I have a thing for horror movies revolving around children.  And by “thing”, I mean that they rarely fail to at least freak me out if not leave me anxiously searching for the little midgets in dark corners for months afterwards (The Orphanage, I’m looking at you).

So when I saw the Spanish movie The Baby’s Room floating around in my Netflix queue, I was both terrified and intrigued.  More terrified than intrigued, honestly, as it took me months to get around to watching it.

My problem is actually that I simply don’t trust movies released under a heading of “This Number of Films to do Some Activity For” or “This Number of Films Will Cause You to Wet the Bed at Least This Number of Times”, and this one was released under “6 Films to Keep You Awake”.

Sweetie, now that you’ve impregnated me, I’m going to own you for the rest of your life.

However, I let my Spanish leanings towards The Orphanage eventually sway me away from a particular Korean flick I was eyeing and into this lovely little film directed by one Mr. Alex de la Iglesia, whose directing work some might know already from The Day of the Beast.

The Baby’s Room centers upon a Spanish family: Juan, Sonia, and their baby who they call “Fester” (but I’m not altogether sure if that was the actual name, a nickname, or a description).

See: owned.  Rest. Of. Your. Life.

As in most haunted house stories, the true starting event is them moving to a new (haunted) house.  (I say “true starting event” as there is a brief opening scene that, while neat and made sense overall, I think was underwhelming and could have done much more to establish the movie.)  Juan and Sonia are a truly happy, loving couple, full of tenderness and teasing as they work together on their new house and shower Fester with all the affection he’ll need growing up with a name like “Fester”.

However, the first night they sleep over in the house, Juan digs up a pair of baby monitors and stations one in the titular baby’s room and one in their bedroom (as putting it in the garage would have made *no* sense at all).  As they start to doze off, they hear Fester giggling over the monitor, which is followed by heavy breathing and, when Juan grabs the device, a suddenly angry and unintelligble male voice.  Juan  slowly gets up and walks to the baby’s room, grabbing a table leg on the way– but no one is in the room with his offspring.

I’ll admit that he does look like a “Fester”.

In American movies, things like this are dismissed the next day.  Oh, we were both tired.  Oh, it was the acid we dropped.  Oh, it’s just the neighbor’s porn channels being received.

This is not an American movie.

Juan goes to work and tells his boss that he’s late because his house is haunted.  There’s no level of disbelief or rationalization, his house is haunted and that’s the end of it.  The boss is less than impressed.

After work, Juan heads to a baby store (where you buy, you know, babies) and picks up a new monitor set– one with an infrared video camera so they can actually watch their baby sleep.  Juan wakes up in the middle of the night to see a strange, dark man leaning on Fester’s crib, which causes him to grab a nearby dinner knife and bolt into the nursery.

The eyes scare you?  What about me?!  GYAH!

Sonia is, shall we say, less than amused to wake up and see her husband hovering over their baby with a knife in his hand.  Relationship tension continues to mount from this point in the movie.

Paranoia begins to take over Juan’s brain, as not only does one of his coworkers start to feed into anxious possibilities, but the police that are summoned to inspect their house for a potential B&E are less than sympathetic to their mental state.

Basically, the policeman they question about their safety is like, oh yeah, thieves break into houses during the day and just hide and come out and night.  Yeah, sometimes they go into bedrooms and steal while the owners are sleeping.  You’re lucky you woke up, because sometimes they steal babies, too.

Very reassuring.

Anyway, after nearly being accidentally killed by Juan, Sonia decides to grab Baby Fester and head out of town for a bit.  While she’s gone, Juan’s psychological state continues downhill.

Here’s Juanny!

This rapid downhillery manifests in several ways, but the most important and freakiest of which was him buying several more infrared baby monitors once he realizes that they can “see” into the haunting.  Basically, he ends up running around the house with a baby monitor in such a way that caused certain parts of my body to clench in fear.

So, yeah, this movie repeatedly scared the crap out of me.  Yes, I’m a whuss and, as soon as the scene was over, I’d say to myself, “What the hell were you freaking out for?” or write things like “SO FUCKING DOOMED” on my notepad, but it was still scary.

Library field trip, yay!

As midnight rolled around, I started texting an ex-boyfriend.  Here’s our conversation:

AM: You up?

EX: Nope.

*minutes pass*

EX: Whyfor?

AM: This movie is terrifying the shit out of me.

EX: Aww.  Poor fragile Allison

AM: ‘Nother scary Spanish movie.

EX: Well, don’t worry… there’s probably nothing behind you.

AM: I hate you.

EX: I’m saying, odds are good that there’s nothing creepy outside.  That noise on the stairs is probably just a cat, so relax.

AM: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!

EX: It wasn’t a cat?  You should go see what made that noise.

AM: WHY DO YOU SUCK SO MUCH?!

Scariness aside, the plot itself was fun.  Sure, it has been done before, but that didn’t make it any less interesting and it certainly didn’t spoil the ending for me– with movies like this, you can go a variety of different ways and, as far as I could tell, there was no real lean towards any one direction, no reveal to the ending, until the actual end, which I greatly appreciate.

Spoiler: Old people are crazy.

Also of note, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a movie use Schrodinger’s Cat to explain the paranormal, so total points for that.

If I was at all prone to assigning rating systems to movies, this would fall below the level of “I’m Going to Sleep in my Parents’ Bedroom with a Lit Up Glo-Worm Doll” but above the level of “Another Goddamned Paranormal Activity Movie”.

As always (always!), if you feel like following the adventures of a man who would call his kid Fester, this movie is available on Netflix on Demand.  Watch it, call me a pussy for being frightened, and design a drinking game around cultural differences in dealing with hauntings and bad decisions that ultimately cause the main character’s downfall.

More than a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the combined sets of Axel Braun Production’s latest super hero projects, Wolverine XXX and X-Men XXX.

Skin readies the Danger Room… for pleasure!

Many people have a certain idea of what being on a porn set is like.  From what I’ve determined from various sources, there’s sex all-the-time-everywhere-in-every-hole-everybody’s-just-fucking-everybody and the amount of cocaine placed on each table rivals the peaks of Disney’s Matterhorn.  

Having now been on a number of porn sets for various projects (and sometimes purely entertainment purposes), I’ve yet to ski down powdery white slopes or witness gratuitous sex in dark corners.  (Is there such thing as gratuitous sex?  Let me know.)

Fantasies = shattered.  I hope that one day you can forgive me.

Mike Moz is prepared for the chilly climate with this stylish plaid blanket.

What I did find on the set was a desperate need for thick blankets, as most of the talent (and some of the crew) retreated between shots into the make-up room where one of the sole heaters was blasting.

I also found that some filming locations have permanent sets.  This one had, among many things, a maternity ward (complete with boxes of plastic babies), a morgue, and a very scary room that contained only a  rather intimidating gyno chair, which, one of the girls remarked in passing, had been used for a scene in a different adult movie.

During the time I was there, when I wasn’t hiding in the make-up room talking to various talent or taking photos for this article (which was quite fun, by the way), I was able to watch a threeway scene between Deadpool (Derrick Pierce), Spider-man (Xander Corvus), and Rogue (Allie Haze).

Ms. Allie Haze as the previously untouchable Rogue.

Before you freak out in a bout of nerd rage, I promise you that I did quiz the screenwriter on this apparent impossible feat and there is a perfectly logical explanation as to why Deadpool and Spider-man can touch (ream, really) Rogue without, you know, dying.  But you’ll have to watch the movie to find out, as I would simply hate to spoil the plot for you.  But try to calm yourselves in the meantime.

Xander Corvus has this pose down.

(Also, did anyone else go: “Huh.  Derrick Pierce.  Deadpool.  I wonder what else starts with ‘DP'”?  Or was that just me and my own sexual fantasies manifesting via text?  Probably.)

Dark, brooding, and totally insane.  Oh, Deadpool, you hit all my buttons.

I also was able to watch the filming of the Danger Room’s control room, when Wolverine (Tommy Gunn) is introduced to the Institute by Professor X (Mike Moz) and meets Storm (Skin).  I will do my best not to mention the incredibly silly pictures that I took which will not be released of the charming Mr. Gunn holding a baby doll while Skin stands by looking absolutely shocked.

Danger Room.  Being Filmed.  Like a badass.

I left before Axel Braun’s contract girl, Aiden Ashley, did her scene for the evening as Domino for Wolverine XXX.  Aiden recently signed on to perform boy/girl scenes exclusively for ABP, as she has, until recently only agreed to girl/girl, making this a decently big step for her in the world of porn.

She’s planning on killing you… tomorrow.

While she was sitting in the make-up chair, I had a chance to chat with her about her role as Domino.  When she first announced her casting as the probability-altering mutant, she told me, fans immediately began to respond, demanding that she do the research for the part of such a surprisingly loved character.  She bought every comic book she could find with Domino and read every one of them, but she only brought Yost and Kyle’s Sex and Violence with her to set and grinned at me as she told me it was her favorite.

It was fascinating to be able to watch the characters come to life, to watch Domino’s spot be applied, to see Spider-man suit up for the first time that day, and follow Professor Xavier as he wheeled around the set (when the chair was not hijacked by other members of cast and crew and maybe– just maybe– this article’s author).

Oh, baby, that’s the spot!  (*rimshot*)

Over the days of the filming for these two movies, other characters came in, though I was unable to attend their scenes.  However, I have been told that we will be seeing Evan Stone as Sabretooth, Billy Glyde as Colossus, Chanel Preston as Polaris, Andy San Dimas as Jean Grey, and Katie St. Ives as Kitty Pride.  Definitely not a bad selection of characters, in my opinion.

I’ve nothing funny to say.  Skin’s really rather gorgeous.

I left the set late in the evening, but filming continued on for several more hours– twelve to sixteen hour days seem to be fairly common in the world of porn, though I’ve heard of, and witnessed, longer.  Double-entendre not intentional, just so you know.

His hair is pointy, his sideburns are thick, and his eyebrows are angry.  It must be Tuesday.

While neither X-Men XXX or Wolverine XXX has a release date as of yet, keep an eye out for these two additions to Vivid’s collection of adult superhero movies directed by Axel Braun.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to the press conference and pre-screening of Soderbergh’s new film Haywire.  If you’re like me in your cultural obliviousness, you may not recognize his name, but Soderbergh brought you such movies as Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic, Solaris, and Contagion just to name a few and make this paragraph uncomfortably long for one of my opening paragraphs.

See what happens when I try to educate the masses?  Fucking long opening paragraphs.  I don’t even know why I try.  Here: there’s this director and he does stuff and he directed a movie called Haywire that’s coming out on Friday, January 20th.

Haywire is the major acting debut of female MMA fighter Gina Carano, a debut backed by an impressive line-up.  Who is in this so-called impressive line-up? you may ask.  Well… Ewan MacGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender (who can call me anytime with declarations of love or just sexual intent), Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, and Bill Paxton.  (Side Note: Paxton plays Carano’s father.  I kinda wanted him to be my dad until I remembered Frailty.)

So this isn’t just some bit of fluff centering around bringing some fighting star to the big screen (I’m looking at you in particular, Mr. Kane, and your See No Evil).  And Carano’s acting mostly holds for her part.  There were all of two scenes where I cringed slightly at her acting and the rest was absolutely fine– not bad at all, with this being her first movie.

Oh, hai Mr. Fassbender.

This movie, in sum, focuses on the betrayal of security operative Mallory Kane (Carano– obviously, unless MacGregor is cross-dressing) and how she handles that betrayal (spoiler: mostly with violence).  It’s an interesting collision between Ocean’s Eleven and The Bourne Identity.

This is being marketed, at least to the press, as not just another action movie– and it isn’t.  Soderbergh ensures this on multiple levels.  

On my Christmas list.  FYI.  (The gun, not Carano.  Though I wouldn’t turn her down.)

The sound effects were unexpectedly enjoyable.  It was the minimizing of unnecessary external noises, especially during pursuit scenes, and the maximizing of the noises that would be acknowledged by and matter to Carano as she fled, hunted, and waited.  In a way, it dropped the boundary between Carano’s experience and the audience’s experience, letting us experience what she was experiencing.

The soundtrack was excellent as well– a mix of the Ocean’s Eleven soundtrack and what you would expect from Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts, sort of James Bondish, but with a more modern edge to it.

The fight scenes added an unexpected level of intensity.  So many action movies are so damned unrealistic with their action that we don’t really react to it as an audience because we know it’s fake without even having to think about it.  But while watching Haywire, sympathy groans filled theater scene after scene– you know, those “Oooh!” noises you make with your friends when you’re watching those dirt bike or skateboard injury– this film’s action never lost its edge, never went over the top.

One of the things I loved most about this movie was how the character of Mallory Kane dealt with her betrayal.  I feel that too many times I’ve found myself watching this type of movie with a female lead who, once she finds her betrayer, (while beating him to death) asks tearfully, usually at high volumes, “Why?? WHHYYYYYYYYYYY?!“

Kane didn’t do that.  She discovered a problem, she took care of it.  There wasn’t a lot of emotion involved, just a tying up of loose ends, making sure everything was taken care of.  When she questioned people, it was for information, not emotional succor.  How goddamned cool is that?  A female badass who is actually a badass, not just experiencing PMS.  That’s role model material right there.

Bad ass role model, yes.  But don’t take make-up tips from her.

Was this movie amazing?  No.  Will it change the world?  No.  But did Soderbergh, his crew, and his cast create a different sort of action movie?  Yes.  Will it hold your attention from beginning to end?  Yes.   Will you be cringing as much as I was at the realistic violence?  Maybe.  I’m kind of a pussy.

Sometimes a movie just reaches across the divide between media and consumer and really touches you.  Sometimes a movie gives you the kind of feeling one would associate with your devoted pet proudly running up to you and dropping a two-month dead baby possum with AIDS in your lap.  This would be that movie.

“Shattered Lives” was released in either 2009 or 2010… or possibly 2007.  It’s all rather vague and I really don’t care. (Which is funny, as this film states that it’s a “No One Cares Production”– that’s foresight!)

This movie details the life of Rachel, a very Swedish-looking girl that is the supposed offspring of someone with a vaguely Latin-ish ethnicity and a gay Irishman.  Don’t worry too much about the genetic miscasting– when they show “older Rachel” she’s vaguely Latin-ish like her mom.  (AKA: Ethnic transformations for the win!)

Rachel is either absolutely batshit or is haunted by twin(ish) demonic clown/mime dolls who want her to kill things.  This is never made clear by the movie, though one IMDB reviewer/tool felt like fancying their review up by writing the following verbally nebulous bullshit: 

“Her fears and inability to cope with the harsh realities of life becoming so intense that they manifest themselves in an altered state of reality, a schizophrenic girl begins taking orders from a pair of clown dolls who instruct her to murder her adulterous mother.”

I don’t care how many multi-syllabic words you can put in one sentence, it’s still someone just trying to sound educated in their option of a crap movie.  Carrying on.

You might have noticed by now that all the pictures thus far are pictures of the twin(ish) clown/mime dolls and you might have noticed with some alarm that those T C/M Ds are played by midgets, therefore triggering a base-fear response in your hindbrain.  Please do remain calm and take slow, deep breaths until your animal instincts subside.

Even with my concern for your well-being, the topic of these pictures is not going to change.  I have purposefully only taken screenshots of the T C/M Ds so you can fully appreciate my immense suffering.

In order to truly submerse you in the experience of viewing this movie, instead of my usual plot breakdown and (obviously missing) list of noteable actors (there are none), I’m just going to give you snippets of dialogue from the clown/mime dolls, one of which is Geordi LaForge.

Rachel: Who are you?

Freak #1: You are not allowed to ask such questions.  We mean you no harm, we are your friends.

Freak #2: Nothing.

Freak #1: Something.

Freak #2: One thing.

Freak #1: We are everything, but everything is nothing.

Freak #2: The long-forgotten fairy tale is in her eyes.  Caught inside a dream world.

Freak #1: Feelings too intense.

Freak #2: And nothing makes sense.

Freak #1: Clinging hard to her dreams.

Freak #2: And everything shatters around her.

Freak #1: I know.  We will perform for you.  Mouth closed, eyes open, ears listening, take a peek.

Everything that is wrong with performance art as interpreted by chiaroscuro midget clowns.

Rachel: Who are you?

Freak #1: Ooooh, we cannot tell.

Freak #2: It’s a seeecret.

Freak #1: We couldn’t. 

Freak #2: We shouldn’t.

Freak #1: Noooo.  I’ll whisper it into your ears while you sleep so you can remember in your dreams.

Freak #2: Dreams?

Freak #1: Dreams.

Freak #2: Dreams?  Dreams are answers to questions that you do not know how to ask.

Freak #1: The child poking holes in reality.

Rachel: Who are you?

Freak #2: Sssh. *whispers*

Freak #1: He’s says if you ask that again, if you open your mouth one more time, I swear to god I’ll break it, so shut the FUCK up.

*pause*

Freak #1: What?  An uncomfortable siiiiilence.

Freak #2: The little child is scared.  I can smell the fear in her veins pumping through her booody.

Do you now understand how incredibly creepy and bad and so, so WRONG this is?  There are scary black and white midget clown/mimes whispering bad poetry to this little Swedish kid who has a gay Irishman for a dad.  It doesn’t get much worse.

Wait, it does.

Let’s say that you’re me.  You’re in bed in your favorite skeleton pajamas and Halloween socks. It’s late at night, you’ve been watching midgets in black and white coo at this blonde kid.  You’re starting to feel like your mind has been raped by someone’s idea of performance art and you just want the movie to either fully go over the edge or burst into flames.

And then the movie goes forward in time to deal with “older” Rachel at her high school.

And then you blink.

You blink again.

And you realize that you’re looking at footage of the high school you attended.  You see the grate you tripped on six dozen times over the years, the cafeteria where you were accidentally hit by a flying large soda, the inside of the classroom where you read Lord of the Flies.

Obviously, the clowns are speaking to you, they’ve modified this movie to reflect on your life in order to embed themselves and their bad poetry into your skull.

So you go downstairs, get a knife, and go on a free-form massacre.

The clowns wanted you to do it.  Who are you to question the clowns?

My life feels a little more empty now.  Empty and cold.  This reviewer is going to go curl up in bed for a few days and pretend that this movie, accessible on Netflix on Demand, never actually happened.

When one (aka: me) is sitting in on press conferences, one (me) gets to hear a lot of banal questions.  How did you feel about this script, did you like your character, what did you relate to with your character, what was it like working with so-and-so, what’s coming up the pipe for you?

I suppose this is a sign of what people like to read about in their movie reviews and their companion-piece interviews.  Personally, I’ve always found that stuff rather trite– with a few exceptions.  If I’m reading an article about someone’s experience filming a ghost movie, I don’t want to hear about all the “spooky” things that went on on set.  It’s filler, and it’s boring filler.  

I want to know more about what’s going on, how people processed certain activities and how they view themes of the movie, more than how often the lights flickered in their hotel room or what got them into acting.

So I poke and I prod and I ask (often confusing) questions.  Fortunately for me, when I sat down with The Innkeepers male lead, Pat Healy, he was willing to answer my (often bizarre) questions and do so with much thought.  

I’ve had to take out some bits so as to remove spoilers, but there still are somewhat hinting sentences, so read at your own discretion.

AM: I found it really interesting, your character and Sara’s character seem to be almost the same person except at very distinct junctures where you actually had some notion of sexuality and where your character […], but you guys seemed so much the same person until those slight diversions kept happening.

PH: Yeah, I think that they’re two of the same type of people at different  points of their life.  He [Luke] is older and dropped out of college long ago and he’s there and, like many people that I’ve known that are just as talented if not more so than I am, has seemingly no ambition for whatever reason.  She [Claire] is at this turning point where she’s just dropped out of school and he’s trying to guide her in a way to not take this stuff [ghost hunting] too seriously and to be careful and not make the mistakes that he made.  He says to her, “You start thinking that these things are real and then you’re out there and you can never come back,” to that effect.  

AM: Right.

PH: It must be because he’s been there himself and he’s older now and it’s coming from more of a place of cynicism.  I think that those are the two sides of a person, like in “Paranormal Activity”: the early go-getter– the young person fresh out and excited about everything– and the hard-worn cynic who has been there and seen that there’s nothing there and really wants nothing to do with it anymore.  It’s two very distinct stages of life of a person who has moved into the working class world with the dead end job.  

AM: “The Innkeepers” had a lot of these little interesting moments and one of the ones that caught me off-guard was when they [Luke and Claire] were going down into the basement together and they were sitting and then […].  And I was just like… it was so unexpected for me.

PH: Yeah, that was like the diversion path you were talking about, which is that at certain parts of our life we choose to believe something, whether it’s a creation myth or religion or in ourselves and sometimes we get scared and we back off.  I’ve been in those places where, in my life, I’ve had opportunities where, you know, I choked, and maybe it was because I had an impression in my mind that I was a choker.  Now that I’ve stopped thinking that about myself, when I get to a place of opportunity for myself I seize it. Luke is a person who has given up on that.  I think he sees some salvation or transformation in the form of this person that he really likes [Claire], and right before the scene that you’re talking about, that’s shattered.  

AM: Right, it was kinda heart-breaking.

PH: After that, there’s really no reason for him to stay around anymore […].  That’s certainly from an actor’s point of view, reading the script and doing it, the sort of through-line that I was working from is that he’s doing it all for her and then he sees that’s not going to happen […].

AM: So, if you’re going off of a metaphor, which Ti [West] said a lot of the side characters are like metaphors, and he was going and looking at a future with her, a future in a certain way, where he was going and believing with her, and when it came to a crunch point […].

PH:  It’s interesting. He’s operating under a complete delusion that she’s interested in him. During the movie, he moves away from this delusion into a harsh reality while she moves into this theoretical delusion of the supernatural.  They sort of move away from each other.  They have this nice camaraderie that is split apart by these ideas of things that are going on in those two people’s heads.  I imagine Ti is an astute guy and there’s possibly some of his own experience in this.  

AM: It’s funny, if you take that metaphor that she’s going forward with her belief in the supernatural and he’s going in reverse, her hopes and dreams and beliefs were the vehicle that forced her conclusion while Luke reached his own by staying cynical and not pursuing potential pathways which seems kind of counterculture.

PH: Yeah, I guess it is, though it certainly is not my personal philosophy.  It may have been at one time and it might very well  have been if I had chosen the path of least resistance in my life and not been ambitious in the way that I have been.  It certainly has been a struggle to survive in this business and I could have done what some of my friends have done and taken a regular job and still live in wherever.  So I can understand that in him and I can understand the philosophy in that it’s safer to stay that way, though it doesn’t necessarily make it better.  He’s pretty shattered, pretty devasted in the end.

AM: So if it were up to you, if there was more of you in the character, you would have acted differently as Luke?

PH: Nobody really knows what they would do in that type of situation.  I’d like to think that I’m the kinda person that would step up– and in times of crisis in my life I have surprised myself and been that person, so I’d like to think that I would be, but who knows?  I’ve seen a rat in a subway before and hidden behind a girlfriend, you know?  I just happen to be really frightened of rats– I have a phobia of them. I’d like to think in Luke’s situation that I’d help another person, but there are times when we surprise ourselves by how selfish and self-absorbed we are.  In this case, I don’t really think there was anything he could have done.  

In case the “picture break” didn’t alert you, the interview section of this article is over.  We’re now moving along to where I reflect on my years as a high school football mascot.  

One of the tag-lines of this movie is “A Horror Movie for the Minimum Wage”, which I think is terribly clever as it not only parodies the constant claim of “A *insert amazing thing here* for the modern age” line, but also touches upon not only the current economic “issues” the country has been having, but also brings us (or at least me back, if you guys aren’t going to join me in mental solidarity because you’re assholes) mentally back to that first job.

We’re told in high school that we need to determine Our Career.  They give us personality tests to determine the field we’re “best suited for” and have us shadow someone in that field so we can see what Our Future can/will be like.  We’re told to keep our grades up, to do community service, be on a sports team or in an academic club so we’re more attractive to colleges in our pursuit of Our Future.

And I’ve found that very few high school students actually know what they want to do as A Career through this “guidance”.  (Note: generally speaking, if you’re a high school career guidance counselor, your own dreams certainly have fallen by the wayside and, therefore, you shouldn’t be guiding anyone.)

So those of us that are lost either go straight into the workforce and head into college, hoping the answer to The Career Question will show itself and suddenly we’ll have A Plan and Social Value. Our parents will finally be able to stop finding creative ways to tell their friends that their child has no direction in life but is doing really well in that basket-weaving class.

During The Innkeepers press conference, Ti West spoke on the design of Luke and Claire’s characters. “I’ve either had a minimum wage job or directed movies,[…] I have no intermediate skills.  So if this [directing] doesn’t work out, then I have to go back to being a bus-boy or something.  I’m sorta terrified of that.  But I’m also very charmed by one’s weird insular work friends and being stuck in a job.  It’s not digging ditches, but it’s probably not where one wants to be, […] so I worked very hard to make a charming ghost story and I thought that if I could make these characters relatable to myself and the people that I worked with, people would relate.”  

We care about these characters because we, to a degree, understand them– whether we see ourselves as the charmingly aimless Claire or the fatalistic Luke.  It makes the film that much more entertaining and that much more frightening when we see someone we connect with in potentially dangerous situations.

The Innkeepers is available On Demand and in select theaters on February 3rd.  

I knew my years of French classes in high school would pay off.  Somehow, I was certain that I would wind up an American traveler in Paris, being romanced by some long-haired hippie Parisian.  (My taste in men’s personal hygenie has since changed.)

In 2011, my French still hasn’t paid off and the only long-haired hippies I see are really just hipster kids in disguise.  (Note to hipster kids: your trendy cowboy boots are not as trendy as you think they are.  And they make me want to punch you.)

However(!), also in 2011 (just two days ago, in fact), I had the pleasure of watching the IFC Films release of the Belgian mockumentary “Vampires”.  (How they came up with such an original title, I have no idea.)

This lovely little movie hit the festival circuit in April 2010 and has traveled all over the world, hitting Brussels, London, Canada, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Taiwan, Spain… well, certainly more countries than I’ve had the pleasure of visiting.  The reviews have been excellent, awards have been won, celebrations must certainly have been had.

Here is where I’d normally go over the actors in the movie, but no one cares about Europeans.

Oh dear, I hurt her Euro-feelings.  HA!  LIKE THEY HAVE ANY!

Okay, okay, so that’s wrong.  But this movie did the smart thing of only casting, from what I can see, one person that might be mildly recognizable to some people somewhere.  So it’s kind of pointless to list out non-existent celebrities.  If you want to fight about it, send me your challenge with a box of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and I’ll consider it.

The premise of the movie is this: a film company is invited to visit the home of a family of vampires in Belgium in order to create a documentary of the vampire lifestyle within the country.  After two… uh, false starts, the third film crew assigned to the project manages to enter into a fairly non-threatening relationship with a delightful blood-sucking brood and begins to document their night-to-night activities.

Comprising the household are George Saint-Germain (+2 for historical reference), his wife, Bertha (who reminds me, in a way, of a rabid St. Bernard), his son, Samson, and his daughter, Grace.  Living in the basement are their (vampire) neighbors, Elizabeth and Bienvenu.

I like long walks on the beach, dog blood, and yoga.

What I think makes this movie amazing is not the way it was filmed (sometimes it seemed like the documentary-nature of it was lost) or the music (which was, at times, incredibly overblown), but the relationships between the characters and how real these no-name actors were able to make them– especially Elizabeth.

George and Bertha have a laissez-faire parenting style when it comes to their creations, Samson and Grace, and as a reaction to such, the children manifest this in two very different ways.  

I yell that at men too, but I’m not going to go into that here.

Samson is the “true” vampire– he loves playing up the role, loves to go out and hellraise, sometimes much to the distress of his parents, when he breaks what they call The Code (a system of vampire laws held in place by the head vampire of the region).

Grace, on the other hand, dresses all in pink.  She’s blonde, rebellious, in love with the idea of being human, of being able to die by way of hanging, drowning, or, yes, dousing herself in gasoline and lighting herself on fire.  She keeps her hair blonde, applies a fake tan when she gets up at night, and starts dating a human boy midway through the movie to underscore her rebellion even further.

George does his best to tolerate his daughter’s actions and suggests that she’ll grow out of it eventually, but Bertha, her mother, thinks it’s all disgusting– especially the pink.

Hello, understatement.

The downstairs neighbors are another source of woe for George and Bertha.  As what can only be described as orthodox vampires, Elizabeth and Bienvenu are are stuck in the basement until they decide to create a child at which point they will be given a house of their own (another rule of The Code).  They hate their unruly upstairs neighbors and their cramped living conditions, but admit that the reason they cannot have “children” of their own is because neither of them can control their own base desires. (Elizabeth, well, she eats babies.  Bienvenu, he molests older children.  Who knew?)

Which, as they say it, almost comes off with the shame of a couple who desperately wants a child, but have fertility problems.  

There’s also The Meat.  The Meat is a girl who lives in The Fridge– a cold outside storage area– who takes care of their daily needs and provides them a constant source of fresh blood with some sort of unspoken trust that they’ll do their best not to accidentally kill her.  She loves them like family and only goes into the occasional seizure from blood loss– no big thing.

I’d like to Meat her in a dark alley.

We get to learn about coffin-shopping, about how the Belgian government delivers undesirable persons to their door and offers a corpse clean-up once a week.  We meet the Belgian vampire government and go to the local school for new vampires to see what they learn and how.  We get to see what happens when you take a severely mentally-handicapped person (look at me, being all politically correct!) and turn them into a vampire.  (Note: it seems that then you have a retarded vampire.  Fuck, there goes the politcal-correctness.)

I wonder who teaches them how to dress themselves. Liza Minnelli?

What is wonderful about this is that, as opposed to many recent mockumentaries, it’s subtle.  The underlying humor stays just that– underlying.  Yes, I loved A Mighty Wind and Drop Dead Gorgeous as much as anyone, but to see a well-made mockumentary where the people and their relationships could truly be believable (well, if they weren’t vampires)… that’s really neat.

Queue it up on Netflix on Demand and follow the undeaths of the Saint-Germains.

 A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being invited to view Ti West’s (The House of the Devil, Trigger Man, Cabin Fever 2) latest horror film, The Innkeepers.

This Magnet release was an official selection of 2011’s Fantastic Fest, SXSW 2011 and also showed at the Los Angeles Film Festival this past year.  Fortunately for you, dear reader, this movie isn’t limited to the festival circuit and will be coming to select theaters on February 3rd.  And if you don’t have it in a theater near you, you can always watch it On Demand. Hooray!

“The Innkeepers” features the talents of Sara Paxton as the aimless Claire (You may know her from Last House on the Left, but since I have a *thing* for, well, chick movies, I know and love her from Sydney White.  Please stop judging me.) and Pat Healy as the equally aimless but further-along-in-his-acceptance-of-said-aimlessness, Luke (Who you’d recognize from Rescue Dawn, Ghost World, and, since you’re nerds, a bit part from Star Trek: Enterprise).  We also have Ms. Kelly McGillis dropping in as traveling psychic/spiritual healer, Leann Rease-Jones, and you’d probably not recognize her as Charlie from Top Gun, but she certainly was. 

And, yes, she took my breath away. (Why, oh why, did I just write that?  It’s a lack of shame, that’s what it is.  That and having no friends.)

“Goooooose! Nooooo!”

The plot follows thusly: The Yankee Pedlar Inn, a historic hotel in some unidentified town (actually: Torrington, CT) is about to shut down.  The two remaining employees, Claire (Paxton) and Luke (Healy) have temporarily moved into the hotel for its last few days in order to split their shifts straight down the middle: twelve on, twelve off.

And to hunt ghosts.  You see, The Yankee Pedlar Inn is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Madeline O’Malley, a bride who was jilted at the atlar and hung herself in the hotel.  According to legend, when her body was found, the staff hid it in the basement of the hotel for three days, making the basement a site of heavy hauntings.

In pursuit of this legend (among other things), Luke has created a website that talks about the history of The Pedlar and records its haunted occurances.  This website, if you’re anything like me, will make you almost spill your drink once you cast your gaze upon its 1990s Geocities visage.  Harkening back to it, thou mayest findth yourth abilitith to typeth regressivelyth altered..th.

Claire is interested in the project, but after a few nighttime explorations, she finds herself drawn rapidly in, more so than Luke himself.  Once Claire’s idol, famous television actress Lea Rease-Jones, unexpectedly checks into the hotel and questions Claire’s goals in life, Claire violently latches onto her ghost hunting as a means of social salvation and life-purpose.

Which sounds really odd to write, but there it is.  Ghosts = success.

Jealous of his glasses? Yes. Yes, I am.

Honestly, it makes perfect sense with Claire’s character.  Paxton portrays an adorably awkward, completely desexualized girl who is wandering through her life.  As Paxton charmingly put it during the movie’s press conference, “I think it all ties into the fact that Claire– we’ve all felt like this, she’s so relatable– she’s stuck at this dead-end job at the front desk.  She’s really “murr” about life and she’s like, ‘Should I go back to school?  I don’t know.  The coffee girl is annoying.  The movie star lady made me feel like a jerk.’  I think that because she’s so “murr” about the whole thing that when the ghost stuff starts getting crazy, she’s totally into it.  She’s like, ‘This is the thing, I’m gonna do this now, because everything else is so lame.'”

The “murrness” (Which is incredibly, incredibly adorable when Paxton says it.  If you are not, in fact, as adorable as Paxton, please hunt down the most adorable person in the vicinity and ask them to “murr” at you for something reaching the full effect.) of not just Claire’s situation, but Luke’s, is something that stretches through the entire film.  It’s a sense of a sort of stuck wandering, like being trapped in a transition period– in a way similiar to the seeming awkward purgatory of puberty.  And we’re going to pretend that I didn’t just make that metaphor.

During the same press conference, Ti West likened this to the theoretical situation of ghosts, where they are tied to a place, repeating the same actions over and over again, going nowhere.  What really underscores this in the movie is the inn itself.  Older inns were stops on long journeys, transition points from one place to the next.  Occasionally, yes, inns would take on boarders, but those were still temporary inhabitants, waiting for the next stop in their lives.

Luke and Claire, however, are still trapped on this train car that (nearly… bwah hah ha..!) everyone jumped off of a long, long time ago and they still aren’t ready to leave.

Slightly philosophical discussions aside, I greatly enjoyed this movie.  It was a classic ghost story– not in the epic way of “The Haunting”, but more along the lines of a story told around the campfire with a flashlight under your chin and a host of eight-year-olds that are likely to topple over at any moment.

“Bloody finger, bloody finger!”

That being said, it is one of those slow burns.  The pressure builds over the course of the movie– there’s not a lot of gore and the real jump-inducers are pretty much all at the tail-end.  It’s fun and the dialogue is smart and, if you’re a “Real Genius” nut like me, you’ll catch a lovely reference to it in the bowels of this movie that’ll give you a good laugh.

Give the preview a gander and show this great little movie some love.

Sometimes, a movie comes along that makes you weep those proverbial tears of joy.  Sometimes, a movie comes along that moves you deep, deep inside.  Sometimes, however, a movie so great comes along and you end up typing at Matt Kelly in capital letters over Facebook IM, screaming in near orgasmic bliss and confusion.

This movie was the latter, obviously.  I mean, yeah, I’m a bit full of non sequiturs, but it’d just make absolutely no sense if I turned around and said, “And this movie was just kinda okay.”

Suck hit the film festival circuit in 2009 and worked its way through 2010, winning the Audience Choice Award for both the Whistler Film Festival (2009) and the Calgary Underground Film Festival (2010), while also snagging the silver medal for Best Canadian Feature at the 2010 Fantasia Film Festival and the Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking award at the 2010 Newport Beach Film Festival.

There’s a “seeing red” joke here, somewhere.  If only I could find it.

Okay, who knew that Newport Beach had a film festival (Editor’s Note: I did. Gay By Dawn played there in 2005)?  I thought they only had boats and sea food restaurants.  Oh, and a Condom Revolution.  Fuck yeah, Newport, you get down with your naughty side.

For those of you who caught my review of Kiss of the Vampire, you know how I feel about vanity projects (AKA: when the writer/producer gives themselves the lead role in their movie), but Rob Stefaniuk did not only the role he assigned himself well, but the script, especially for what it was, was amazing. 

The amusing part is, this is a Capri Films movie.  No joke.

The writing was nearly consistently tight throughout the film, beautiful, beautiful lines that nearly had me falling over with laughter.  (The good kind.  You know, when you’re laughing with something as opposed to at it?  That happens sometimes.)

This film sorta broke my brain with its cast.  Here’s an excerpt of an actual conversation I had with Mr. Matt Kelly over IM while I was watching this movie:

AM: WHAT THE FUCK

AM: WHAT THE FUUUCK

AM: MY BRAIN IS BREAKING

AM: SAVE ME MATTHEW

AM: OH MY FUCKING GOD

AM: LOOK AT THIS!!!

AM: LOOOOOOOK AT THIS!!!

AM: I CAN’T FUCKING HANDLE THIS

AM: LOOK AT THE CAST

AM: LOOK WHAT THEY DIIIIIIIID

MK: oh wow

AM: WHAT THE FUCK

MK: hahaha

AM: I can’t even deal with this right now.

You don’t believe me?  I’ll send you a screen shot.  That’ll teach you to question my overuse of caps-lock when I’m excited.

Could she be any hotter?  I’m thinking no.

So let’s take a walk through this cast.  We’ve got Jessica Pare as Jennifer, the bassist and back up singer of the band “The Winners”, who you would know as Megan Calvet from Mad Men.  We have Nicole de Boer as Susan, the ball-crushing girlfriend of the band’s lead singer, Joey (Stefaniuk), who you possibly had a crush on for her role as Ezri Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  (Personally, I say fuck DSN, but I hear that some people liked it.)  

Oh, and then we have:

Iggy Pop.

Alice Cooper (who bartends and can *read your mind*).

Dave Foley.

Moby, singing some sort of thrash metal while having raw meat thrown at him by fans.

And Henry Rollins.

(Side Note: Dear 1990s Henry Rollins, I want to do dirty, dirty things with you.  If I had a time machine and an ability to override potential restraining orders, I’d be a *very* happy girl.)

There’s various other musical cameos, but we’re going to leave it at the ones I actually took screen caps of.  For dramatic effect and all.

The movie’s plot line is such: failing rock band’s back-up singer/bassist, Jennifer (Pare), goes home with Queeny, a (male) vampire, after meeting him at a gig.  Aerosmith’s “Jaded” music video ensues.

Disclaimer: Not Aerosmith, just adorable.

Oh, yeah, this is a semi-musical.  Most of the songs make sense, as there’s bands playing and all that.  However, sometimes it’s just like Stefaniuk said, “Fuck this ‘dialogue’ crap, it’s time to rock!”  And they did.

Continuing on with the plot line, Jennifer mysteriously shows up to the next venue all gorgeously gothed out and wows the audience with her sexy vampness.  Sexy vamp hijinks ensue, starting in a convenience store with the most amazing death-by-vampire scene that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Also of note: this movie also has the most amazing slaying of a vampire I’ve ever seen in my entire life.  

Are you swooning?  I’m swooning.  You’re probably masturbating.

As various musical cameos are made, we are introduced to Eddie VanHelsig, vampire hunter.  He wears sunglasses and an eyepatch, so you know he’s double-cool.  Mr. VenHelsig is on a mission to destroy Queeny, the vampire that bit Jennifer, to satisfy his need to revenge his lovely young… love.  

This movie was nothing short of amazing.  Seriously.  It’s not some work of high cinema, it’s an awesome, colorful, totally irreverent comedy with a near-complete focus on the musical– not only in the choice of actors, but subtle lines of dialogue that Stefaniuk tastefully drops into the scenes.  All things considered, it’s fun, and it’s way smarter than it has any right to be.

Oh, Hugo.  Oh, dear Hugo. <3 <3 <3

Try it yourself.  Fire it up on Netflix on Demand, watch the first ten minutes, and honestly tell me it wasn’t enjoyable.  If you get to the convenience store scene (about 28 minutes in) and you aren’t toppling over from laughter, I’m pretty convinced that you have no soul.

Jonathan London, this excludes you.  I’m already convinced you have no soul (Editor’s Note: What’s a soul?).

There’s something I really hate about celebrating the New Year: recaps.  It’s when we drudge up everything that was so very forgettable and put it alongside stuff we actually care about, stuff we will carry into the new year with us.  Like Breaking Dawn: Part One.

Okay, okay, I admit, that’s only me and like sixty billion fangirls.  Whatever.  Yeah, shut it.  I’ll hunt you down with a chainsaw and some canola oil.

This was my first year at the lovely and wonderful Geekscape, home of the Heroine Addict, Ms. Molly Mahan (who I almost killed earlier today in a freak float decorating accident involving some onion seeds), and my own guilty pleasure, Matt Kelly (who I did not almost kill today, but who did move to Pennsylvania, which is sort of like death), and it has been a blast.

After all, what other website would encourage me to watch things that later have me rocking back and forth in a corner, feverish, scratching at invisible bugs crawling all over my body?  What other website owner would laugh at my suffering as much as Jonathan London does (Editor’s Note: And I do… a lot)?  Ah, rhetorical questions, you delight me.

For the answer is: no other website.  None could bring me such dirty joy as Geekscape brings me.  And on that totally unrelated note, here is my 2011 anti-recap “This Geek in Netflix” awards.  

“The Most Boring Movie That I’ve Watched This Year That Happens to Have a Spider Hut” goes to… In the Spider’s Web!  (The crowd goes wiiiiild!)

The only thing I really remember from this movie: Spider. Fucking. Hut.

“The Goddamn Freakiest Ultrasound I’ve Ever Seen” award goes to… Isolation!  Inside out fetal cows are fucking scary.  Even scarier when they put on puppet shows inside your uterus.

Ultrasound not shown.  Because I’m lazy.

“Best Use of Make-up” and “Best Line From a Movie” go to Night of the Demons for its inventive(ish) use of lipstick and the line: “She put her lipstick in her boob and it fell out of her vagina!”

Not the boobs in question, but still… boobs.  I’ll just be a moment.

The runner-up for “Best Turkey Puppet Wearing a Human Face” goes to Thankskilling! 

Still fucking adorable.

The winner for “Most Homoerotic Dance Number” is… Santa Claus and its delightfully cocky “devil dance”.  (Just watch it.  Really.)

Puckering up after putting on his dancin’ shoes.

For “I Would Rather Rub Ground Day-Old Chili Peppers Into My Nether Bits Than Watch This Movie Again”, we have a tie between Vampire Girl V.S. Frankenstein Girl and Kiss of the Vampire!  

Kinda explains itself.

And, finally, a special appearance for this awards show, we have the non-Netflix movie Kenneyville taking home the prize for Most Incoherent Storyline! (Oh, the drama! The audience is rapt with this unexpected turn of events!)

He’s trying to make her watch Kenneyville.  She’s looking for ground chili peppers.

Thanks for tuning in, folks.  We’ll be back after a few costume changes and maybe a nipple-slip or lesbian kiss.  Welcome the band, Stryper, to the stage!!!  (Audience roars!  A reference that no one under 35 will understand, OOOOOMMMMMGGGGGGG!!)