HOST: things that go zoom in the night

Host is an effective ghost in the machine lockdown horror from British director Rob Savage, which has just received its global world premiere on Shudder.

He and his co-writers, Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, have created the perfect Covid-19 chiller that we can watch in the comfort of our own homes, I say comfort but that dissipates as the 56 minute film unfolds with some bravo moments and scares that linger long after the film has finished.

Don’t let that running time put you off, it’s perfectly efficient and never outstay its welcome and just so happens to be just shorter than the length of a free Zoom group call.

A horror film conceived, written and shot during lockdown restrictions based in lockdown could have been just a clever idea, but it transcends that and we are left with an accomplished and clever little horror film. In fact it’s one of the best pieces of entertainment not to just come out of lockdown, but one of the best I’ve watched during. And like everyone else, that’s a lot of content.

Technically it is simple but brilliant as it was shot remotely with Savage giving instructions to the actors – using their real first names in the film – who also shot it on their own devices and had to do the practical effects themselves. All of which adds to the authenticity.

It does what horror does best and reflects the time it is created, perfectly tapping into our fears of the pandemic with an unseen enemy where no one is safe. Even in the apparent safety of our own homes, and just like with the unseen virus there are those that don’t take the rules of the Zoom seance quite as seriously as they should, with typical horror movie dire consequences.

Zoom meetings may have been daunting and uncomfortable before, but this makes them downright scary, taking horror staples like the seance, exploring the attic and malevolent entities and packages them up in a neat and effective bubble that is anything put protective.

It’s akin to Unfriended, another device based horror – that one around a Facebook style platform – but this is around a seance done through Zoom. Rather than just a neat gimmick it plays to the platforms strengths, which is as integral to the plot as any of the characters.

It was apt then that the evening before I’d watched Poltergeist, that classic Tobe Hooper/ Steven Spielberg horror with ghosts emerging from the TV. This brings that horror smack up to date, and does what horror does best, makes the normal and everyday unsettling.

And like all good horror it stays with you long after it’s final scene, and comes back to haunt you at 2am in the morning. If Contagion and Outbreak were the films that everyone was going to at the start of lockdown, this is the one that comes to define it best from it.

Perhaps its most frightening message is that it is no longer a single haunted house we need to fear, but a haunted world where there is no escape. And that will stay with you on long after your next Zoom call and accompany you on your next trip to the supermarket or to work.

Gremlins #30DaysOfFright

To describe Gremlins as a kid’s film would be like describing the Bates Motel as a swell place to stay.

Cutesy in a typical Spielbergian world at the very beginning, sure, but it is soon revealed that we, the audience, and indeed the Peltzer family are sorely mistaken and have somewhat misread the situation in the ultimate ‘always heed the instructions’ moment in cinematic history

An animal is for life, not just for Christmas, such is the number one life lesson that we can all learn from the Spielberg Executive Produced, Joe Dante Directed, Gremlins. Rounding out this trio of talent is then scriptwriter – later Harry Potter Director, Chris Columbus – who was on something of a roll after penning scripts for both The Goonies and Young Sherlock Holmes around the same period. This ‘E.T. with teeth’ captivated and entertained and still stands tall as a comedy horror Christmas classic, and you don’t get many of those.

Originally a spec script by the young Columbus the feature was set to be a very different ‘beast’ with the Gremlins being even more dark and twisted, with the irresistibly cute Gizmo turning into Stripe, Barney the dog getting hung and Billy’s mum’s head rolling down the stairs!

Being a Joe Dante film it is a veritable reference of film and cartoon delights, from a cameo by the legendary animator Chuck Jones to a blink and you’ll miss it Steven Spielberg disappearing in The Time Machine.

It’s a deliciously wicked and rich film, even until this day and has an almost timeless charm about it like that other 80’s classic Back to the Future, which also shared the Universal backlot as its main set that created the town, Kingston Falls, and it does so spectacularly.

We get suckered into the cute, furry routine just like the Peltzers. It’s a family movie alright, but more about a families survival than in the traditional sense of the word. As such it caused such shockwaves Stateside and was one of two films that year, 1984, that helped create the PG 13 rating in America, the other film being Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

For all the Gremlins’ attacking from a Christmas tree, driving a bulldozer into the Futterman house, causing mayhem in the streets it’s a very low key scene that lingers in the memory and proves to be the most distressing, that classic monologue by Phoebe Cates on why she hates Christmas, a chilling story of them finding her dead dad stuck up the chimney dressed as Santa Clause. Inspired and perhaps only pipped by the SS Indianapolis story speech by Quint in Jaws for its powerfulness. And it is creepy as hell.

The set pieces and the imagery, their swirling lights of the swimming pool when Stripes throws himself in at the deep end, the tension of the death of the college tutor scene played against the rapidly beating heart on the projector, on par with anything in The Howling. Not to mention the discovery of the pods and the classic kitchen scene culminating in death by microwave.

It’s a shame that Dante went for out and out comedy in the sequel as it would have been an interesting study in terror to see them go really, really dark. Of course, a remake or reimagining has been mentioned but it really does remain to be seen whether the Gremlins would hold the same appeal us knowing that they were merely pixels. The Gremlin creations by Chris Walas (who went onto win an Oscar for the effects on The Fly) are pretty much pitch perfect in design, that other unsung hero of the film is also Jerry Goldsmith and his blistering score that manages to be both comical, touching and scary in equal measure.

It really is a nasty piece of work, and is all the more beloved and beautiful for it. Full of great energy, Dante clearly has great fun letting the Gremlins run riot in the usual Spielberg-like world, albeit one full of B-movie horror high jinks, and it all works wonderfully thanks to the film’s humour and the charm of its young leads. It maybe a special effects lead film but it’s the story that drives it, just like Back to the Future.

Alien is often mooted as the monster sci-fi movie of reference but for me it will always be Gremlins, for me it will always be a great big little monster movie.

 

Scream

Scream didn’t just reinvigorate the horror genre back in 1996 – can it really be over 20 years old – it took it to another level. From its shock opening this seminal shocker mixed knowing titters and terror to triumphant effect.

Horror director, Wes Craven, had previously scared us witless The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street and he had already dipped his toe in post-modern horror with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, but Scream wouldn’t just rewrite the rule book, it would eat it and spit it all out, defining much of Hollywood’s horror output for the next decade.

Although everyone now knows how the opening sequence of that first film turns out, no one can deny its power and shock seeing it for the first time on the big screen, surely the modern day equivalent of Janet Leigh meeting her maker in Psycho some 36 years earlier.

Shock endings have long been a staple of horror but shock beginnings with such a well-known name and so early on in proceedings, which was a humdinger and justifiably secured its place high in the history of highs in the genre.

It was visceral and I vividly remember the murmurs of uncomfortableness and hushed ‘did that just happen?’ as the smash cut frames of Drew Barrymore could be seen hanging from her parents tree as I sat in that Odeon cinema in Luton. Jesus, they had just killed the little girl from E.T.!

This was the end of the innocence and the birth of a new horror icon, and if that wasn’t enough he went onto slay The Fonze as well.

With that opening it set its stall out early that this is a horror with a whole new set of horror-savvy rules. Boasting assured direction and writing it was the perfect meeting of minds with the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes and The Last House on the Left, meets the writer of Dawson’s Creek, Kevin Williamson.

The Scream films, all four were helmed by Craven, are essentially like the main character, lean, mean, pull no punches and list anyone and everyone as a possible victim (and suspect for that matter).Was it the dad, the boyfriend, the cop?

There were red herrings aplenty and everyone is a suspect, like a teen Agatha Christie movie, even going so far to use the double killer device from Murder on the Orient Express.

Even after 20 years it is still really fresh and sharp, the dialogue and scenes canter along. As well as expertly crafted in its own right Scream is a bloody love letter to the genre.

There are film references galore throughout, which makes it all the more fun to watch. It covers everything from Psycho to Carrie, a Wes Craven cameo in a Freddy sweater, Halloween on the TV, Friday the 13^th, and a cameo by The Exorcist’s Linda Blair as a news reporter to name but a few.

Like those films, Scream has a memorable bogeyman in the form of Ghostface, who quickly established himself as part of the pantheon of iconic horror ghouls.

These kids aren’t stupid either and they know the rules of horror films, are self-aware. Knowing and clever it doesn’t insult the audience, instead it – like the characters themselves – it outfoxes them. Craven had stepped one foot in that arena with his previous film, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, where Freddy Krueger stepped into the real world.

The only difference being that Scream takes place in our world also, a world where previous horror films such as Halloween and Friday the 13^th exist. All of this is delivered with effective jumps throughout, that teeter between comedy elements and pure frights.

As Matthew Lillard’s character touted, “These days, you’ve got to have a sequel.” And Scream did, three, all directed by Craven. Scream now lives on rebooted for the new MTV generation, on where else, MTV.

Like Freddy, Norman and Hannibal before it Scream has joined TV. And it’s in good company with the likes of the continuing American Horror Story, The Walking Dead and the The Exorcist TV series.

I loved the original Scream trilogy, but was less impressed with the fourth chapter which returned after an 11 year break. It also turned out to be the last film of Wes Craven, who sadly passed away in 2015.

It’s doubtful we’ll see Scream back on the big screen anytime soon but as Craven showed with Freddy – returning to write Part 3 and direct Part 7 – you can’t keep a good horror franchise down and with horror resetting itself anew every few years and Scream being at its best, a celebration of horror films and trends, you can be sure of a back from the dead ending for this franchise on the big screen.

A whole new world: welcome to Jurassic World

The teasing is over and the park is almost open, welcome back to Jurassic Park.

The opening image of the first trailer is of course us entering through those infamous gates, it’s a familiar scene but also unfamiliar at the same time as this is those King Kong style gates writ large as this time it isn’t 4x4s journeying through the gates but a slinking monorail.

And we know that from the likes of the 1976 remake of Kong and The Simpsons that monorails never work out.
The original Jurassic Park was written by Michael Crichton, and that concept was then was very much initially seen as Westworld with dinosaurs, a film that was both written and directed by Crichton.

And now this return of the franchise takes that and creates a Walt Disney come Sea World theme park experience, from the panicked runners in ‘main street’ to the Shamu moment given extra spice with it being a giant swimming dinosaur, a  mosasaur eating a great white shark whole.

That’s a huge upgrade from the sacrificial goat of the original and is the perfect example of how the new Jurassic experience will be much bigger in scope than the 1993 original.

It’s of course a giant nod and wink to Executive Producer Steven Spielberg, who both directed the original and Jaws, so what better way to signpost that where gonna need a bigger dinosaur film in the wake of the Peter Jackson Kong remake, Pacific Rim and Godzilla.

We see old favourites such as the velociraptors, seemingly being raced like greyhounds, and a newly engineered dinosaur is quite rightly left in the shadows…before it escapes and the tourists get to run away (must run faster) from it echoing Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm in the first film when he says “Oooh, ahhh, That’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running and screaming.”

It may not have appeared in the trailer but don’t think we won’t be seeing the T-Rex, there is no Jurassic World without him, he’s still top of the iconic pile and we’ll all get a nice fuzzy inside feeling when he stomps onto screen, think of it as the cinematic version of a special guest star on a sitcom getting a huge whoop and cheer. Besides he is the logo so he is contractually obliged to roar, sniff and get those gnashers out.

We do know of course that there will be no return for Lord Attenborough’s John Hammond (hopefully there will be a portrait or something as a nice nod) And FX master Stan Winston who created the physical dinosaurs, both are no longer with us and that melancholy reverberates through the single piano notes echoing the Jurassic Park theme that punctuate the latter part of the trailer.

The scope and feel of the new film is truly epic, who thought that anyone would ever say that the summer theme park ride of a movie, Jurassic Park would ever feel like a small and intimate film…it looks like it might next June.