in these moments (though not forgetting that these kids are virgins, and when do virgins ever die in horror movies, 2000’s Cherry Falls aside, that is).
For sheer unadulterated, occasionally sophomoric humour, the movie is a clever twist on an old formula, and it gives its teen cast more than enough chances to shine, and each of them does. Sheridan is on winning form as the nerdy looking Ben, and Miller is suitably abrasive as the self-centred, selfie-obsessed Carter. But it’s Morgan as the dedicated scout Augie who steals the show, his often wide-eyed and wondering features perfectly suited for the outlandish exploits he and his fellow scouts find themselves involved in. And praise too for Dumont, who despite being garbed in cut-down shorts and bust-enhancing top, sidesteps any accusations of sexism by making her character, Denise, easily more ballsy than any of her male comrades.
Rating: 7/10 – a hugely enjoyable horror comedy that delivers pretty much throughout, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse has enough charm and low budget panache to meet the needs of genre fans everywhere; packed with moments to make you smile and go “Wow!” (and often at the same time), this is one horror treat that deserves cult status and to be a big hit on home video.
Cast: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Meagan Good, James Marsden, Josh Lawson, Kristen Wiig, Dylan Baker, Judah Nelson, Greg Kinnear, Harrison Ford
Nine years after Ron Burgundy’s first outing, the news anchor with the salon quality hair is back, still unrepentantly sexist, still with an ego the size of San Diego, and still oblivious to the chaos he causes around him. Happily married to Veronica Corningstone (Applegate) and sharing the lead anchor spot with her at the World Broadcast news station, Ron’s life is devastated when news boss Mack Tannen (Ford) promotes Veronica to lead anchor and fires Ron. Forcing Veronica to choose between him and her promotion, she chooses the job and Ron leaves her and their son Walter (Lawson). After a stint at San Diego’s Sea World, Ron is approached by Freddie Shapp (Baker) to come work for Global News Network and be part of the first ever 24-hour news channel. Ron agrees on the proviso that he can assemble his own news team. He tracks down Brian Fantana (Rudd), Champ Kind (Koechner) and Brick Tamland (Carell), and with his team around him, he sets about regaining his position at the top of the news tree.
The success of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, a slow-build process fuelled by home video and extensive word of mouth, brought with it the fans’ desire for a sequel. On its own merits, the first movie can be seen as a “happy accident”, an uneven mixture of stupidity and witlessness that was nevertheless funny at the same time. Ron was crass and boorish in a “who-let-the-moron-out?” kind of way, while his news team almost matched him low IQ for low IQ. Carell, then still climbing the comedy ladder, was endearing as the intellectually challenged Brick, Rudd was boyishly charming as Brian, and Koechner was – intentionally? by accident? – the funniest of all of them as Champ Kind, a man who has never heard a woman speak before. Ferrell created a fantastic character, a vain popinjay with delusions of adequacy, and milked the character for all he was worth. The performances made the movie, and over the years, have firmly lodged themselves in our collective comedy memories, so much so that we remember them with excessive fondness.
Sadly, that’s how they should have remained. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues trades heavily on our love of the characters but holds them in a kind of developmental stasis; in nearly ten years they haven’t changed a bit. Ron is still vain, Brian is still the scent-fixated ladies man, Champ is still the least developed of the four, and Brick is still an idiot. Veronica, having challenged Ron’s supremacy in the first movie, is demoted back to the same role again. The secondary characters are used as a foil for the news team’s shenanigans – not least Kristen Wiig’s uncomfortable turn as Brick’s love interest, Chani – and even Ron’s nemesis at GNN, Jack Lime (Marsden), is given little to make him a serious rival for the news anchor crown. And as with the first movie, Ron’s “story arc” is that he learns not to be so self-centred.
A re-tread then rather than a true sequel, Anchorman 2 arrives with a tremendous weight of expectation and reveals itself as more of a vanity project for Will and the gang (including director/co-writer McKay). There are laughs but as most of them are repeats of gags and scenes from the first movie, it’s hard to look upon them as anything but nostalgic or, worse still, lazy. Add the awkwardness of Carell’s performance – the line between exploiting Brick’s “disability” and treating him kindly is crossed time and time again – plus two sequences that inflate the running time beyond what’s necessary, and a recurring sense that the script was a first draft, and you have a movie that never quite gels in the way its makers had hoped. There’s an attempt at lampooning the public’s appetite for sensationalist news but it’s only briefly explored, and whatever criticism is implied by the need for ratings success over quality content is given short shrift also.
The movie does have a professional sheen to it, however, and the technical side of things is adequately handled but there are times when it even has the feel of a TV show. Ferrell acquits himself well, despite the limitations of his own script, and is ably supported by his cast mates. McKay directs ably enough, and the soundtrack throws up a few Eighties gems despite itself. And as for the final, cameo-studded battle of the news stations, what starts out as a glorious free-for-all, ends up as a let-down with a poor ending…and this is, ultimately, the main fault with the movie: scenes begin strongly but soon peter out. Once or twice in a two-hour movie is forgivable, but not all the way through. With this much talent involved, a better return would have been expected.
Rating: 5/10 – a huge disappointment and a perfect example of when cherished, much-loved movies should be left to stand alone; uninspired, derivative and overlong.
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