The Man in the Orange Jacket--Aik Karapetian (2014)

"Woman in Peril," chased by a sadistic madman, is par for the course in Karapetian's The Man in the Orange Jacket (2014)

Like several of the films that I saw at the Fantasia Film Festival, Aik Karapetian's The Man in the Orange Jacket (Man in OJ) is an excellent example of squandered potential.  On the whole, the film is fairly derivative of films where a sadistic killer, out of misplaced desire turned to aggression, hunts down a bunch of unlikeable people in a remote location, and dispatches them through a wide selection of weapons/tools.  If Karapetian is attempting to craft a story where we are not sympathetic towards the victims or the perpetrator, he succeeds.  Yet the film has some significant moments that suggest that he's trying for something more complex and powerful--especially in regards to Eastern European class tensions.

The camera tracks our killer as he jogs on the property

Here is where the film works: the cinematography in the Man in OJ is simply stunning, and the multiple tracking shots in the beginning of the film as it follows the man (Maxim Lazarev) leave his harbor job, travel to his boss's home, kill both the big wig and his younger wife, and then proceed to live "large" in the mansion he has invaded--well, these images are gorgeous.  Karapetian masterfully manipulates the space of the mansion, and his opening and closing of the doors that divide this space increases the film's tensions exponentially.  Shadows and light create a misty, grey netherworld where what is real and fantasy becomes more and more unclear.

The Man in OJ lounges in his new-found solarium

The film also cleverly explores what it might be like to live like "the haves," when all one has known is what it's like to "have not."  The man initially struggles with his new luxuries.  He wears his male victim's clothes (even though they are not REMOTELY the same size), he lounges in his robe, he smokes his cigars (and hacks violently).  The man goes out to dinner, and gorges on rich food that he has no idea how to eat (when all else fails, use your fingers).  He then proceeds to get violently ill, and tries to recuperate in a bubble bath.  He's not even good at hiring prostitutes.  If I'm being generous, I would say that the film tries to critique the fantasy of affluent masculinity, suggesting that money and power are not easily obtained through violent class overthrow.  At the same time, does the film imply that wealth's pleasures are illusory, or that one just really needs to be "born to it?"  

The required half-naked dead girl, snuffed out after a long chase scene

Most of the film's deeper questions fall flat because of the seemingly requisite amount of gendered sexual violence on display.  This particular focus undermines any class critique, as the film frequently devolves into a "boogeyman" with a weapon chase narrative.  The film's kills are straight out of the "Carol Clover guide to slasher films," with the male character dispatched with one blow, and with the women gratuitously clad and on the run from an almost supernaturally empowered killer.  True, the man (in OJ) is shown to be both dis-empowered and riddled by guilt over his deeds, but that part of the film MAKES NO DAMN SENSE unless one chalks up the whole thing to fantasies nestled in his deranged mind.  Major cop-out.  

I initially was hoping that the film was transforming into a circular pattern, where another Man in OJ shows up, and, thinking the first man (in OJ) is the boss (who recently laid off thousands of people who work at the harbor), he goes all homicidal on him.  So the man who initially INVADES the home gets his home invaded, and so on, and so on, infinity.  (I think these time travel, mind fu** films are starting to infect my brain).  See, here is where the film had some real potential! Yeah, but that narrative does not happen.  Instead, the man seems to have a lot of misplaced, unmotivated guilt (which undermines all his previous actions), and then out of nowhere there's a really dumb Final Girl twist.  Really dumb.  Thankfully, the film clocks in at 71 minutes, so it's over pretty quickly.  I wouldn't say that it's not worth seeing for some of its visual inventiveness, but ultimately that The Man in the Orange Jacket disappoints.

31 Days of Horror--Day 30 Alternate Endings and 28 DAYS LATER (2002)

Naomie Harris as Selena in 28 Days Later (2002)

In a recent interview with The Huffington Post, since re-posted everywhere, Naomie Harris, one of the stars of the most recent Bond film Skyfall suggested that Idris Elba would make a fantastic James Bond.  Anyone who has seen the utterly fantastic Luther, or even Ridley's Scott's lame-o Prometheus might heartily agree.  I would like to suggest, though, that Naomie Harris would actually make a great Bond, or at least an action hero in her own right, rather than some sidekick.  I have come to realize that I live on a different PLANET than many other people, and that what I'd like to see in cinema is not embraced by everyone else.  This realization is drilled into my skull when I think about her transformation in a film such as Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002) from fierce fighter to a more romantic, even maternal figure over the course of the film.  She starts out like this:

with Cillian Murphy's Jim begging her to wait for him as he hurls his weak, soft male body up the stairs after her.  She has managed to survive the fast moving rage zombie apocalypse so far, and has done so with a willingness to kill even her infected "friends" in the name of survival. 

Running Zombies, not Walkers

She's a cool cucumber in a crisis, where Jim is little more than a mewling infant, tying her down.  She helps him, because she's a hero through and through.  The problem is that in this world, Selena cannot stay rational, tough, and fierce.  She must be softened.  So Boyle gives her another "girl" of which to take care, Hannah, and the threat of rape looming over them by a bunch of creepy soldiers who haven't seen a woman in a long time.

Waiting for sexual assault, Selena loses her fighting spirit

Oh, and Jim evolves from dopey, helpless ex-bike messenger in need of rescue to male rescuer and love interest, because in apocalyptic times, women like Selena cannot be too picky??  Her days are numbered, you know.

I like the fact that Hannah bashes him over the head because she think Jim is biting Selena, but that idea is quickly dispelled.  Jim comes back and saves the women from a pretty horrible fate.  What's fascinating about these tales of lawlessness is that instead of a zombie apocalypse creating a world where gender roles are leveled into an even playing field, once civilization deserts us, we resort to the most hackneyed gender expectations.  While I understand that these films are about humans being as, or more, monstrous than the monsters, I really believe that these ideas highlight a failure of the imagination on the part of the male-dominated film industry (and its pandering to stereotype-hungry audiences). 

One of 28 Days Later's most striking qualities is the film's portrayal of a rather soft and mushy male hero.  Cillian Murphy is a fine actor, but he's very pretty and delicate, a true damsel in distress in the film's first moments. 

His transformation into a hard and angry man, little different from the raping, ruthless soldiers and rage-filled zombies that surround him, occurs at the expense of Selena's strength.  Now Boyle had a shot at undermining this rather sad and expected shift with the ending he initially proposed for his film.  **Spoilers Ahead.

In his original ending, Boyle kills off Jim, who may have been moderately transformed into a bit of a tough guy, but realistically dies from a series of fatal injuries.  Selena and Hannah try to save him, but in the end, the two women are left to face the zombie menace alone, dresses on and guns in hand.  And these two were going to make it!  I felt rather thrilled by this ending, which one could see if one waited around after the film's theatrical ending occurred.

In the film's theatrical ending, which Boyle went with after test audiences complained about his original decision, Jim, Hannah, and Selena are living as a happy little family in some bucolic farmhouse in the countryside.  Selena employs her sewing skills in crafting a big sign for airplanes to notice when flying overhead, and the three jump up and down like happy little monkeys, smiling and grinning as they attempt to get the attention of the plane.  Awwww.  Isn't that nice?  It looks like they might be saved.

Well, that ending makes me feel kind of like this: effing Pissed OFF.  So test audiences are only satisfied when everyone fits neatly into their tight little gender niches, where men are MEN, and women get back to sewing.  In an interview, Boyle stated that audiences were worried as to how these "girls" are going to survive on their own?  Here I cry bullshit, since the "Final Girl" in horror cinema, despite all her problematic representations, always manages to do JUST THAT.

I have only recently started to watch AMC's The Walking Dead again, primarily because Michonne is going to be a focus of this season, and because I had some real problems with the pregnancy storyline and the reification of traditional gender roles the season before.  My concern is that these fierce, fighting black women are touched by some kind of exotic primitivism that contains and dampens their strengths, stripping them of a heroism richly imagined and rightly deserved.  We'll see.

31 Days of Horror--Day 26 EVIL DEAD remake

I have a soft spot for Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, especially I (1981) and II (1987).  I'm not a fan of Hollywood Remakes, as you can tell from my post on COMA and its remake.  So I was a little upset to find out that Evil Dead was going to be remade, even if Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are producing the bugger. I guess they have to send their kids to private school.

What's worse?  Diablo Cody worked on the screenplay.  As a feminist horror scholar, I am all for more women in horror, but with this particular screenwriter, I have been previously burned (I'm looking at you, Jennifer's Body (2009)).  I fear for this film's dialogue.

The Old Ash

I also cannot imagine an Evil Dead film without Bruce Campbell as Ash.  From what Campbell has admitted at a panel on the remake at this past New York Comic.con, Ash is now a woman, "Mia," played by Jane Levy.

The New Ash

What else did I glean from the panel?  That Mia is the New Ash AND is raped by a possessed tree.  I guess Raimi and Co. thought that if they stuck in a Final Girl, then they could get away with something so violently misogynist and outdated.  Did Ms. Cody write THAT scene?

Still, like my rant about the Carrie remake, I know I'll still see this film, and while I can complain all I want, this film is a done deal, and I'm going to have to talk about it.  Here's a couple of unfunny images from the new Evil Dead.

Yikes.  I do like horror films to scare me, and I will admit, this Red Band Trailer for the Evil Dead remake looks pretty damn scary.

The original film, with its wonky special effects and hyperbolic acting, is positively quaint in comparison.

31 Days of Horror--Day 22 Rodolfo Loaiza's Disasterland

Never Sleep Again

For those of you who prefer "Final Girls" to Disney Princesses, Pop Surrealist Rodolfo Loaiza's "Disasterland" series hits the sweet spot.  This show premiered in early August at the La Luz De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles.  The show unsurprisingly sold out, so we'll just have to wait until Loaiza's next slaughtering of a sacred children's franchise.

Bloody Forest

Kill Mulan

31 Days of Horror--Day 11 HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009)

Babysitters are born snoopers.  Once the kids are asleep, these teenage girls have nothing to do but explore the house in which they are staying.  What else are they going to do?  Watch TV?  Do their homework?  Yeah, they'll do some of that too, but there seems to be something irresistible about someone else's house and stuff when you are fifteen years old.  I discovered some weird identical twin porn once while I was baby sitting.  Ick.  Still, if you are baby sitting in a house like this:

For people like these:

Mary Woronov and Tom Noonan as the Ulmans

You'll likely end up like this:

Especially if you babysit Mrs. Ulman's elderly Mom, who looks like this:

Yikes.  Now granted, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) showed up to babysit expecting a kid, so that bait and switch wasn't her fault.  And, the Ulmans offer her $400 for four hours of work, which is just a ridiculous amount of money for sometime in the 80s.  I'm guessing 1983 because of the huge size of Sam's Walkman tape player, combined with The Fixx's "One Thing Leads to Another" and Thomas Dolby's "One of Our Submarines" on the soundtrack.  Awesome soundtrack choices BTW.

Ti West has a tendency to create ridiculously nosy female characters.  He does so with the lovely Samantha, and repeats that deadly type with Claire in The Innkeepers (2011).

Claire pokes around the Yankee Pedlar Inn in The Inkeepers (2011)

As Horror film scholar Linda Williams attests (along with theoretical support from Mary Ann Doane and Carol Clover), women are often punished for possessing an inquisitive gaze in the cinema.  Frequently, it seems a better bet to NOT SEE, and be just one of those victims quickly dispatched.  Blam, you're dead.

Samantha's nosiness is a little much in The House of the Devil (2009), West's ode to babysitter horror with dashes of Satanism thrown in the mix.  She wanders around every inch of the house, and pokes her head into almost every door (except the one with the 3 dead bodies, heh). 

Yes, Sam is desperate for money, but her level-headed, trash talking friend Meghan (Greta Gerwig) tells her that the situation is just too WEIRD.  And one should always listen to Gerwig's characters!

Oh, and one shouldn't eat too much pizza.  Especially if the creepy couple for whom you are babysitting mention 3 TIMES that the phone number for pizza is on the fridge.  Stay away from pizza, or it gets delivered by this guy:

Who actually also dresses like this:

And then, again, you'll end up like this:

With this kind of ritual being performed on you by the scary crone woman/elderly Mom:

I've seen this film twice now, but the first time I don't think I was entirely sober, so it didn't stick with me.  This time I thought to myself, "Wow, if this is all it took to conceive a child (of Satan), women would be lining up for this kind of thing."  But I am utterly and completely twisted, as my physical therapist just told me 3 times today while she was working steadfastly on my back and neck. 

Hmmm, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Somehow, and I mean SOMEHOW, Samantha manages to untie herself and escape this pentagram ritual space.  Like your stereotypical Final Girl, she runs into her dead friends.

She wields a big phallic weapon.

And she ends up a complete bloody mess.

I know that in many ways, Horror film fans champion the Final Girl for surviving.  Sometimes I just don't know if surviving is really worth it.  If I had a choice between Samantha's fate and Meghan's, I'm going with Meghan's.  So many horrible things happen to Samantha, that the choice she makes at the end seems kind of smart.  But, West has to add a Rosemary's Baby type twist at the end that made me just ask, really?