Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I'm currently at a tropical island paradise visiting a movie set, but as I type this we have so many festivals either gearing up, currently running or recently wrapped that there just seems to be a torrent of reviews rolling in. Awards season is here. I myself went to Telluride and still have some stuff to write up from there, we have Anton Sirius, Cartuna and Copernicus up at Toronto and now we've gotten a review from "Boba Fat" who attended screenings of the new movies from horror legends Joe Dante and George A. Romero at the Venice Film Festival.
Gotta say I love that these two are still kicking around, making art. I'm not a fan of Romero's last zombie movie, but I'll always be excited to see a new movie from him until either he goes or I do. If I go first, I hope he can use me in one of his features...
Anyway, here's the rundown on THE HOLE and SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD! Enjoy!
Hi Quint
I was lucky enough to catch Romero's Survival Of The Dead, and Joe Dante's The Hole, at the Venice Film Festival last week and, seeing as nothing seems to have turned up about them on the site, here's my thoughts.
First off, Survival Of The Dead. I love George Romero. I would have liked to have given that big bear of a man a big bear hug. I enjoyed Diary Of The Dead, but was left a bit cold by Land Of The Dead. It came across a bit rushed to me and it felt like it had been interfered with. Diary played like a fun experiment and I could go along with that, but it also seemed a bit below such an icon as Romero. After watching only one clip of Survival online, a less than great scene of the guy catching a zombie on his fishing line, my hopes were low, but the film is a pleasant surprise or unpleasant, depending on where you stand with gut munching. If anything, it's his first western.
The story revolves around two feuding families on a small, east coast island and some mercenaries who turn up there to find a safe haven. The mercenaries were the guys in Diary who dressed like they soldiers or maybe they'd gone AWOL - you might remember them stopping and stealing from the kids in the Winnebago. The main guy with the beard is the lead character here. Anyway, the islanders and families have different approaches to the epidemic. One wants to keep the Zombies alive, train them to eat animals and give them some sort of quality of existence until a cure can be found. The others want to shoot em. The mercenaries are now looking for a home and after seeing an advert on the internet about Plum Island, they set off. They pick up an annoying hipster on the way when they rescue him from a bunch of looters who keep zombie heads on sticks for fun. When they get there, the island has degenerated into a sort of asylum for survivors and zombies alike. Which is an idea I'd like to have seen played out more. The zombies are chained up and repeatedly try to post letters or chop wood. Like I said, the island stuff plays like a western. The end has a definite Wild Bunch feel to it and there are probably other references that I didn't catch as Westerns have never really been my thing. There's even a zombie on horse back, which is better and spookier than it sounds.
The film is not without it's faults. There's a twist about the zombie on horseback that seemed like a bit of a cheat to me and the guy who wants to keep the zombies around out of respect for the dead goes a little gun crazy in the middle of the film. The audience loved it, though. They gave George a five minute standing ovation before and after the film and politely applauded the big kills. Flare gun and fire extinguisher stand out, but there's plenty of chomping, splattery gunshots and gut chewing at the end. It's the film Romero should have made when Universal were throwing all that money at him to make Land and I think it's his best since Day Of The Dead. With the glut of sub-par zombie stuff around these days it made me really happy to see the man who wrote the rule book so appreciated.
I've seen Joe Dante's Hole and it doesn't stink. There's a sentence I never thought I'd write, but it's true. I knew very little about this film going in. I knew it was in 3D and I'd been told it was like Disturbia but with a bottomless hole, which it is for the first ten minutes, then it becomes a dark, really dark, episode of Eerie Indiana. Dante gets to flex his big screen muscles here and he's been away for far too long. You really get the sense he's put everything he's got into this film and the big set pieces are a master at work.
The story revolves around a single mum and her two kids, a late teen rebel and his kid brother. They move to a tiny town in search of the quiet life, but the kids find a seemingly bottomless hole in their cellar and when they unlock it, with some help from the cute girl next door, the darkness get out. Remember that bit in Poltergeist where the medium gives the big speech about the poltergeist knowing your fears and using them against you, then nothing really happens? Well, this is what would happen if that promise had been fulfilled. In fact The Hole has a lot of similarities with Poltergeist, including psycho toy clowns, childhood fears and families under siege, but it aims to affect the audience on a deeper level than Hooper's haunted house ride.
It's squarely aimed at the PG 13 audience, but gets surprisingly intense and spooky at times. I don't really want to spoil too much about the plot, but as you probably guessed, the two brothers and the cute girl (sorry, I can't remember any of their character names) have to confront the hole. So, you get to see three sets of fears dealt with. A child's, a teenage girl with repressed memories an accident in her past and the older kid who claims that nothing scares him
The 3D is so restrained that at times I was begging for something to make me duck into my seat. You don't really get that, but Dante spoke before the film about 3D being here to stay and it being up to the film makers to be worthy of it. So, I guess he deliberately stayed away from any of the "coming at ya" stuff. He tries to use the technique to create an immersive environment, but you sort of expect a bit of cheesy stuff from a 3D movie. Well I do anyway. They showed some footage of a upcoming Japanese horror beforehand called Shock Labyrinth and that had stuff flying at you in spades so, I guess you can take your pick. It looked very cool and very Japanese.
I hope The Hole finds a big enough audience to get Dante back on the big screen more often - it deserves it - but my worry is that hard core horror fans are going to be left wanting more and the Disturbia audience may not know what to make of it. Hopefully they can all get on board for some quality scares.
Finally, there are the familiar in-jokes for fans to spot and cameos from the old favourites. Orlacs glove factory anyone? Bruce Dern pops up and it has the funniest Dick Miller cameo yet.
If this is of any use to you call me Boba Fat, if it's no use call me fuckin useless.
Ciao!
I've seen Joe Dante's Hole and it doesn't stink. There's a sentence I never thought I'd write, but it's true. I knew very little about this film going in. I knew it was in 3D and I'd been told it was like Disturbia but with a bottomless hole, which it is for the first ten minutes, then it becomes a dark, really dark, episode of Eerie Indiana. Dante gets to flex his big screen muscles here and he's been away for far too long. You really get the sense he's put everything he's got into this film and the big set pieces are a master at work. The story revolves around a single mum and her two kids, a late teen rebel and his kid brother. They move to a tiny town in search of the quiet life, but the kids find a seemingly bottomless hole in their cellar and when they unlock it, with some help from the cute girl next door, the darkness get out. Remember that bit in Poltergeist where the medium gives the big speech about the poltergeist knowing your fears and using them against you, then nothing really happens? Well, this is what would happen if that promise had been fulfilled. In fact The Hole has a lot of similarities with Poltergeist, including psycho toy clowns, childhood fears and families under siege, but it aims to affect the audience on a deeper level than Hooper's haunted house ride. It's squarely aimed at the PG 13 audience, but gets surprisingly intense and spooky at times. I don't really want to spoil too much about the plot, but as you probably guessed, the two brothers and the cute girl (sorry, I can't remember any of their character names) have to confront the hole. So, you get to see three sets of fears dealt with. A child's, a teenage girl with repressed memories an accident in her past and the older kid who claims that nothing scares him The 3D is so restrained that at times I was begging for something to make me duck into my seat. You don't really get that, but Dante spoke before the film about 3D being here to stay and it being up to the film makers to be worthy of it. So, I guess he deliberately stayed away from any of the "coming at ya" stuff. He tries to use the technique to create an immersive environment, but you sort of expect a bit of cheesy stuff from a 3D movie. Well I do anyway. They showed some footage of a upcoming Japanese horror beforehand called Shock Labyrinth and that had stuff flying at you in spades so, I guess you can take your pick. It looked very cool and very Japanese. I hope The Hole finds a big enough audience to get Dante back on the big screen more often - it deserves it - but my worry is that hard core horror fans are going to be left wanting more and the Disturbia audience may not know what to make of it. Hopefully they can all get on board for some quality scares. Finally, there are the familiar in-jokes for fans to spot and cameos from the old favourites. Orlacs glove factory anyone? Bruce Dern pops up and it has the funniest Dick Miller cameo yet.
If this is of any use to you call me Boba Fat, if it's no use call me fuckin useless. Ciao!
