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Homepage > Joss Whedon Off Topic > Winter horrors can be scary (sarah michelle gellar mention)
From Joplinglobe.com Winter horrors can be scary (sarah michelle gellar mention)By Scott Meeker Friday 18 February 2005, by Webmaster It was right about the point in “Saw” when Cary Elwes began using a hacksaw to remove his foot above the ankle that I began to rethink my position on horror movies released in the winter. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let me back up just a bit. My sister called me last weekend to ask if I knew anything about the movie “Hide and Seek.” “You don’t want to see that,” I said. “Why? Have you seen it?” “No, but it’s a horror movie the studio released in January. It can’t be any good.” I proceeded to explain that it wasn’t necessary to see them because if a movie studio had any faith in movies such as “Hide and Seek,” “Boogeyman,” “Darkness” and “Alone in the Dark,” they’d release them in October or November. Combine the late release dates, watered-down ratings, trailers that emphasize cheap scares and bizarre casting choices (Tara Reid as an archeologist! DeNiro battles a girl’s imaginary friend!) and you wonder why the heck these movies didn’t go straight to video. Which reminded me that I still needed to take a look at a couple of the horror movies from last fall that are just now creeping onto DVD. I started with “The Grudge.” Like 2002’s “The Ring,” it was a remake of a Japanese horror film (“Ju-On”). The Japanese have learned a few things about horror movies that we’re just now catching on to over here. Namely that stringy-haired dead girls crawling out of TV screens or chasing you down a staircase on their hands and knees is way more creepy than quick cuts of something jumping out of the shadows and the obligatory violin shrieks blasting from the soundtrack. (Though it might not be quite as frightening as Tara Reid playing someone with an advanced college degree.) In the remake, Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as a student in Japan who takes a job with a home health-care service. She’s assigned to care for a woman who lives in a home where a particularly nasty murder-suicide occurred. It seems that a very angry spirit is still hanging around there and goes after just about anyone who sets foot in the place. If you’ve seen “The Ring,” there’s not much new here, but there are a few good jolts and disturbing images that linger with you - namely scenes with a stringy-haired dead girl caught on a grainy security video and later chasing Gellar down a staircase. Next up was “Saw” - which hit video stores this week. The premise is as original as it is disturbing. Two men (Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell) wake up in a dingy bathroom, chained at the leg to pipes at either end. In the center of the room is a bled-out corpse clutching a cassette player in one hand and a gun in the other. Each man has a cassette tape in their pocket, a bullet and a hacksaw. Playing the tapes, they learn that they have been kidnapped by a deranged killer who has given them six hours to escape from their chains and shoot the other man dead, or else they both die. “Saw” is a low-budget affair that tries to out-gross “Se7en” in terms of the nasty ways in which the victims are offed (a barbed-wire maze, a bear-trap helmet that can flip a person’s head inside out). Just how effective the scares are depends on your tolerance level for large amounts of gore, creepy clown dolls and things lurking in the shadows. For me, it put an end to horror movies for a while because it made me acutely aware of every house-settling noise at bedtime and made me pine for the cheap non-thrills of “scary” movies released in January. Maybe next year. 2 Forum messages |
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