Peg Life Vol. 19

This edition of Peg Life is rather a special one. This will be my last Peg Life as next week Brian will murder me in a fit of rage after reading my decimating review of his first completed film, Dead Kids. Actually, that’s likely not to be true. Brian knows I’m on the level (his words), but you can bet your ass I’m not going to be gentle. I’m also going to include in this volume the review I wrote for the movie Ju-On (that’s the Japanese film upon which The Grudge was based for all you cinematic philistines). So it’s going to be kind of a movie review themed issue. I also hope to go somewhere else with it at the end, but we’ll see how that goes. Let’s begin.

Ju-On
The movie starts with the nigh obligatory montage of scenes from the bloody event (read murder) that originates the premise. Proceed to introducing the first in a long line of victims that will die as a result of the curse started by aforementioned bloody event. Here we encounter the first problem with the film: rather mediocre acting. I realize that the language difference may affect this judgment, but I would maintain this conclusion even if comparing it only to other Japanese films. I could cite Tatsuya Nakadai’s performance in Kurosawa’s Ran as an example of much better acting. But enough name dropping. The acting really isn’t that terrible (in fact, the role of the ghost or cursed woman or whatever the hell she’s supposed to be is done pretty well) it just really could have been better. That being said, there are some redeeming qualities to this movie. The actual house that was used was a terrific find and the director made very good use out of it. There are some nice and quite effective camera moves both in the house and in other locations. These could have been made even more effective with a bit better editing, but I won’t piss all over the decent job that was done simply because it wasn’t fantastic. So what about the plot? Is there one? Hardly. What scattered story there is serves mostly as filler to connect the various creepy images. There are some jumps that are made through time without warning or explanation and really only serve to confuse the viewer and (as mentioned) add more creepy scenes. For all its faults, the film does do what it’s supposed to do. The creepy scenes are genuinely creepy (though none can match the girl crawling out the television in Ringu) and the sounds serve to create a suitably unsettling atmosphere. In the final analysis Ju-On is an average film that is still better than any American horror movie made in the past ten years. **1/2 out of *****

Except House of 1000 Corpses, which starts out as a grindhouse slasher homage and stays that way throughout the whole film until just before the credits it turns into the funniest comedy of all time. But enough about Rob Zombie. The Dead Kids review is what you all came for. And by that I mean it’s what Brian came for. And maybe Trevor too. So here it is.

Dead Kids
Let me begin by saying that I’m not going to be commenting on the acting in this film. The combination of the actors being amateurs and the actors being mostly people I know makes me reluctant to say I could give criticism without too much bias. I’ll just say that I did hear some of the acting compared to year book poetry, but that’s not what I’m concerned with. I’m concerned with the substance and technique of the film. I should probably note here that some of what I write here may be considered spoiler, so if you haven’t seen the film and you intend to you might want to save reading this for later. Otherwise, continue with the fun as I tear it apart. We open with the hardcore music that is so characteristic of Brian Barnhart’s films and a rapid dialogue laced with profanity between Sass and E.T. over top of the credits. So far so good, although I did have a hard time hearing what much of the dialogue was actually saying. After the credits we’re subjected to a sequence of frenetic editing that seems to suggest… the filmmaker’s desire to use frenetic editing. Or possibly just to patch something together from a small selection of footage. This is understandable given the time and budget restraints, but you can’t blast an audience with a rapid deluge of images without giving those images a reason for being there. Take for instance Sass and E.T.’s moment of tongue sparring in the car. There doesn’t seem to be any rationale for it being there other than to be “shocking.” It happens again later when they’re in the house, but it makes more sense then because it’s part of a larger scene. Here it’s isolated and irrelevant. And then we have Brock and Daisy being kicked out of somewhere, for what we can only imagine. It ends up seeming like a wasted opportunity to introduce one of the characters in more depth. There are some individual shots that reveal a good eye for camera movements in this beginning sequence. I see this as a definite sign of potential. The fundamental problem is that the script can’t decide if it’s simply a portrait of a group of degenerate youth or some kind of love story between the Jake and Pascal characters. It’s almost as if the script were written around Jake and Pascal’s characters but the film was edited around Brock, Sass, and E.T. In my opinion the script should have been written around those characters instead. As a result of this dichotomy in focus the character development suffers. When E.T., Sass and Brock are entering the house I can’t understand why Sass tells E.T. to be quiet. Loud and obnoxious seem to be E.T.’s defining characteristics. If this is made transparent to the audience it should be blatantly obvious to the other characters and thus Sass should realize that her plea is futile. Not only that, the fact that she says this (or at least the way that she says it: “Okay, be quiet” rather than “Shut the fuck up” or “Shut up, bitch”) suggests that she cares what someone else might think of the noise, which is very much out of character. The scene with E.T. talking on her cell phone is wholly unnecessary. While it does attempt to present the character as foul mouthed and sex obsessed, this has already been established and makes the scene redundant. The best part of the film is the end sequence, filtered in blue, emulating the dim, post-dawn light. The split screen of E.T. yelling at Brock from the window came as a surprise, but even more surprising in its effectiveness at portraying that moment. I can see vast improvements coming to Brian Barnhart’s films with bigger budgets, longer shooting schedules, and more experienced actors. As for his first effort, I would describe it as Larry Clark’s Kids minus the story, character development, and 90% of the running time. And the on-screen sex. ** out of *****

And the moral of the story is: Indie does not mean good. This applies at least as much to music as it does to film. People who use a band’s popularity or level of distribution as a measure of their quality are ridiculous. I once had a girl tell me that she didn’t like Propagandhi because they were “too pop.” After I got over my initial confoundment I laughed almost as hard as I did at House of 1000 Corpses. Her logic was that her cousin listened to 50 Cent and also listened to Propagandhi, therefore Propagandhi was pop music. What was really stupid was not how wrong she was but how she rejected a band’s music because of its association to something popular. Indie does not mean good. Popular does not mean good. Good means good. Music and film, good or bad, have to be judged on their merits, not their commercial success. So there it is. Straight up. I think I’m done.

Tony Hawkins is only in it for the money