The Conjuring 2 Review

With so much geek culture being the thing in the mainstream right now, it’s not surprising to see horror following suit. The dark and sleazy edges of the genre have been pushed to the fringe (again) and horror is again making blockbusters - big summer blockbusters that are roller coasters of excitement as the creators gleefully make us jump out of our seats with well-timed jump scares and a seemingly endless assortment of haunted houses to exploit.

James Wan is at the center of all this, having perfected his Hollywood horror skills, which began with the first “Saw” movie and has gone from there to “Dead Silence” to “Insidious” to the first “Conjuring” movie. Is “Conjuring 2” his peak? I guess time will tell but it’s a slick and steady successor to his original that has big box office written all over it. This is not a low budget exploitation movie that happens to catch on - this is Hollywood moviemaking through and through.

The protagonists of the “Conjuring” movies are Ed and Lorraine Warren, real life ghost hunters brought to film by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. The movie version sees the twosome motivated by love and God to help people who need help. While often in horror the ghost hunters are really just there to provide exposition, Wan uses the Warrens as the emotional crux of the story - it’s their faith that anchors them to reality and it’s the devil himself attacking that faith that causes conflict.

For “Conjuring 2” the story starts in Amityville briefly before moving to London and the Enfield haunting which is, essentially, the British equivalent of our Amityville horror. There’s nothing especially shocking about the concept: a family is being haunted by something inside their house. It starts with their children and escalates, until the Warrens themselves are called in.

The difference between this movie and the lesser versions that pop up is Wan’s steady hand. His kind of horror is one of timing - he leaves the camera on a spot in a dark room, sometimes something happens, sometimes nothing happens. How he manipulates that timing is where his horror comes from. When we’re comfortable, he attacks. When it’s bad, he makes it worse. It may not be genius, but it’s still pretty dang effective.

“The Conjuring 2” has a secret weapon, though, one that’s a little surprising for a horror movie these days. Whereas so much horror is bad things happening to unlikable people, there’s a real compassion laced through this movie. The family being haunted is being given enough time to breath that you do start wanting the terror to stop. Again, that compassion is carried over to the Warrens. This is not a movie where you root for the monster, for sure. Even scenes where each Warren talks to the haunted girl (a splendid Madison Wolf) tug at the heart strings without being cloying.

Still, the movie does suffer a bit from Hollywood excess. The last battle is needlessly long and puts its thumb a little too squarely on the themes of the piece. As much as the movie is based on true events - the last act is such an obvious exaggeration, it doesn’t lessen the experience per se, but it certainly takes it from something that may have happened to something that’s clearly a big, expensive action set piece.

There’s horror that makes your skin crawl and leaves you wondering why you even watched the movie in the first place. “The Conjuring 2” is not that kind of movie. This is a bright movie - a roller coaster ride where you hide your eyes but don’t lose sleep at night.

Unless of course, you hear something go bump in the night. At that point, you’re on your own.

Scream Season 2 Episode 4

The biggest cheat in horror is the dream sequence - something really terrifying that our protagonist can’t escape happens, only they wake up at the last second and all is well. “Scream” has used it a couple times with Emma.

This week, most of the episode is an elaborate hallucination brought forth by some spiked booze that was seemingly sent by Jake, who no one knows is really, really dad yet.

So who DID send the spiked drink? Eli’s the one that found it but he has so many red flags that it seems unlikely he’s the bad guy ... unless they WANT us to think it’s too obvious that he’s the bad guy.

The hallucinations, of course, were all tied to the plot and themes. Brooke didn’t know if creepy Gustav was trying to help her through her sickness or trying to take her clothes off. The hallucination of Jake wasn’t helping matters any.

Audrey and Noah made out in their sickly state, only to have Zoe, on a date with Noah, join in a bit too, with both of them. Oh, and Audrey told Noah she was sorry, although she didn’t say for what. As we know, she has a LOT of things she could apologize for, not the least of which was the previous week where she was ready to bash his head in with a statue to save her own ass.

Emma ran away and may or may not have been chased by the Brandon James killer - was it a hallucnation? We still don’t know, but it did set the tone that she now thinks there’s a killer on the loose and that the madness is happening again.

For the episode’s big finale, the school announced the five finalists for their annual beauty pageant, one of whom was Brooke. As she was announced the episode went all “Carrie,” but it wasn’t a pig’s blood dumped on her head, it was Jake’s as his body fell from the rafters and landed on the stage in front of everyone.

Now that’s a cliffhanger.

Scream Season 2 Episode 3

SPOILER-FILLED WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK PART: Last week, Emma was followed by a mysterious car, that turned out meant her dad was back in town. Noah talked to the desk boy at the hotel where Piper stayed last season and found out about a mysterious storage unit where Piper kept her stuff. Audrey went to said storage unit where she found Jake’s bloody body.

Episode 3 of “Scream” keeps the momentum from last episode - Audrey’s going more and more out of her mind trying to keep her secrets - secrets Noah seems determined to find on his own. Emma has all sorts of family drama with her dad back in town and creepy Mr. Branson shows up again to give Brooke trouble.

So far the real excitement this season is with Audrey trying to get away from her hand in last season’s murders. While we still don’t know exactly how much blood is literally on her hands, we do know there’s enough. This week we saw what lengths she might go to in order to protect herself as she almost took some pretty serious actions about her best friend Noah. With a show like this, though, a major crisis was averted but, still, not knowing what Audrey would have done, but seeing what it looked like she was going to do was pretty heavy stuff.

We learned a lot about Emma’s dad and, more importantly, learned he’s been getting updates about Emma from one of last season’s victims via email. All this leads to the belief that someone wanted him back in town, the question is why. The episode made a pretty big hint about it, mind you, but there’s a lot left to do.

Again, one thing the show continues to do well is use the horror melodrama as a way to reveal the truths these characters have been hiding from for years. In this case, we learn the reasons Emma’s dad left - they’re not fodder for a murder mystery so much as they’re the end result of a normal human falling apart and losing control. It’s that underlying unhappiness that has made this show work since day one.

Oh yeah, then Brooke and friends ran into douchey Mr. Branson at a movie theater. Weird Gustav was there too and before we knew it he’d aligned himself with Brooke, Noah and Zoe (who’s hoping to get in on some of that Noah action.) It could all be teenage melodrama but, on a show like this, it could be a lot more. We did learn that Branson’s been around more than we thought and that only drove home Brooke’s frustrations with the still missing Jake. Granted, we know why Jake’s missing but the show isn’t letting anyone else know, which is a fun and morbid twist on things.

Still, the real thrill this season is seeing Audrey getting more and more trapped in her own past, with no real end in sight. At some point she’s going to have to tell someone something, right?

In the meantime, the killer came closest to taking another shot at one of the Lakewood Six tonight. It got foiled. Maybe next time it won’t.

Scream Season 2 Episode 2

SPOILER-FILLED WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK PART: Last week, Emma came home from therapy but was still crazy, Noah got more and more obsessed with finding out Piper’s accomplice, much to Audrey’s dismay, Brooke and Jack had a happy moment, then a big fight then Jake got eviscerated.

After one of the “Lakewood Six” met their untimely end last week, more weirdness seems to be finding the other survivors and Audrey keeps finding herself more and more trapped by her past and the inevitability that someone’s going to find out what she did. Kieran’s somewhat creepy cousin Eli cryptically bumped into Emma (because Emma needs more cryptic encounters in her life,) and the sheriff’s weird son Gustavo continued to give off as many weird vibes as possible to our real heroine, Brooke. Noah closed in on a big reveal as a hotel desk boy claimed he knows who Piper’s accomplice is, which, naturally made Audrey crap her pants.

Oh, and by the way, Jake’s still dead, although as the episode begins no one knows that. Brooke thinks he’s just being stubborn and his parents are out of town. But where IS Jake? Keep watching ...

Anyway, Emma’s still tormented by her past this week, freaking out when she sees a woman in the coffee house who might be Piper, and then an old crappy mysterious car starts following her around. Rather than doom herself to an entire season of self-pity, though, she makes Kieran take her to the dock where all the shit hit the fan and confront her fears. She relives the tragic finale of last season again and thinks she sees the Brandon James killer but realizes it’s only a hallucination. Happy that she’s seemingly over the trauma of last season, Emma and Kieran totally do it.

Not that Kieran’s life is without trouble as he’s been living alone since his father died, which the police aren’t too thrilled about. His aunt is talked into staying with them by the aforementioned Eli and the whole thing seems weird. The aunt seems really white trash and wants to cash in on the free room and board taking care of Kieran will provide. Eli, meanwhile, well he just seems to have something nasty up his sleeves. Or it’s all a red herring and he’s really a helluva guy. We’ll have to keep watching.

The big conflict this week is with Audrey as she freaks out when she learns the desk clerk at the hotel knows who Piper’s accomplice is. Noah’s excitement at getting closer to the story is tearing Audrey apart and seeing her take action when she needs to is a great reminder that she’s done some pretty hardcore things so far, even if we don’t know EXACTLY what, we have some kind of idea. The question is becoming: what is she willing to do to get Noah off the case?

Jake then texts Brooke back and invites her over which is odd, since he’s dead and all. All signs point to creeper Gustavo being involved with the texting but nothing’s confirmed. While it seems somewhat inevitable that Brooke would go to Jake’s and find his body, that’s not what happens. While his body IS revealed, it’s done in a far creepier and bigger way.

It’s that cliffhanger that really sets the stage for next week. Shit’s about to get real.

Scream Season 2 Episode 1

I’m going to try to do these on Tuesdays. I can’t watch ‘Scream’ live on MTV because I don’t have cable but I can watch it the next morning on Amazon.

SPOILER ADVISORY: I’m not going to spoil episodes week to week BUT, at this point, it’s pretty hard to talk about the show without spoiling Season 1, so if you haven’t finished the first season yet, you may want to wait until you have before reading on.

Continue at your own risk ...

Following the harrowing events during the first season of “Scream,” our protagonist Emma went off to get some counseling while the rest of the “Lakewood Six” tried to get on with their lives. Nerdy Noah started a podcast and continues to obsess over the crimes that give him and his friends a degree of infamy that he clearly seems to enjoy, Brooke and Jake are trying to be a couple, Audrey is working at the movie theater and living with a few secrets of her own and smoky-eyed Kieran is left wondering if he and Emma are going to live happily ever after or not.

Of course, Emma’s return starts to kick events into motion and before the end of the first episode one of the Lakewood Six has been eviscerated. There are a couple new kids in town, the creepy son of the new sheriff who is keeping with the tradition of sheriff’s sons obsessing over Emma, although his seems a bit less romantic and Zoe, a nice girl who seems to be all good intentions, some of them even aimed at Noah,

(And a quick kudos to the writers for NOT making all the new faces new students. Yes, it’s entirely possible that the lead characters new other people than each other in their years in school together. Also kudos for adding a female teacher for Noah to crush on who doesn’t look like something out of a porn. She’s pretty and absolutely crush-worthy but not to the point of distraction. Well, except maybe for Noah.)

“Scream” Season 1 ended with a bit of a bombshell as we learned one of our heroic teens may have dirtier hands than we suspected. It’s that character’s mystery and increasing paranoia that is fueling the first episode of season 2. While the easy solution is to start finding answers, that doesn’t seem to be what that character wants. Too many crossed ‘t’s may lead to some questions that are better left unanswered.

There are a lot of dangers in doing a second season of a show like “Scream.” Too much happily ever after may seem false; not enough may seem to undercut the catharsis of the first season finale. While the writers find a pretty good balance, there’s still an issue with Emma, our heroine, being too much angst and blue balling heartbreak. She’s always in danger of being outshined by straight-shooting Brooke and making them besties so far is already tipping the scales toward Brooke. She may be a bitch about it, but she’s usually right.

The big wrench in things already is the violent death of one of the main characters. That character was up to something when the new Ghostface found them. We don’t know if it was good or bad, which is what makes it intriguing. Every member of The Lakewood Six has a dark secret. How the show lets them bubble up again is what is going to make or break Season 2.

New mysteries are already starting to pile up too. The one way to hide the red herrings is to make the pile of them as deep as possible. Everyone has a motive to do something, even characters who haven’t even shown back up yet.

Or, as the saying goes, everyone’s a suspect.

Season Two of “Scream” is off to a good start.

Carrie 2013

Despite being around 40 years old, "Carrie" has established itself as a timeless tale - the sort of thing that should be able to be reimagined every couple decades with the same sequence of events but the details of how kids interact tweaked to reach a newer audience.  With bullying being a constant current buzzword, a remake for today's kids was fairly inevitable.  Signing on director Kimberly Peirce who studied similar themes in the painfully powerful "Boys Don't Cry" seemed like a risk that said this version would definitely push the power of the story's themes, perhaps even at the expense of the plot.

Most people know "Carrie's morality story - an outcast teenage girl is humiliated at school when she freaks out having her first period in the locker room.  What the girls don't know is that the onset of puberty also unleashes the girl's telekinetic powers that build and build as the bullying against her continues.  Meanwhile her crazy, pseudo-religious mother torments her even more, convincing her even the most basic of human emotions are sins of the devil.  There's a prom, pig blood and tragedy.  All this is present in Peirce's version of the story, pretty much note for note.

King's story has a built in metaphorical weight - the characters are set up in broad strokes - the outcast, the pretty girl with a conscience, the pretty mean girl, the jock with the heart of gold, the well-intended teacher.  Each character falls into place pretty much as expected and it certainly creates an explosive mix.  There's a heightened reality to the story, making it more of a parable than anything.  Peirce's mistake is in how she presents the characters - instead of elevating them, she lowers everyone, making them presumably more realistic, but diluting the power of the character interactions and thus lessening the impact of the story's powerhouse climax.  That the movie feels more polite than mean-spirited and more like an after school special than a potboiler horror movie is a colossal misfire.

Really, the problems start with casting.  Chloe Grace Moretz is a talented young actress who tends to draw attention to herself in supporting roles and does that even moreso here.  No amount of crinkling her hair, taking off her makeup and frumping her posture and clothing can change the fact that Moretz is a charismatic and attractive person.  She isn't convincing as an ugly duckling and her personality is way too warm to convince that she's been kept at arm's length her entire life.  She'd really be a great Sue Snell, the character who's supposed to show a kindness beyond her looks.  As Snell herself Gabriella Wilde is a Barbie doll at most.  Judy Greer as Mrs. Desjardin, the teacher who tries her best to befriend Carrie, has more of an oddball quirkiness to her and never quite settles into any spot in the story.  She's not quite warm enough to be a convincing mother figure for Carrie, nor is she much of a foil for the bad girls populating the story.

Speaking of the bad guys, the story has two.  Carrie's mother, played here by Julianne Moore and Chris Hargensen, another student who gets off (literally) on tormenting Carrie.  This time around Hargensen is played by Portia Doubleday and she has the hateful kick of a spoiled little rich girl, although the material doesn't really ever convincingly illustrate her hatred for Carrie White.  Moore's problems are a bit like Moretz, no amount of frumping her wardrobe and self-mutilation can help the character here who is more two-dimensional than she even is on the page.  The character is interesting as a monster but trying to layer her here and trying to dial down her vicious obsession with her god and her daughter takes away her bite and, again, doesn't clarify the powder keg that Carrie finds herself living in.

And maybe that's it -- for the story to work best there needs to be a feeling that Carrie is being attacked from all sides and that even when something good happens to her - a nice, handsome boy asking her to the prom, for example - it should create that feeling that something bad's going to happen.  Here we expect something bad to happen simply because we know the story, instead of fearing something bad is going to happen because of the mood and tone of the characters and story.  

Then there's the question of Carrie White's destructive powers.  The issue here is that as she learns about her powers and learns to harness them a bit, it almost brings Carrie out of her shell, instead of driving her more deeply into it.  She starts to smile a lot, she watches videos (online of course because this is SO modern) and all of a sudden starts to feel like she belongs.  It almost feels more like a super hero learning they can fly than a terrified girl realizing she has a power that makes her even more of an outcast than she already was.  If she's not afraid of herself and her power, why should we be?  Even when doused in pig blood by Chris Hargensen's mean-spirited trick, Moretz uses magical hand gestures to use her power, like one of the X-Men.  It lacks the feeling of someone releasing primal energy trapped inside themself.  Even the pig blood itself ends up looking more like a Hollywood makeup job than it does an attack that strips her of her dignity.

There's a prom, of course, and all the insanity that comes with it.  Here, Carrie's revenge feels more controlled, more conscious an effort.  But since the character shows no darkness until that point, her sudden mean streak and deliberate attacks on people who she feels wronged her doesn't feel right.  She doesn't feel like a victim, nor does she turn into a monster, she just turns into an attacker and despite everything that's happened to her, it doesn't necessarily feel justified.  It also doesn't feel like she finally turns into a monster - unable to control the power inside her as she is unleashed on a world that created her.  Carrie White, even at her most vicious and violent, is a sympathetic character as we should be able to see the deadly series of events that created her.  This version of the story doesn't create that sensation. 

The evening's not a total loss, mind you.  There's a genuine sweetness to Alex Russell as Tommy Nolan, the teenaged heartthrob convinced by his girlfriend to take Carrie to the prom and their time together at the dance is downright charming.  He certainly has more chemistry with Moretz than he does with the icily attractive Wilde.  Early scenes with Carrie and her mother have Carrie calling out her mother's Bible-references and self-created nonsense, giving it the beginnings of an Old Testament vs. New Testament angle.  

Ulimately, though, the world created here is too TV-movie bland and the story is too pasty and dialed down to really exploits its inherent grindhouse power.  The movie posters this time around promise we will remember her name.  That might be the case, but that's not because of this version of the story.  This one's much more likely to be forgotten sooner rather than later.  

See No Evil 2 Lands Harris, Isabelle

www.bloody-disgusting.com is reporting that "See No Evil 2," the sequel to 2006's WWE produced horror flick starring WWE superstar Kane, has landed both Danielle Harris and Katherine Isabelle to star.

Both actresses are well known to horror audiences, having starred in numerous genre pictures over the years.  Isabelle has worked with "See No Evil 2" directors the Soska Sisters in this year's "American Mary."

More info in the link: http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3254398/see-no-evil-2-will-star-danielle-harris-and-katharine-isabelle/