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~ Dissecting horror films

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Tag Archives: paramount pictures

Movie review : Smile (2022)

24 Tuesday Jan 2023

Posted by surgeons of horror in Movie review

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jessie t usher, kyle gallner, paramount pictures, paramount pictures australia, parker finn, smile, sosie bacon

One of the first things you learn in the field of advertising is the concept (and then painstaking explanation of the difference) between Idea and Execution.

In an advertising sense, a strong execution can make for a great one-off ad, but a STRONG IDEA can make for a great campaign (made up of MANY executions) over a period of months.

And a BRILLIANT idea? One that speaks to the HEART of the proposition or product you’re promoting? That can last decades.

This isn’t restricted to creative endeavours either. In an episode of the Big Bang Theory, Sheldon and Leonard get into it over which is more important (idea or execution) when they haggle over credit of a scientific discovery they’ve made together.

And therein lies the crux of this review.

On the surface it would seem the answer to the question, “which is more important, idea or execution”, the answer would appear to be…Idea.

That’s what I was always taught. But as a director once told me many years ago – when discussing different video gauges – “What’s the point of busting a nut shooting something on the best format possible if the person watching it sees it on a TV that looks green?”

This was in the days before digital formats and flat screens, but what he was saying made an uncomfortable sense. There’s a reason why cinemas are still in business despite recent innovations in home entertainment systems. Nothing beats a cinematic experience, even if the movie itself is shit.

Another way of looking at it is through your ears. A lot of sound engineers & producers will tell you, if the album you’re crafting sounds good on shit speakers, it’ll sound AWESOME on good ones.

So, execution is not nothing.
And – in this reviewer’s typically long-winded way – we get to the crux of Smile.

On the surface of it, it is a completely unoriginal idea. An unseen all powerful McGuffin tortures a person, puts them through hell, kills them, and then moves on to the next victim.

It Follows anyone? Truth or Dare anyone else?

For those of you who saw the trailer and thought this was another “one of those” type of films, you’d be right! Right down to the way they usually start, middle and end.

But UNLIKE those movies, this one has been wildly successful ($216 million to date against a budget of just 17). In fact it’s been so popular it has crossed over into mainstream popularity (you know you’ve made it big when you get mentions on American late-night talk shows).

But why? Admittedly it had a clever marketing campaign but at the risk of alienating my advertising brethren who I so lovingly mentioned at the head of this article, so what?

People don’t throw money at a volume of 12 to 1 at a movie unless it has something IN the product itself. And so with Smile, what is it?

Well – if you’ve been paying attention so far – if it’s not in the idea, then it has to be in the execution.

Here at Surgeons of Horror we have mentioned several times during our many podcasts that horror –as a film genre–is easy to do. But hard to DO WELL.

That’s because in the moment of actually making a horror, NOTHING is scary. The moment is out of context, contrived and repeated until an acceptable take is achieved.

The scary comes in the editing, and this movie is well put together.

From accomplished jump scares to decent tension and build up, a film like this hinges heavily on the lead actor (in this case Sosie Bacon) to sell the trauma of what she’s going through without getting annoying; and she by & large does a very creditable job.

In a nutshell, Smile is a cookie cutter template taken straight from the maguffin curse book. A curse puts a person through hell before killing them (in this case, by making them commit a grisly suicide) before leaping on to the next person (specifically, the one who witnessed the suicide) and so on.

What ensues is the usual steps of unsettling happenings leading to bigger and bigger scares; the protagonist goes through the standard stages of disbelief of the curse, believing the curse, understanding the curse, and finally, defeating the curse by – and this bit is a must – FINDING A LOOPHOLE as laid out by the rules of the curse.

But does it work? Well – how Smile handles that is straight out of the playbook too. Twisty twist included. Although – and this is an interesting observation to its execution; because the movie Truth or Dare would make people smile in a crazed CGI assisted way, this movie – when anyone does the same – does so without digital assistance.

Which is a pity, as a slight and unnaturally skewed smile is very unsettling in the best traditions of the uncanny valley. And although it is ALWAYS trendy to say ANY movie with SPFX is better without CGI, in this case it would have helped an already well made film even better. CGI is an arrow in a film-makers quiver. And as with all such tools, it’s all about how you shoot it.

The Prognosis:

So Smile is not very original. But it is very well done, and there is the (now) ancient and famous fable taken from the greatest summer blockbuster horror of all time – as said by its director – “If I’ve done my Job right for the first 100 minutes, then people won’t care that shooting an oxygen tank in a shark’s mouth won’t blow up in the last 2”.

(I may be paraphrasing)

But the point is, as a movie Smile earns a lot with its reminder that whilst Idea is indeed more important, a great idea will never be great without a fitting Execution. And that’s something to… err, grin about.

  • Antony Yee

Movie review: Orphan: First Kill (2022)

03 Saturday Sep 2022

Posted by surgeons of horror in Uncategorized

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isabelle fuhrman, julia stiles, orphan, orphan first kill, paramount pictures

Sequels.
They were the lament of the 80’s. Well – they were endemic enough that it became trendy to complain that they “were never as good as the original”. Which was, and still is (more or less) accurate. But not completely. And the phenomena has morphed these days into Franchise-ism, which is more World Building than straight up sequel-ing. (A loop-hole of lawyer-like proportions that any former president would die for right now).

But another side trend seems to be prequel-ing! From Game of Thrones, to Lord of The Rings to Star Wars, for some reason content creators seem to think we want to know what happened before “once upon a time” rather than after “happily ever after” when it comes to The Next Instalment. So with that in mind, we turn to Esther – or more specifically it’s re-worked title of Orphan: First Kill. A prequel to the 2009 movie, Orphan. And with it comes a highlighted picadillo all prequels face. The age-old problem of aging. (Double edged in a film that is about a fully grown woman, pretending to be 10, in a prequel made MANY YEARS AFTER its sequel).

Before we get into the mechanics of the review itself, it must be said this film seemed to fly under the radar of this reviewer and a lot of the Surgeon’s team of a similar age bracket. Before being told about this movie, I would have said I was vaguely aware of a young girl in pigtails on the poster and that’s about it. She was probably evil and does evil things to her adoptive family ‘cause you know… she’s an (evil) orphan… Probably Satan infused in flavour (judging by the artwork etc).
That’s because a story about a pale skinned girl with dark hair appearing at the end of a decade that had already produced The Ring, The Grudge and Silent Hill meant that there was probably a fair amount of “evil kid” action going on in this movie, and fatigue (for me at least) had well and truly set in. (Although in defence of Orphan, it did make a strong enough profit ratio – roughly 1 to 4 in fact – to justify some sort of new chapter).

Anyway. Orphan: First Kill explores the story that saw how Esther transitioned from Estonia to America – a plot hole from the first film that bugged a few people. Apparently. The solution the film makers came up with was inspired – in part – but the real-life adoption case of Natalia Grace, herself a 22-year-old posing as a 9-year-old in a caper that was inspired, in part, by the original Orphan film! (Google it – what an Ouroboros world we live in).

So straight off the bat young (sic) Esther tries to inject herself into the lives of a wealthy American family (the matriarch of which is played by Julia Styles. Good to see her back on the silver screen after getting killed In The Bourne Forgettable in a scene that we THINK was supposed to have some sort of emotional resonance…?) And Esther does so by claiming to be this family’s long lost 10-year-old daughter (the real one having gone missing 4 years before) and thus ensues the usual shenanigans of her pretending to be
something she isn’t. How? You may ask (if you don’t know…) Esther suffers from a genetic condition that roughly translates to “proportional dwarfism” meaning she can effectively play someone much younger than she actually is. Added to that, she has a healthy dose of psychopathy so killing in her own best interest/preservation is not a problem for her.

But here’s the thing. And indeed the problem with this type of film. This twist is not (or is no longer) a twist, because we, the audience, already know it. It’s what we here at Surgeons call The Zombie Paradox. For any storyteller trying to make a zombie TV show/movie, they have to contend with viewers who know what a zombie is, and the various associated rules in dealing with them. Which means straight off the bat the story is playing catch up with the watcher and not (as you would want) the other way round. But in the case of Orphan – the ENTIRE film hung off Esther’s strange, dangerous and Omen like behaviour. Is she the child of Satan? NO – she is really 33! Dun Dun Daaaah!

But if that wad is already shot, how do you go about making a prequel?

The only recourse the film-makers basically have is to make Esther the protagonist and not antagonist (d’uh as the working title of the film is “Esther”) but digging deeper into what that means; a balancing act is required. If hers is to be the journey we are on, we need to fear for her when she is threatened and break for her when she is hurt. But she is an unhinged murderer. Not even an anti-hero (like say Dexter is) as she doesn’t kill evil. She kills threats, innocent or otherwise. An exciting writing challenge. If you get it right. But even if you do, IS that keeping in the spirit of the first movie? (See Surgeons of Horror, OUR TOP TIPS ON WHAT MAKES A GOOD SEQUEL).

An additional problem – as was brought up at the beginning of this review when we were all so much younger – is how do we convincingly address the aging elephant in the room? Esther – as a character to be cast – can only really be played by an older woman who physically looks 10, but what are the chances of someone like that who exists, has the right look, and can also act? So you go the other way, and choose someone young who can act old. And since cinema is littered with precociously talented child actors since day dot, the route this film chose back in 2009 was sort of a no-brainer. Especially since the actor in question was the then 12-year-old and fiercely powerful Isabelle Fuhrman. But now we are in (not) the next decade, but the decade after that, and Fuhrman is 25 (just a few years off Esther’s real age) and while she herself still has a youthful exuberance about her (helped no doubt by the fact she is 5’3”…it’s so much harder to play young if you’re 6’2”) ONE look at her in close up it is clear she is no longer a child. So faced with this dilemma what do the film makers do? Why go all Hobbit style and shoot force perspective, CGI and use stand ins. And whilst this worked well for LOTR, that film was 20 + years ago. Our eye had yet to be trained to be CGI cynical like it is now, and force-perspective and other old skool filming tricks were so out of fashion, they were LIKE new! But now we are well aware of such deceits and quite frankly, they really show up. (A bit like when you watch Die Hard now and it is VERY noticeable that’s not Bruce Willis getting thrown through windows or being blown up by flaming helicopters, but his stunt double. We forgave SO MUCH pre-CGI…)

But in terms of Orphan First Kill, the most obvious moments are when we track behind Fuhrman’s body double in WS, and then we cut to her face as we track backwards in Tight MS. A 10-year-old comports themselves differently to an adult. Bones and limbs are in different proportions. Neck and shoulders…it’s all different. A child waddles, an adult walks. And Fuhrman’s face – no matter how many downward angles you employ, or indeed, apple boxes you put under the actors around her – is clearly not a child. And especially when you consider the first movie – where 12-year-old Fuhrman is unmistakably Esther from all angles and frame sizes – it is very conspicuous that the coverage and overall shooting style of First Kill is starkly different. And straight away that means the feel of this film is different.

But is it any good?

Well it must be said – there is a twist at about the halfway mark that isn’t the same kind of reveal that’s in the first movie, BUT it is good enough to make you go “nice one” and sit up for the rest of the film. BUT it also negates certain character behaviours and motivations in the first half, so it also comes across as a twist that is very forced. It also – as a standalone story – really lacks the emotional compression of the first movie. The acts and story beats of the first film does an excellent job of putting Vera Farmiga’s character (who’s journey we are on for that instalment) through the wringer. Helped – as mentioned – by the fact that we the audience just don’t know Esther’s full deal till the end of the story.

The Prognosis:

So First Kill definitely lacks such layers, and with the aforementioned difference in coverage, it doesn’t feel like it’s a close relation to the other film.
Although by no means awful, it’s not really worthy of its 2009 predecessor (post-ecessor?) because there is another 3rd difference that the film-makers seemly lost track of during the whole – how-do-we-make-this-story-&-Esther’s-look-work? – hullabaloo, and that is… it’s also not scary.

  • Antony Yee

Retrospective: Event Horizon (1997)

14 Sunday Aug 2022

Posted by surgeons of horror in retrospective

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event horizon, jack noseworthy, jason isaacs, joely richardson, Kathleen Quinlan, laurence fishburne, paramount pictures, paul w s anderson, richard t jones, sam neill, sean pertwee

Paul W. S. Anderson has divided audiences since his sophomore feature, Mortal Kombat became a commercial success. Since then, he has been commonly associated with his Resident Evil obsession having produced six instalments and directed four. 

It is however his third feature film that has arguably gained wider cult status and now celebrates 25 years since its release. It is also the movie that made me sit up and expect great things from him as a director. 

It heralds a lot of things for a science fiction horror to warrant the following it currently receives. It has a cracking concept centred in the year 2047, around a rescue mission to the titular spaceship which happens to be carrying an experimental engine that creates a rift in the space-time continuum. The question is not only where did it go? But also, what did it bring back with it when it mysteriously appears again in the orbit of Neptune?

It is further emboldened by a strong cast with Laurence Fishburne as the stoic Capt. Miller, headstrong and in juxtaposition to the unhinged designer of the Event Horizon, Dr. Weir played the always brilliant Sam Neill.

Accompanying the duo is a worthy crew in Kathleen Quinlan’s medical technician, Peters; Joely Richardson’s communications officer, Lieutenant Starck; Richard T. Jones as rescue technician, Cooper; Jack Noseworthy as chief engineer, Justin; Jason Isaacs (a little underused in my humble opinion, but there are a few characters up for the chopping block here) as medical doctor D.J.; and Sean Pertwee as pilot, Smitty. All of who carry around their own personal demons that claw their way to the surface to haunt them, as hell breaks loose.

Initially a box office failure, Event Horizon would find its audience in the home entertainment scene, who would forgive its flaws, predominantly in the final third of the movie, and embrace the special effects on show combined with the psychological breakdown of the human mind… in space!

I, for one, find myself drifting back to this movie time and time again, and consider it one of my guilty pleasures. I still remember the cinematic experience, clearly one of the few who enjoyed it at the time. I also remember a friend of mine from university being deeply moved by the experience, stating it one of the most shocking movies he’d ever seen.

Whatever your experience of it, the cult following keeps on growing and I’m curious to see if Amazon and Paramount will greenlight the TV series that was discussed in 2019, with You’re Next director Adam Wingard potentially overseeing things.

Until then we must continue to claw our way back into the feature film and soak up the crazed ambience, and crackfire performances on show. 

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

29 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by surgeons of horror in retrospective

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adrienne king, amy steel, betsy palmer, carl fullerton, Friday the 13th, Jason, Jason Voorhees, john furey, paramount pictures, sean cunningham, steve daskewisz, walt gorney, warrington gillette

Slasher films had been around through the 70s, although they were more commonly associated with snuff films, but when John Carpenter thrust Michael Myers and Halloween into the horror genre, the flame was struck. Two years later, Sean Cunningham teamed up with writer Victor Miller and stoked the fire further to propel slashers into the mainstream and a plethora of similar movies soon followed.

So, it was inevitable that Paramount Pictures would look at the film’s success and look at ways to spawn a franchise… but there was one big problem.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear, at the beginning of my movie, Jason is dead!

Victor Miller

When they offered me the script for Part 2, I got the script and Jason was running around and I said, “What are you doing?

Tom Savini

If you track that into any kind of timeline, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Sean Cunningham

If the original creators were puzzled, so were the fans, but it wasn’t just the script that was out of whack. There were a number of other conflicts that occurred behind the scenes. Most notably was the return and demise of the films original heroine, Alice played by Adrienne King. King wasn’t shy with her complaints about the production and the way that both her and her character were treated… killing her off in the opening scene supposedly without her knowledge. Those who had come to love her character and her strength in the climax against Jason’s mother Pamela, thought that it was dealt with rather too swiftly.

Another controversial component in-house came with the casting of Jason himself. Let’s forget about the whole sandbag over the head thing which was clearly a lift from The Town That Dreaded Sundown released five years earlier. Instead the issue centred on Warrington Gillette who was given the role of Jason when he failed to win the role of lead counsellor Paul, losing out to John Furey. The only problem was that Warrington at the time wasn’t a stuntman, so the producers had to call in Steve Daskewisz to perform the stunts and debate would strike over who the real Jason was.

Friday the 13th Part 2 was clearly trying to stitch the pieces back together on its path to create a franchise, and arguably were pulling from other movies to inspire or develop this world. Although the creators claimed ignorance, there is a striking similarity to one death scene in the movie to Mario Bava’s 1971 flick, Twitch of the Death Nerve, aka A Bay of Blood (The Surgeons will be taking a look at this movie in more detail for a podcast down the track).

Despite all this, some iconic moments were created.

The introduction of Ginny (Amy Steel) who not only kicked arse as the final girl, but was smart and managed to psyche Jason out by pretending to be dear old Mom. This also brought Betsy Palmer back to resurrect Pamela albeit in dream form.

Also returning from the original movie was Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) and with him the wacky old guy character that would become synonymous with the slasher films. Plus the iconic camp fire scares and young school counsellors getting busy before they get whacked, which is a key draw card for the sub-genre. 

Speaking of kills, with the absence of Tom Savini in the makeup and effects department having signed on to make The Burning, another mastro Stan Winston stepped into the scene, only to also be called away for another commitment. Instead Carl Fullerton (Wolfen, The Silence of the Lambs) would more than step up to the plate and deliver some great effects sequences and some of the most memorable kills from the franchise.

It may have been built on some shaky ground with some questionable narrative decisions that are still debated today, but the final result pulled in $21.7 million at the box office. This wasn’t as successful as its predecessor but it was enough for Paramount to call it a win and from the wake of Pamela Voorhees came the birth of Jason. They were still finding their feet in who or what Jason would be and he is more in embryonic stage, but with Director Steve Miner returning again to helm the next instalment alongside producer Frank Mancuso Jr. history was being made and Jason would soon take great strides in the horror film industry.

  • Saul Muerte

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