Tagged Subgenre

APOCALYPTIC(ally Bad)

Apocalyptic. 2014. Directed & Written by Glen Triggs. Starring Jane Elizabeth Barry, David Macrae, and Geoff Pinfield. Dark Epic Films. Unrated. 84 minutes. Drama/Horror

★
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A lot of people seem to have had more than their fill of found footage. Me – I’m not quite done with the sub-genre. Of course, that’s me, I like to wring the life out of something until there’s no fun left in it anymore. Not really, I just try not rush and judge something by its predecessors before giving it a full chance.
Unfortunately there’s nothing in Apocalyptic that was worth waiting for, in any way. I’m always a sucker for a good, creepy poster, and the first one I’d seen is not the one I used here – it has a shot of some frenzied, bloody-mouthed person running into the frame. I thought it was decent, but certainly a poster is nothing by which to judge a film.

The premise is pretty simple – a pair of filmmakers, Jodie (Jane Elizabeth Barry) and Kevin (Geoff Pinfield) are going to get a first-person perspective on some sort of cult-like religious group, all under the care and eye of Michael (David Macrae), who is himself fairly unsettling. Things are strange from the start when they come into the woods where this group lives and are met by two females, one older than the other and both dressed in the same attire, and then they are lead towards the house where they live in the country to meet Michael. They learn Michael picks one of the women around the dinner table after they eat, and that one must go with him, staying with Michael through the night. Naturally, the situation deteriorates, as Jodie notices one night that Michael picks a very, very underage girl, and off they go to the bedroom as if nothing is out of the ordinary. From this moment on, nothing is the same as it was before.
eePY7kQBasically there isn’t much of anything that makes this film worthwhile. All I can say is that there are some really wonderful looking shot, gorgeous to see in an eerie, spooky sense, but there is little-to-no substance throughout Apocalyptic. For instance, (SPOILER AHEAD) once the big moment of the stoning comes later in the film there is almost no suspense or true tension to keep us tethered to the characters/plot emotionally, and it comes off terribly. I don’t like to rag on a film by being too cheeky, but man, was this part ever poorly pulled off. It could’ve carried at least some weight, instead it’s just like a big metaphorical premature ejaculatory incident caught on film. The camerawork in the scene is bad – and yes, it’s found footage, but there’s no need for it to be unwatchable, there are plenty of these types of movies where it’s not all shaky camera angles and garbled frames – and the acting is poor, and the whole look of it effects wise is just kind of embarrassing as far as I’m concerned. This scene could’ve come off as a whopper and really freaked people out, but it is far from that type of moment.

Worst of all is the climax of the film, at the finale. Apocalyptic‘s final ten minutes plays out like a bad rendition of Jonestown, Michael as the stand-in Jim Jones, like The Sacrament except in the dark and not nearly as well-directed as Ti West’s movie. It’s the same thing you’ve seen time and time again – people flail around in the black frames, occasional scenery popping in and out of the darkness, screams, a bit of blood, discovering bodies laying on the floor. A real mess. Sure, you say, “they’re all like that”. Well, no they aren’t, sorry to break it to you. Sadly, Apocalyptic took a concept that worked really well in something like V/H/S 2 for Gareth Huw Evans & Timo Tjahjanto in their short “Safe Haven”, and Triggs fumbled a chance to do different things. West’s movie worked because it was basically a contemporary look at a Jonestown-esque event in our society, nothing groundbreaking yet it was effective and unsettling. Whereas Apocalyptic aims to be different, poses as something different, but ultimately does a near exact replica of the most well-known aspects of Jim Jones and the whole massacre in Jonestown. (SPOILER AHEAD) The very end plays out like the last few moments of Jones’ life, and of course like West does with The Sacrament. So there is really nothing at all innovative about any part of this movie, which is a shame. Cults are always good for a bit of horror.
apocalyptic2I wasn’t overly taken by anything in this one, aside from some of those juicy creepy creep shots like images sort of lost in darkness and a few that were covered in a fog, like a mist wrapped the frame. I’ll give Triggs 1 star, solely for those few fleeting moments, and I did like the opening. However, once the mystery started to slip away and the plot revealed itself, I was less an less taken, found myself not really caring about anyone in the film other than the poor young girls being obviously abused and raped by Michael. There just was no emotion. Even the main performance by David Macrea wasn’t anything to write home about. He tried, a valiant if only decent effort. It just was not enough to lift Apocalyptic out of tedium, a pit of boredom, and the whole thing is not even mediocre, it’s bad. Whereas a film like Red State, which I personally loved, had someone such as Michael Parks to really propel the movie into another stratosphere of excellence, Apocalyptic did not have any of that, from either of the lead characters. If maybe there was a great scare in the end, moments which were downright terrifying, or even a bit of wild gore or effects, I might have been able to give this more than 1 star.
But no such luck in life. This was a rough one to sit through – believe it or not, I watched it twice just to see if there was anything I’d missed in my first round of boredom. I don’t recommend it, only for completists who want to see all the found footage they can get their grubby mitts on. Almost not even worth the time and eyeball moisture.

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WE ARE STILL HERE Channels Fulci

We Are Still Here. 2015. Directed by Ted Geoghegan. Written by Ted Geoghegan & based on a concept by Richard Griffin. Starring Barbara Crampton, Andrew Sensenig, Lisa Marie, and Larry Fessenden. Dark Sky Films. Unrated. 84 minutes. Horror.

3.5 out of 5 stars
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I’m a big fan of horror, big fan of Barbara Crampton, so naturally I was excited when I heard We Are Still Here would be an old school haunted house style outing with her as a main character. And while it isn’t the best thing I’ve ever seen, it’s a head above most modern horror. Not to mention there are excellent moments of horror and also fun, interesting characters, which help remind us of the 1980s without trying too hard for nostalgia.

Paul (Andrew Sensenig) and Anne (Barbara Crampton) are moving into the countryside of New England to an old house where they plan on starting over. The move is brought on by the death of their teenage son. Unfortunately, once they arrive at the house things begin to get strange. An old couple seem to have more than just genuine interest in them, and the house makes Anne feel as if there are spirits living there, as if she can feel their son within the walls. As the house’s history literally haunts the new tenants, Paul and Anne must figure out how to stop it, or at the least – how to make it out alive.

In general, I thought this was a fairly solid horror effort. The directing is sharp. Ted Geoghegan has done a fine job crafting the film into something partly fresh, partly old, but one that is certainly full of atmosphere and packs a nice little jab in some of the creepier moments.
Immediately I’ll start with the two small pieces of We Are Still Here I did not particularly enjoy.
First, there’s a death that I found beyond tired and played out – I won’t describe it fully, but it comes once the house starts taking victims. A character gets out of the house, into a car, and seemingly away from the evil… only to be surprised down the road, as a ghost is hiding in the backseat. My initial problem is that once the character got out, I thought “okay this is going to go a different way than most other films that use this type of scene”. It went exactly how I expected. That’s fine sometimes, my problem with this is that it sort of tosses the movie’s own ghost logic out the window – if the ghosts can leave the house, why do they need to wait until someone moves in to wake up every 30 years and take souls? This made me wonder.
Second, I didn’t like how the ghosts looked. They were kind of generic, the look wasn’t too terrifying or anything. Maybe that’s the way they needed to look because of the story, I get that. There are just certain films, which aren’t necessarily bad, where the ghosts or monsters [or whatever they are] don’t look scary like they ought to, but again – this look was mostly in part due to how the people died that eventually show up as ghosts, so I can’t exactly fault the effects. I just didn’t find them super effective in the end.
WE-ARE-STILL-HERE_Andrew-Sensenig-and-Barbara-CramptonNow, on to what I did enjoy. The performances were fantastic. You can pretty much bet your ass Barbara Crampton will give a good performance if she’s given a good script. I thought Crampton did a spectacular job ranging between the normal grief we feel and then all those supernatural feelings some get when confronted with death. I thought Crampton and Andrew Sensenig had great chemistry. Sensenig played an excellent character; little bits of his old-fashionedness came out with his remarks about women drivers and all those foolish yet harmless jabs. This really set up the idea that the husband was a much more skeptical type of person, very old-fashioned and set in his ways, which contrasted with Crampton. Then of course there’s the wonderful pairing of Lisa Marie and Larry Fessenden as the New Age couple May and Jacob Lewis. They each did well, but Fessenden is always a treat. I love him as a director and even more as an actor – he always has a fun little part to play whether it’s in his own movies, someone else’s, or even on the FX comedy Louie. Marie and Fessenden were perfect as the binary opposite of Crampton and Sensenig. And once the story gets crazier, Fessenden really has a few good scenes to chew apart. Overall, if the acting were bad this film would not have succeeded. However, these four really were great, and the supporting characters were also played nicely.
WE-ARE-STILL-HERE_Larry-FessendenThe best part of We Are Still Here, for me, is the atmosphere and general feel Geoghegan conjures up with a lot of well-crafted cinematography, editing, and tone. Even the final shot of the film, as one character stands in a doorway looking to the basement, reminds me of an older movie. The atmosphere definitely has that retro-feel, but as opposed to other movies which try hard to get that across I think Geoghegan’s is a much more natural feel. The house itself has a lot to do with that, it’s a great little place in the country and there’s an ever-present nostalgia in it; reminds me of a cabin in the rural part of Newfoundland where I’m from, a lot of those places almost feel like houses out of time, stuck in the 1970s and 1980s when they were first built. So I think some of the throwback feel Geoghegan wrings out of the film comes organically.
Another of my favourite parts is how the film centers on an older couple. There are a couple younger characters in the film, but this is almost entirely about the characters of Anne and Paul, and what they were going through after their son’s death. So many modern horrors, even the ones trying to pose as retro, are entirely based on characters who are millenials – I’m one myself, born just after the end of the so-called Generation X – and that is honestly tiring. Young people aren’t the only ones who love horror; plenty of horror fans out there grew up in the ’70s/’80s when horror really had some balls, innovation, and a hell of a lot of ideas. So, I think Geoghegan’s film is great on that level because we get to see a story, while typical, yet instead of a bunch of young people in their late teens/early twenties being killed for 84 minutes we’ve got more of a mature look at something so familiar. It doesn’t offer much new, but does give a different perspective on the haunted house for a generation getting so used to drivel like Paranormal Activity.
we-are-still-here-imageThis is definitely a 3.5 out of 5 star film. It was refreshing to watch. Like I said, it isn’t necessarily a brand new take on the haunted house sub-genre of horror. However – I really enjoyed it. The couple small beefs I had with the movie aren’t enough to ruin the whole experience. Crampton and Sensenig did a solid job together, and Fessenden really livened things up during the middle part of the film. Geoghegan has a knack for creating atmosphere and setting a specific tone, so I hope to see something new from him sooner than later. We Are Still Here is, for all its faults, one of the better haunted house films to come along in the last decade. I can confidently say that, even with the problems I had. Check it out on VOD, or if it’s in theatre anywhere near you get out and take the chance. I don’t think you’ll regret spending the time to watch it, and you might find a creep or two just for you lurking in there somewhere.