Undermarked Oversights: One Dark Night (1982)

Never underestimate the simple effectiveness of a horror film's ability to gradually and properly build up its concept. Oftentimes, entries in the genre rush toward the expected scares at such a rapid pace that they neglect how an audience absorbs and processes information, leaving character motivations and the in-universe logic of how the supernatural functions scrambling to catch up. One Dark Night wouldn't be considered a particularly remarkable example of the genre, splicing the old-hat playfulness of sorority hazing with the mystique of psionic electricity and the dead rising from the grave, but writer/director Tom McLoughlin appreciates how the right type of progression and escalation can magnify the supernatural mood. Some iffy ‘80s affectations and a decidedly hollow plot can't detract from the atmosphere generated by the overnight premise and the credible characters, resulting in a slight yet absorbing and mostly convincing jolt of supernatural horror.

Following the reported death of occultist Karl Raymarseivich Raymar, in which several other women were discovered at the crime scene, a funeral takes place at a local mausoleum. On the other side of town, reserved yet growingly adventurous high-schooler Julie (Meg Tilly) has been enduring a battery of obstacles in order to join the "Sisters", a purple-jacket-wearin' clique of girls helmed by Carol (Robin Evans). She fits the stereotype of the sororal ringleader, bubbly yet jealous and petty in her treatment of Julie, which reaches a fever pitch once she discovers her deepening connection with ex-boyfriend Steve (David Mason Daniels). In retaliation, Carol decides that the final step to Julie's initiation will involve spending the night inside the local mausoleum, which … you guessed it, so happens to be the resting place of the recently deceased occultist. Thus, a long evening of growing dread begins for Julie, which intensifies once elements of the paranormal begin to emerge from within the mausoleum.

After setting an eerie tone with the oddities of the murder scene, Tom McLoughlin pumps the brakes on the film's paranormal thrills, directing its attention to the mannerisms of the potential victims and those with connections to the occultist angle. While the daughter of the occultist, Olivia (Melissa Newman), alongside her wary skeptic of a husband (Adam West), gains exposure to the depths of her father's research and capabilities -- the words "psychic vampires" come up at one point -- the story focuses on layers of justification for the high-school kids to act in the ways they do, a tricky thing since so many horror scenarios can get dismissed simply by them being the product of poor or out-of-character choices. Julie's motivations for wanting to join the Sisters at any cost and Carol's spurned malice toward her make plenty of sense, and it's because writer/director McLoughlin insistently emphasizes the state of their decision-making through passably sincere teenage drama. By the time Julie rolls up to the cemetery in the car with the "sisters", it makes sense.

Inside the mausoleum, One Dark Night takes a largely hands-off approach to the inherently gloomy atmosphere of the thick black-and-white marble and lengthy echoic hallways, gradually enhanced by cracks forming in walls and dimming lights that worsen as the evening goes on. McLoughlin wants this to initially feel like a real night stuck in the creepy building, and the stillness in the air while Julie explores her surroundings achieves that effect, with only the knowledge of the occultist's burial place closing in on her as a terrifying factor. The pacing could've taken a hit while she wanders through the mausoleum -- and, granted, it still does to a degree -- but McLoughlin helps that along by revealing Olivia's discoveries about her father at the same time. What does impact the intensity of the thrills is the unnecessary usage of hallucinatory drugs, which casts doubts on the validity of certain imagery and contrives subplot elements that conveniently assist the story in dire situations later on.

Immersed in pink lighting and eerie shadows leading into the increasingly dangerous corridors, One Dark Night eventually arrives at the point where it transforms the mausoleum from a psychologically taxing maze into an outright house of horrors. Sharp practical effects generate bolts of lightning, decaying flesh, and floating bodies that culminate into a wild climax for the clues and buildup throughout the film, though the scale remains comparatively small and confined to the location and the specific evening. The steadiness and restraint of McLoughlin's buildup also translates to the caliber of its thrills, though: regardless of the impressive low-budget construction providing macabre eye candy, the scares themselves end up low-key, anticlimactic, and too neatly wrapped-up once all's said and done. For its duration, however, One Dark Night lures those watching into a distinctly pragmatic yet entrancing atmosphere that, unlike many contemporary horror flops, puts ambient due diligence above hasty shock value with an agenda.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Undermarked Oversights: Dark Water (2002)

The spooked-out feeling someone gets after being told a ghost tale around the campfire doesn't easily translate off of the big screen, since that incremental, anticipatory pace that has listeners hanging on every word from the storyteller can flicker and fade over an hour and a half. Japanese filmmakers, notably the works of Hideo Nakata, discovered how to get it right with consistently growing ambience and relatable dramatic storytelling, weaving together growing supernatural dread with personal reflections upon the people experiencing the events. Like those campfire stories, these also tend to follow a similar rhythm that becomes recognizable after hearing a few others, even giving birth to a horror subgenre: that of the "stringy-hair ghost girl". One of such tales, Dark Water, might be bogged down by resemblances to other stories of its ilk, but it drips with enough heavy atmosphere and parental psychological tension to drown out its familiarity.

Hideo Nakata's follow-up to his adaptation of the Ringu novels also draws from one of Koji Suzuki's works: "Dark Water", a short story. In it, a mother, Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki), desperate for inexpensive options amid a tough divorce takes a unit in a run-down apartment complex, an endlessly gray and humid building whose less-appealing traits are outweighed by its cost and her immediacy to find a home for her daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno). Despite her devotion and love for her daughter, Yoshimi struggles to make ends meet, often leaving young Ikuko waiting for long hours after school. If that weren't enough, they've also started to deal with a leak coming from their ceiling, a problem unhelped by the management of the complex. When strange sounds and events start to happen in the apartment complex, the activity of children who don't live there and cannot be found, it leaves one to wonder whether they're really happening or figments off Yoshimi's psyche.

Like the stained, dripping patch that stretches across the ceiling of the apartment, a murky and distressing mood gradually seeps into Hideo Nakata's Dark Water, using the overbearing grayness of the apartment to capture the film's gloomy intentions. Persistent rainfall and claustrophobic echoes within Yoshimi's home thicken the atmosphere, yet they're not designed for jump-scares. Instead, director Nakata draws the audience deeper into the ominous living conditions without making an effort to overlty startle those watching, using child disappearance posters, elevator surveillance footage, and a curiously bright red backpack for milder chills that double as extended world-building around a grander mystery. Jolts aren't waiting around the corners of the dampened building; instead, new facets of their paranormal living conditions emerge with what seems like each passing day, and the way it provokes curiosities over the building's history taps into its own kind of slow-rising, immersive dread.

These horror elements in Dark Water tend to be subtle at first, fading into the background to such a degree that they hide underneath the drama involving Yoshimi's struggles with parenting and divorce. It'd be understandable if one's interest level were to ebb during the film's mid-section, though: like many divorces, there are recurring arguments and discussions about the state of the proceedings, which slosh around within the film's intentionally washed-out visual style. What keeps Nakata's film afloat during that period comes in the psychology of the mother, whose history with mental illness adds a layer of ambiguity atop the bumps and drips that she's experiencing in her new home. The restrained performance from Hitomi Kuroki revolves around weakening composure and frustration as a mother, heightened by a tender -- if melodramatic -- glimpse at how her daughter keeps her from snapping, her eyes widening and posture stiffening as the supernatural curios further approach the surface.

With time, the enigmatic mysteries of Dark Water become too much for the walls of the apartment to hold back, flooding the end of the film with insidious spectral anomalies and disturbing revelations about the eerie aspects -- posters, bags, footsteps -- sprinkled throughout. Rising chills and melancholy overtones latch onto the story's distinctive elements, culminating in a dimly-lit, murky plunge into the dominion of the supernatural, hinged on paternal intuition and sacrifice in the presence of the paranormal. While it's difficult to overlook the parallels between its climactic events and those found at the bottom of the well in Nakata's own Ringu, Dark Water ends on a gloomier note , connecting its obscured details into a bleak, breathless conclusion reminiscent of the kind of somber exclamation point one might expect from those campfire stories. There are scarier "ghost girl" tales out there, but this one embraces the right mixture of swelling atmosphere and dramatic undercurrent for what it sets out to accomplish.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Undermarked Oversights: Saved!

Christianity might regularly change with the times to appeal to the youth of their flock, but its effort toward a "hip" and "cool" makeover in the late-'90s and early 2000s struck a mainstream chord, marking the rise of Christian alt-rock, WWJD bracelets and brand-parody shirts, and massive worship conferences. While writer/director Brian Dannelly drew from his own experiences with Christian schooling and subculture during his youth while writing Saved!, a teen-comedy powered by religious satire, it's the timing of its release around the period of this "emerging church" that herded it into a cult-classic niche. Satirizing religion -- especially when involving teenagers -- can be tricky, but Dannelly know how to cross necessary lines that ask questions and push buttons without attacking the entire institution, resulting in a sharply funny depiction of teens navigating the complexities of morals, zealotry, and figuring out what their beliefs are in the process.

Mary Cummings (Jena Malone), a senior at American Eagle Christian High School, has a lot going for her. Along with graduating soon, she's also a member of a pop-music singing group that started at her school, the Christian Jewels, which is led by her wildly popular best friend, Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore). Mary also has a good Christian boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust), whom she can see spending her life with. The couple are confronted with a challenge, however, when Dean tells Mary that he might be gay, obviously a no-no when it comes to their faith. To help save the relationship and under the pretense that her actions will lead Dean astray from even worse sin, Mary decides to take their relationship to another level. In the process, Mary ends up pregnant, leaving her to hide the secret from her secular friends as she turns to the school's pariahs -- like Hilary Faye's handicapped brother, Roland (Macaulay Culkin), and the school's wild-child "witch", Cassandra (Eva Amurri) -- for comfort and help with the situation, while also ducking the untimely flirtations from a ministry skateboarder, Patrick (Patrick Fugit).

Writer/director Brian Dannelly and co-writer Michael Urban channel long-term perceptions of Christian schools and this turn-of-the-century "revamp" movement of Christianity into the halls of American Eagle Christian High School, a place where it's difficult to tell who runs the place: the teachers, or the hero-worshipped Hilary Faye and her model posse of "Christian Jewels". Mandy Moore's overly cheerful charisma plays up the foundation of her character's higher-power faith into both a tool for her popularity and a weapon against those who clash with her and her beliefs, shaping Hilary into a unique kind of villain who stands toe-to-toe with the likes of Regina George in Mean Girls or Heather Duke in Heathers. From hands-in-the-air concerts with the Christian Jewels and the slang-riddled preaching from the school's dean to soul-saving prayer "interventions", Dannelly nails down a kind of moral battleground full of charismatic worship that won't stand for deviations from its -- or Hilary's -- way of thinking, a place of insistent love hiding its underlying intolerance.



Of course, what's a better way of using this buttoned-up atmosphere than to throw a bunch of challenges at its status quo? There's a degree of convenience behind the moral "hiccups" that Saved! introduces in its religious takedown, where teen pregnancy, homosexuality, and demonized non-believers all erupt at the same time around meek senior Mary, played with convincing naivete and simmering ferocity by Jena Malone. Yet, the personal experiences and research channeled into their stories neatly weave together with the setup orchestrated by director Dannelly, striking a balance between elevated reality and outright parody that carries enough authenticity to take seriously. Our playfully-named heroine, Mary, goes down a path that leads her through conflicts of morality and the integrity of her religion, and the broadening of her horizons along the way telegraphs a solid message about figuring out what elements of higher-power belief -- if any -- make sense to different people.

Backed by a soundtrack featuring tunes recorded by Mandy Moore, recognizable classic Christian songs like Jesus Christ Superstar, and seasonal music to mark the passing of time, Saved! follows the calculated moral battle that Hilary Faye wages against the "pariahs" of American Eagle over the schoolyear. While Mary struggles with how to handle and cover up her pregnancy situation from, well, everyone, effective humor forms around exorcisms, converting non-believers, and the dirty little secrets people keep about themselves. Punchlines are rarely overt, though; the funniest line in the film gets tossed out in the film's trailer. Instead, the comedic timing and chemistry within the rising-star cast elevates the surprisingly witty and cautiously subversive jabs in the writing -- especially through Mandy Moore's deadpan villainy as Hilary and Eva Amurri's brazen rebelliousness as Cassandra -- easing up on its satirical edge with a reputable amount of honest teen-oriented drama and romantic diversions.

Luckily, Saved! doesn't preach about the touchy topic of the Christian faith among high-schoolers, nor does it rely on using religion itself as the butt of easy or cruel jokes ... even though it probably could've held onto more cynicism while delivering the culmination of Mary's tribulations through intolerance. Between the budding relationships -- occasionally playing like relics of late-'90s sappy sitcom TV -- and the repartee between zealous believers and their opposing outsiders, a versatile tone builds between these fleshed-out caricatures and stereotypes that writer/director Dannelly brings together. This relatively dark comedy does focus on a clear point: there's an unquestionable commentary going on here about the stringent and sometimes hypocritical grasp people have on morals, forgiveness, and the Word of God. Saved! largely works because it understands how to step over those bounds for the sake of its critical satire, though, while also staying pleasantly accessible as it appeals to a broader, receptive audience with the actual spirit of its message.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Undermarked Oversights: Vanilla Sky

Pay closer attention to the opening sequence in Vanilla Sky, where Tom Cruise's then-unidentified character speeds through Times Square -- both on foot and in a gorgeous Ferrari -- without a soul in sight. The dreamlike nature of the scene isn't easily overlooked, of course, but there's more underneath and beyond the surface than seen at first blush, revealed in whispered voices and quick flashes as he hysterically spins at the heart of New York City. It's a hell of a thing to start a narrative with false bearings on reality like this, later revealed to be the first musings that David Aames has divulged to his psychological evaluator, Dr. McCabe (Kurt Russell), before the start of a murder case. So begins Cameron Crowe's reverent remake of Alejandro Amenabar's Abre Los Ojos, one whose attention to style and emotion justifies its existence while smartly expanding on the mentality of the man in question. What results is a provocative descent into unreturned desire, authentic love, and the power of the subconscious.

Not to give it excuses or anything, but Vanilla Sky didn't really have it easy in the year of its release. On top of being a Hollywood remake of the critically-acclaimed Spanish film, it also had to contend with the debut of Lynch's Mulholland Drive and the wider distribution of Nolan's Memento -- both of which generated buzz by accomplishing similar things in superior ways -- earlier that year. Therefore, the field was crowded in the psycho-puzzle subgenre, and the twisted story of David Aames' conflict of romantic pursuits and amnesiac murder mystery wasn't, in a literal sense, anything new. Crowe tweaks the narrative, though, by emphasizing the protagonist's legacy as the heir to a publishing empire, accentuating his recklessness with the business end of things and a general self-awareness of the tools at his disposal: charisma, wealth, and appearance. That makes it all the more intriguing to watch his casual tryst with clingy actress Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz) evolve beyond his control, and to see it all deconstructed by a beautiful but comparatively commonplace dancer, Sofia (Penelope Cruz), who immediately steals his heart.

Having Tom Cruise in the central role adds a degree of meta-context to Vanilla Sky, whose pop-culture stature merges with David's grasp on vanity and mortality. Already displaying a versatile dramatic side in Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, Cruise admirably embraces the understated commentary on his persona through his character's carefree place of power and his thorny relationship with his father, with his easy charm and building anxiety driven by writer/director Crowe's good-natured style of human interaction. An immediate spark ignites between his character and Sofia within, unsurprisingly, a cluttered celebration of the greatness of David on his birthday, and it stays credible throughout the film due to how Penelope Cruz's down-to-earth wit and allure drags him out of the clouds, shaping into a poignant love story. The standout performance, however, emerges in Cameron Diaz with arguably the best turn of her career (second, perhaps, to Being John Malkovich), encapsulating obsession and one-way affection in a beautiful shell that's both sympathetic and unsettling, the cloud over David's happiness.



Infusing ethereal tracks by composer (and wife) Nancy Wilson and Icelandic band Sigur Ros with classic and contemporary melancholy pop songs, director Crowe again uses his musical awareness to heighten the visual and dramatic tempo in Vanilla Sky. Instead of directly enveloping scenes in the feel of a time period or the clear emotional state of a character, however, his musical selection here transports the audience through the complicated space of David Aames' mind, guiding the film in both similar and differing tonal directions to that of Amenabar's original intents. Crowe's attunement to sound mixes intriguingly with the growingly abstract nature of David's telling of the events, embracing an attitude that's somewhere between the earnest warmth of the director's previous pictures and the disappearing grip on reality within David's psychosis. Overt sentimentality does get in the way of establishing a consistent suspenseful mood, but that duality also becomes one of the film's distinguishing attributes as the tone shifts between those margins.

Along the way, Cameron Crowe never lets the viewer forget that this is a narrative being spun by an imprisoned man in a latex mask, divulged to an inquisitive psychiatrist as he builds a case for David's mental state surrounding a murder accusation. Paired with the evocative perspective of Braveheart and Almost Famous cinematographer John Toll, surreal cues emerge through the film's visual language that suggest there's more to everything than what we're shown, where little details scattered about -- photographs, drawings, even the mole on someone's body -- begin to play with the perspectives of both David and the audience's trust level in him. It's at this point where Vanilla Sky pulls the curtain back on what it's really about, descending into the pandemonium of nightmares and unreliable narration through warped science-fiction that recalibrates just about everything that's transpired thus far. Crowe doesn't get carried away with it all, either, keeping a firm grip on what's safe to be deduced and not as the film shapeshifts into a psychological thriller.

Vanilla Sky tumbles down that rabbit hole in a wild, slyly unsettling climax to the tragic mysteries of David's life, both revealing the truth of what's going on and inviting different interpretations to what it all means through layered clues, more flashes of images and whispers in the distance. It's unsurprising that heavy emotion speaks louder than thematic lucidity in Crowe's ending, the most divergent part of the film from the original; however, the bittersweet nature in how it feeds into the choice between moving on with one's life or perpetuating an illusion says enough. Despite tiptoeing around some rather dark elements, it leaves the audience with a degree of cathartic optimism hanging in the air alongside swelling atmospheric music and painterly surroundings, yet there's also the lingering sensation that everything hasn't been, and won't be, fully answered. Whether repeat viewings will bring that more into focus depends on the viewer, but thankfully experiencing the sweet and sour of David's life is compelling enough to continue doing so anyway.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Undermarked Oversights: Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

The mind of Pedro Almodovar has produced some of cinema's most provocatively mischievous pieces of art, touching on themes of unobtainable carnal desire and gender identity while pushing the boundaries of audience sensibility. Even at his most challenging, he does so in a way that's far from abrasive, where vibrant color palettes and open, frank body language frequently make exploring the nuance of his ideas an utter delight. At the time when Almodovar originally released Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, however, that liveliness mattered little when it came to getting lassoed by the MPAA, deeming its provocative content -- the capture and binding of an ex-porn starlet until she falls in love with her mentally-unstable captor -- worthy of the dreaded "X" rating typically reserved for pornographic material. It's a shame, too, because the film's evocative design transcends the wacky concept's exploitative and smutty artifice, rarely without some engaging underlying purpose or figurative suggestion about the dynamics of courtship, seeking family, and the warped nature of Stockholm Syndrome.

That's not to say Almodovar doesn't intend on rousing his audience with Tie Me Up!, of course, since that's inherent in the pursuits of his twenty-something former (?) psychotic. Ricky, played with casual charisma by Antonio Banderas, has recently been released from his mental institution by court mandate, out into a world where he has nobody and nothing but a bit of cash, his wits, and his good looks. He's not interested in a cavalier life of freedom, though: the first thing on his mind is locating a specific woman and making her his wife. That woman happens to be an former porn actress and drug addict, Marina (Victoria Abril) who's turned her life and acting career around, someone whom Ricky previously shared a night with during one of his brief stints outside the institution. When traditional methods of getting her attention fail, Ricky resorts to more drastic measures, kidnapping her within her own apartment and tying her down on the bed. His objective? Keep her bound, disconnected from work and family, until she falls in love with him.



Almodovar's vibrant style, both the visuals and his presentation of his characters, brightens what's ultimately a rather dark scenario in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. Cutting into the austerity that could come of Ricky's mental instability and Marina's self-destructive former life of drugs and porn, he uses the film's first twenty minutes to introduce the nuance of these characters against his flair for vivid hyperrealism, dressed in bold yet pragmatic colors. Instead of an outright lunatic and thief, Ricky's revealed to be this charming ward of the state whose prolonged institutionalization may or may not have been justified, despite his inclination towards thievery. Marina, on the other hand, earns sympathy as she attempts to break from her less-savory life, taking a role in a B-grade horror spoof and fighting off the male gaze -- specifically from her director, Maximo (Francisco Rabal) -- and scornful eye of journalists. Both desperately need some form of stability after turbulent periods in their lives, creating a cautious yet optimistic atmosphere as Ricky's roguishness brings him closer to Marina. That is, until violence and confinement put an end to some of the speculation about his sanity.

Clever writing keeps Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! a step ahead of expectations about where the plot's headed, filling in the gaps of doubtfulness about Marina's capture with self-aware subversion of genre conventions. From suspicion about her disappearance to the whereabouts of spare keys to her apartment, Almodovar takes the scenario seriously enough to retain the harrowing nature of a woman being bound and held hostage, yet not seriously enough to detract from flickers of humor and the unhinged romantics of Ricky's intentions. There's playfulness in the sequences involving how Ricky obtains the tools needed to deceive and restrain the object of his affection, from wigs and handcuffs to comfortable rope and less-abrasive tape, that relishes its own idiosyncratic sensibility while tightroping the line between comedy and thriller. That attitude plants the seeds for the organic development of capture-bonding, the film's central conceit, driven by a sneaky juxtaposition of Ricky's twisted grasp on good intentions with Marina's horrified eyes and discomforted squirms in her restraints.



Almodovar's fondness for light arty surrealism occasionally pulls Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! into far-fetched territory -- especially the ways in which Ricky almost gets found out -- yet the chemistry between Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril brings those moments back down to some semblance of reality. Or, maybe their rapport is so engaging and vivacious from start to finish that it doesn't really matter, where the melodramatic fluctuations of their tenuously developing relationship relishes the progression towards Marina's flip in perception. Much of Victora Abril's performance comes from her eyes and her body language, whether she's tied up or not; her tension, instead of disappearing, slowly changes in tone as she becomes more aware of Ricky's intentions and limitations. While captivating, she's ultimately the muse behind Ricky's mania and scheming, brought to life with a deceivingly complex performance from Antonio Banderas that nails his menacing dedication and, ultimately, the likable virtues buried underneath.

Again, though, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is built on a situation whose immensity shouldn't be just shrugged off, and Almodovar knows it. Ricky's perseverance and Marina's opposition actively draw some exaggerated allegorical parallels to the dynamics of opposite-sex courtship, while commenting on the compulsive need for stability and family. The twists and turns of the hostage situation pull those elements together into a peculiar romantic fable that rouses some thought about the way relationships develop -- the hoops jumped through to gain attention, the nature of rejection and acceptance, the emotional bondage and metaphorical bruises -- within the space of Almodovar's elevated reality. While its scenes of provocation and passion may earn its (re-rated) NC-17 label along the way, they also muster a unique grasp on this unsavory beast of a young man displaying genuine fondness for a weatherworn beauty beyond his common, inexperienced means. Can Ricky's actions be justified? No, and Almodovar doesn't try to do that, but Tie Me Up! does unjudgingly play with the idea of whether Marina would've completely broken from her own personal restraints without getting tied up with her psychopath.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Undermarked Oversights: Ravenous

It's not too surprising that a film like Ravenous, a morbidly dark horror-comedy about cannibalism in the snowy expanses of 1800s California, might suffer from some production issues while under studio control. Cycling through directors while undergoing casting issues and dissatisfaction with the day-to-day output, it's probably a minor miracle that director Antonia Bird rallied the troops enough to get this thing out for the public eye, despite the many hands -- including the studio's -- dragging it in different directions. Even more remarkable is the fact that Ravenous, perhaps by a stroke of luck, ultimately ends up being a oddly mesmerizing piece of work that brushes against the fabric of morality and mortality, reveling in an outlandish tone as it takes a few twisted, albeit predictable, turns through the Sierra Nevada wilderness. Its raw, unsettling personality overcomes a host of imperfections and evidence of creative differences, justifying the cult following it has developed since its disappointing critical and commercial reception upon release.

After a not-so-valiant commandment decision during the Mexican-American War leads to him being both celebrated for his actions and reprimanded for his lack of mettle, Captain John Boyd (Guy Pearce, Animal Kingdom) finds himself essentially "exiled" to the remote, depressingly frigid Fort Spence in the California mountains. A skeleton crew keeps the rusty compound running, filled with troops who can barely manage their duties: a wobbly young priest (Jeremy Davies), a veterinary doctor (Stephen Spinella) as their physician, one overzealous soldier (Neal McDonough) ... and, among others, David Arquette (Scream) as a baked and giggly lout. One evening, shortly after Boyd arrives, a starving and skittish man, F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle, Trainspotting) stumbles onto their doorstep, spinning a tale about his group of travelers that ends in starvation, violence, and ultimately cannibalism out of desperation. As they get to know the wanderer a little better, however, traveling with him to his campsite while timidly discussing the Algonquin mythology of the Wendigo, they soon learn that he's not a lick of what he's made himself out to be.

From the moment Boyd, brooding and wide-eyed, cautiously steps into Colonel Hart's (Jeffrey Jones, The Devil's Advocate) office to report for "duty", Ravenous establishes an strange, off-kilter atmosphere that's built on how the shell-shocked captain adjusts to the isolation and oddness of Fort Spencer's troops. The photography from Don't Look Now cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond eerily tracks the soldiers' movement around their rickety, inhospitable surroundings, while a twisted and tonally complex score from Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman gives Boyd's acclimation to his new circumstances a playfully ominous attitude. Merely walking the grounds of the fort gives off a certain vibe even before Colqhoun arrives, but the outsider's tale of consuming human flesh quickly spikes the blood-curdling mood, leaving you uncertain of what to think of the self-proclaimed cannibal and what he'll do in the presence of living men. That tension escalates as they venture into the forest, setting up a quick increase in the film's horror as the music teases those watching with its tone, such as when upbeat folk music plays during a harrowing death.



Unsettling and macabre twists happen early on in Ravenous, making it a little tricky to discuss beyond a certain point to preserve its semi-surprises. It's relatively safe to say that Boyd himself ends up in his own state of desperation while fleeing from cannibalistic threats, where the film descends into raw horror as he, an insecure soldier and sad excuse for a war hero, stumbles through the Sierra Nevada as prey. It's around this time, too, that the story takes an overtly supernatural and somewhat unexpected turn given the practical setting, materializing the film's interest in the fable of the "wendigo" -- cannibals who magically absorb the strength of the beings they eat -- into a mystical plot shift that's reminiscent of the metaphysical territory of vampirism. The script from Ted Griffin doesn't solely use the other-worldly physical benefits as a device, though: once it's introduced, the characters who partake directly address the moral boundaries (and religious comparisons) in delightfully overwrought dramatic scenes, even if they're not really unlike something you'd find in an Anne Rice novel.

While Ravenous presents Guy Pearce in his first big role after emerging on the mainstream Hollywood scene with L.A. Confidential, and only a few years before his "star-making" role in Memento, Boyd's purpose becomes to stoically react and mold to Robert Carlyle's intense, almost-grandiose projection of Colqhoun, leaving him mostly as a hollowed-out background observer at first. Carlyle takes his character's gruesome monologues and elevates then with piercing, alert glances and a distressingly confident tone, which can look appealing in the destitute surroundings of Fort Spencer, especially in the eyes of a soldier who endured a demoralizing and cowardly event in a war. It's only later on, after enduring the pursuit through the mountains, that Pearce gets the chance to unleash his own frenzied talents as Boyd plummets into justifiable paranoia. While there's an air of predictability and unlikelihood about the scenario -- namely, whether people could recognize a man simply without his beard -- the film becomes captivating once the prospect of eating human flesh gets dangled in front of a tortured Boyd's nose.

That energy between Pearce and Carlyle lingers all the way until the film's ending, continuing in the fort's halls with its grisly musings about morality and the hunger for power, while tapping into a vein of exceptionally dark humor where even the sipping of a stew might make your stomach turn while being amused at what's going on. Ravenous does reach a few points that stretch the boundaries of suspension of disbelief with the magical enhancements of the Wendigo Diet: rapid and seamless healing, resistance to trauma, and the ability to fend off death opportunely keep things moving along with an elevated pulse. They also add spice to the story as it approaches a tense finale, though, notably within a brawl between two wendigos and a window for Boyd to get redemption for his missed opportunity at bravery during the war. It's a bizarre and well thought-out blend of good-time gore and straight-faced contemplation, ultimately leading this troubled production into much more intriguing territory than it probably had any right to be in.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Undermarked Oversights: One Hour Photo

Mark Romanek's under-appreciated One Hour Photo came about during a transition period in the mainstream photography scene, a point addressed early on in the film. Before the age of digital cameras -- where people take thousands of shots nobody ever sees, duplicate them at home, and wipe them away with a few clicks -- snapshots either needed to be processed in a dark room or entrusted with a lab for developing. That meant a person doing the developing would see , and possible remember, every single candid shot and glimpse at one's private affairs. Romanek saw that suspicion as an opportunity, framed in a sterile department store and centered on the seeming trustworthy clerk whom you'd give those rolls of memories. Could that person have been Sy Parrish (Robin Williams), the bespectacled, clean-cut employee who obsesses over a repeat-customer family? The strength in Romanek's thriller, a comment on blind trust and valuing the family dynamic, lies in how eerily possible that might be.

Should it be reassuring or alarming that the first image of Sy is of his in-custody interrogation? That's the direction Romanek takes the audience, down the path of misgiving from the moment Sy offers his perspective on his time as a SavMart photo-lab manager, a job he takes very seriously; he calibrates and measures prints with the utmost care, diligently remembering repeat shoppers. The most important of all his customers, though, is the Yorkin family: an unpretentiously beautiful mother, Nina (Connie Nielsen, The Devil's Advocate); the busy bread-winner father, Will (Michael Vartan, Alias); and their young, caring son, Jake (Dylan Smith). Sy knows these people in ways most don't, from memorizing their address and the size of their home to the idyllic appearance of their domestic situation, adorned with birthday parties and little-league games. What's also shown, though, are the moments when he returns to his home, a sparse apartment full of the Yorkin's photographs.

Romanek could've easily forced Sy into a caricature of a stalker or an unashamedly disturbed villain, but instead he takes a more complex route: he's interested in bringing this man as close to "normal" as the thriller's setting and purposes will allow, until the situation no longer allows it. Constant narration -- Sy's interrogation -- beckons the audience into the space of his mind, revealing his tolerant and often rewarding outlook on his customers. When he discusses unsavory people, they're neutral observations with a twang of judgment, not unlike the musings of regular Joes. When he discusses the family dynamic, his outlook is almost admirably idealistic, as if he only knows of the families depicted in perfect photos. Navigating the intricacy of his mind becomes a sharp, disturbing experience as the knowledge of his police custody crosses our minds, and Romanek plays with that idea as Sy uses his job to cross boundaries in ways the general public would rather not consider. He's the worst kind of monster: the one you really couldn't foresee as being one.


One Hour Photo's success, both in terms of intensity and dramatic potency, hinges on the utterly chilling performance from Robin Williams. While Good Will Hunting and Insomnia unveiled a comeback in his serious dramatic side, presenting him as physically intimidating and apt at carrying a dark past, Sy takes his talent in a more cunning, sinister direction than previously seen from the animated comedic actor. From behind large-framed glasses and under a peculiar blonde haircut, the intense eyes that Williams gives the photo-lab manager hide a disturbed man with a void in his life. The psychosis and obsession he conveys through nuanced facial reactions can be pretty remarkable, where the stillness in his gazes and the calmness in his voice often send chills down the spine when he interacts with families, co-workers, and children. The performances around him create a "safe" mid-sized town atmosphere -- Connie Nielsen's honest warmth lures in our attention as she drops off film and eats at a mall -- proving ideal for Sy's under-the-radar fixation.

Romanek explores a mesmerizing visual tone that becomes crucial as we're making heads and tails of Sy's mind, where the cinematography of Jeff Cronenweth (Fight Club and The Social Network) switches between sterile, void sparseness and multihued vivacity for some clever jarring effects. He bathes scenes in the Yorkin's lush upper-scale home with overbearingly warm oranges and browns, emphasizing a false sense of safety and perfection, while the stark-white aisles of SavMart almost convey a sense of blinding clarity through the eyes of Sy. The film very much filters through his point-of-view as his narration guides the audience within his psychosis, where the few impartial glimpses at his life blow the notion of privacy open by a mosaic of photos on his apartment's wall. Backed by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek's pulsating, haunting score, this is a striking sensory experience that lulls the audience into a bizarre combo of sensations between ill-omened fear and cautious sympathy.

That's the nature of a beast like One Hour Photo, a Hitchcock-esque exploration of the underbelly of the mundane ad the family dynamic, not unlike a twisted combination of Cape Fear and American Beauty. Romanek's film is, admittedly, far more interesting during Sy's descent into mania than when he's finally pushed over the edge though, driven by circumstances that come across more as overstated developments to elevate suspense instead of a natural progression of his mental instability. Romanek undeniably goes for bizarre shock value as his punctuation, which waters down the organic human properties that he's worked so hard to develop. Yet, even when he takes Sy into the world of the truly demented, the reason he's locked in cuffs and answering questions, Robin Williams and Mark Romanek still generates a disturbingly authentic perspective on idealistic relativism, and how the mind of "The Photo Guy" who yearns for the family in those snapshots is truly calibrated. Sy isn't the guy who processed your rolls of film, but it makes you wonder who that person really was.

For the full Blu-ray review, head over to DVDTalk.com: [Click Here]

Undermarked Oversights: The Last Kiss

After Zach Braff starred in the quirky coming-of-age comedy Garden State, a move that brought the budding "Scrubs" star's talent in direction and screenwriting to light, he follows it up with his performance in another human transition drama, The Last Kiss. At first glance, it might look like Tony Goldwyn has assembled an unofficial sequel to Braff's film ... which it is, in a roundabout, completely unattached way. Just picture his former depressant, pill-popping character approaching normalcy, only to be thwarted by the uncertainty lying in surrendering to a future that holds "no surprises". Carried over from Italy's original film L'Ultimo Bacio, it relishes in dragging its audience through all the unpleasant arguments, false epiphanies and growing pains that late '20s adults suffer through as a collective -- and they're all unexpectedly precise, whether that's something the audience will benefit from or not.

The Last Kiss captures their static emotional gradient to a fault, a time that causes level-minded young professionals to make destructive decisions and poorly-guided failures to grow a pair and start living their life to a fuller extent. Michael (Braff), a successful architect, is at the center of the story as he begins to structure his life around newly-pregnant girlfriend Jenna (Jacinda Barrett). Their relationship mirrors near perfection, filled with playful banter and semi-sexual undertones that convey a sense of enduring comfort between the two. Surrounding them, however, is a bitter network of not-so-successful relationships, complete with Jenna's parents' crumbling 30-year marriage, played well by Tom Wilkinson as the sardonic, emotionally stagnant father and Blythe Danner as the frail mother, and Casey Affleck and Lauren Lee Smith as the flagrant young couple Chris and Lisa with child in tow.

Instability swirls around Michael -- emphasized by his unwillingness to marry Jenna until she can name three couples that have lasted over 5 years of marriage -- which comes to a head when Kim (Rachel Bilson), a college-aged flautist free of responsibility and obligation, approaches him at a friend's wedding with starry eyes and unavoidable attraction. It's impossible to ignore the use of red coloring in her dress and in several subsequent color motifs, as she ignites an alarming spark in Michael that boosts up the central themes within The Last Kiss: fear of finiteness, and a desire for the dangerous unknown. Though I'm a bigger fan of the like-minded trepidation present in Mike Nichols Closer, there's a particularly creative gravity that Tony Goldwyn gives this story that emphasizes the swirling mentalities of their age group. He paints a picture that tries to keep villains and heroes out of the mix, instead giving each character their own evolving range.

The Last Kiss ditches the lightness generated by Braff and Barrett's charm by growing exponentially more realistic and unsettling as the conflicts cascade downwards, seducing unaware filmgoers to look into a painful mirror instead of laughing along with a relationship parody. Director Goldwyn utilizes a bold script to tell its emotive story, instead hallmarking tense performances from a solid ensemble cast that carry empathy to and from its characters. Marketing is a bigger part of a film's success than you might think, and I'm not just talking about the attractiveness of billboards or posters. You're likely to be disappointed if you go into The Last Kiss expecting the cheeky rom-com that it's projected as being, but to go in with the knowledge that it will show us some of those truthful, uglier corners of relationships might just be the right tip-off needed to scoop up potency from its efforts.

Braff's depiction of Michael, largely similar but a bit less-awkward than his Garden State character, receives the most palpable villain moniker of the bunch, though he's clearly influenced by the chaos in Chris' struggles through a "forced" marriage and the allures of the vibrant, free-spirited Kim. But he's not really villainous; his decisions are his own, but there's something about his internal conflict that evokes a sense of humanity dormant in many of us instead of pure antagonism. Jenna, in turn, comes across as the purest of them by being the relationship fantasy girl -- a counterbalance to Kim, who embodies the physically-alluring and lively "fling" fantasy.

Absorbing The Last Kiss and all its bursting drama at face value won't provide pitch-perfect realism, though that's likely not a fault on its assembly. Sure, some of us have endured the full spectrum of arguments that Michael and Jenna will endure, or even pressed through a least a chunk of Chris and Lisa's child-centered gauntlet of emotions. But to have them all clustered into one narrative, along with a psycho ex-boyfriend (Michael Weston) and a flourishing womanizer (Eric Christian Olsen) pulling up the rear in a quadruplet of male friends, is too cluttered for direct belief.

Yet, that's part of the environment for many within that age group, a cleansing wash of sociologically-driven conflicts that work something like Darwinism in the emotional arena. Viewing it as a condensed collage of everything that the age group endures at the time, however, proves more insightful than most will feel comfortable in acknowledging. Though we haven't endured everything that takes place in The Last Kiss, it'd be hard to believe that someone hasn't gone through at least one of the transitioning difficulties. It's in the small piece of their relationship woes that we identify with in the funneled chaos that makes it a success.

Paired with crisply composed visuals from Clint Eastwood's go-to cinematographer Tom Stern (Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby) and a contemporary musical backdrop, including excellent usage of Imogen Heap's captivating track "Hide and Seek" during a transition sequence, The Last Kiss nails down a fraught yet genuine tone for its dour atmosphere. It captures those painful sequences, from the red-faced argument between warring parents to the point where Michael oversteps and regrets stepping over his bounds in equal measure, in a striking light that taps into our memory databanks by concocting them as vivid reflections on past mistakes that we either could've made -- or did. As a result, Goldwyn's well-acted precursor to thirty-something constancy is a bleak but sincere affair, tying a sense of optimism into our foolish misgivings through the prospects of forgiveness and understanding. It's far from the comedy that it's projected as being, and that's a really good thing.

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Undermarked Oversights: Cat People (1982)

After Jaws hit it big in ’75, a little marine bio horror flick by the name of Orca paddled along just two years after. By design, they’re nearly identical twins – as a renegade sea “monster” is hunted for the betterment of an Oceanside town, blending model construction of the creatures with real archival footage as a semi-ominous score flutters in the background – only with Richard Harris funneling both Roy Schieder and Robert Shaw’s characters into his own. The result is, well, pretty close to abysmal, as wonky scientific ideas and poorly-aged production values make it obnoxious in comparison.

I bring this up because Paul Schrader’s Cat People does nearly the same thing, only with An American Werewolf in London as its framework. With John Landis’ werewolf picture landing Academy Award recognition for its phenomenal make-up work, a path was opened for a copycat, if you will. Sure enough, two years later, a “reimagining” of Jacque Tourneur’s horror work took on a nearly identical structure -- only this time, the imitator didn’t stink.

Cat People is pure fantasy, without question. It calls on its audience to wrap their heads around the concept that predatory panthers mated with human beings in the past, resulting in catlike half-breeds that wander the earth today. They’re an “incestuous race” as Malcolm MacDowell narrates to us, only able to engage in sexual activity with their own kind – or, as the story implies, one specific hybrid. If they try, or if the get in “heat”, then the results are … transformational. In comes Natassia Kinski’s character Irene, the supposed sister to New Orleans resident Paul (Malcolm MacDowell). After long-distance communication over many, many years, she comes to stay with him in the lust Creole environment. Quirky brother-sister chemistry buds, one of them darts off into the night, and, lo and behold, we’ve got a hooker attack in the city with a panther closed off in a hotel room waiting for the zoo’s curator (John Heard) to come and cart him away.

Marking an odd departure for the Blue Collar and American Gigolo director, Cat People expounds on style over substance – and it works to the film’s benefit, as it builds a surprisingly artistic experience within a B-level horror flick. Featuring the “vocal stylings” of David Bowie, apocalyptic reds in its past setting, and a bizarre quarrel among lovers that amounts to a panther-girl-animal catcher triangle, it’s a truly unique experience. Schrader has a way of splicing honesty and allure into mundane situations, labeling him as a somewhat romantic filmmaker who produces less-than-romantic pictures. Shown by a conversation between Heard and Kinski at the oyster bar, he’s able to add a thickness about the room while saying very little.

But Cat People quickly becomes about three things: watching Kinski, watching the cats, and seeing how the two interlace with taboo attraction. Seeing as how Schrader’s little slice of horror churns around primal sexuality, it’s fitting that it wavers little from those core allures. They almost work as a bizarre form of framing device, as we’re first introduced to the panthers in the wild and a more humanistic Irene. They slowly inch closer to each other, utilizing Kinski’s slinky demeanor to grow more and more catlike amid a higher saturation of glimpses at caged panther.

It all slams together in a beautifully shot scene in the woods, a mid-point in a rather long and plodding horror film that operates as the catalyst behind Irene’s transformation. Granted, it doesn’t hurt that Kinski’s beautiful nude frame graces the screen from start to finish, but the rawness present is entrancing as she silently sweeps through the woods and eyes potential “targets” for her latent predatory nature. Kinski has received recognition for her stunning role in Roman Polanski’s Tess and others, but she almost seems hand-molded to play the sharply feline Irene within this odd trip into ‘80s style horror experimentation.

The result is mesmeric; watching her transform, both figuratively and literally, becomes a refreshing and bizarre allegory to the consuming nature of desire and destiny. Blunt dialogue and disbelief aside, Cat People is a surprisingly overlooked gem that works as a piece of blood-drenched, flesh-happy artwork that relishes in its periodic style.


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Undermarked Oversights: Death to Smoochy

How on earth can you beat a satirical comedy that features a giant pink television rhino who inadvertently reveals to his young audience -- in a form of terrorist sabotage care of a rival children's show host who wears a rainbow jacket and derby hat -- a penis-shaped cookie, only for him to turn it around and make it a rocket ship?

You can't, which is one of the many reasons why Death to Smoochy oozes with a slimy consumerist-critique humor that's hard to ignore. Featuring an infusion of hard-edged and saccharine-sprinkled lines from Robin Williams' psychotic kid entertainer and a few "Corporate American" suits embodied by Jon Stewart and Catherine Keener, this snarky expose of marketing and creative control acts as a hit on Barney to see if he'd bleed Pixie Stick-laced syrup or pitch-black evil puss. Directed by Danny DeVito himself and starring Edward Norton of heady films' American History X and Fight Club fame, it's a hell of a lot harsher and more enthralling than it willingly allows its audience to see.

But Death to Smoochy is also really, really funny in the process, though it takes some assimilation to catch its gritty comedic rhythm. It tracks the downfall of an exploitative children's television host named Rainbow Randolph, which happened to earn Robin Williams an undeserved Razzie award in 2003. His character's name embodies a goofy paradox, implying that kids who land on Randolph's show find the "end of the rainbow" aka a pot of gold, stardom, etc. After he's caught in some back-alley type of dealings that exploit children's careers, the television network headhunts a tofu-eating, clinic-hopping performing rhino named "Smoochy", also known as Sheldon Mopes (Norton), to clean up the tarnished image of the show.

Norton's Mopes epitomizes a caricature of the socially-aware vegan / vegetarian performer, even going so far as having him spread healthy green gloop all over his veggie dogs and squirt some kind of wheat germ into his orange juice to give him a "buzz". Flopping him in the driver seat of the station's show works for a while, until creative control, dollar signs, and narcissism leak into the picture and earn a price tag on the pink rhino's head. Death to Smoochy ramps up its fiery dialogue and cutthroat creative suppression at this point, giving it an oddly-balanced and colorfully dark personality that accentuates society's plummeting care for development and spiked focus on economic exploitation.

Bluntness is Death to Smoochy's forte, and it's both a problem and an asset to DeVito's concoction of satire and pitch-black humor. Performances absolutely radiate in each role, even in Williams' bizarrely emotional Rainbow Randolph, yet the tone that they overlay atop the story can brush heavily against the grain of its subject matter. It presents an underbelly of consumerist evil that we'd rather not imagine underneath the programs that we let out kids watch, which can be off-putting for those with children that might be glued to the screen during such programs as we speak. Charitable organizations' greedy motives are "exposed" (nudge nudge, wink wink) for their true nature, while on the flipside a hardened television exec's malnourished emotional side opens up -- though it comes masked as potential "kiddie host groupie" carnality. Even the rhino somehow tastes corruption.

There's a lot of dark material within Smoochy's script, but it can be quite an entertaining brush with discomforting humor if taken with its intentionally biting outlook. And, for some reason beknownst to me, these searing lashes at the industry and at the wide range of characters makes me crack up more with each viewing. Maybe it's the satire, maybe it's the brash dialogue, or maybe it's just seeing Norton in a puffy pink suit and Williams in sparkly rainbow-adorned attire -- for any and all of these reasons, even with the head-shaking knowledge of the film's oddly swirled tonality, Death to Smoochy really hits the horn on the head.

Undermarked Oversights: The Invasion

Directed by: Oliver Hirschbiegel, Runtime: 99 minutes
Grade: B-

Two’s company, three’s a crowd for most cinephiles devout to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers story. Lightning struck a second time in 1978 when the remake of the original ‘50s adaptation of Jack Finney’s socio-snarky sci-fi novel hit. Prospects looked high for another spin of the tale, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig under the direction of Downfall maestro Oliver Hershbiegel -- which soon transformed into a project taken over by V for Vendetta director James McTeigue. There’s treachery afoot, which explains for the drastic shift in tones near the end of the flick.

It's a story done many times over: alien bio-organisms fall to earth and begin infecting the population. A group of people fight against the spread of this disease, led by several scientifically minded individuals like physician Ben (Daniel Craig, Layer Cake) and single mother psyciatrist Carol (Nicole Kidman, Moulin Rouge!). They fight to save their own lives, preserve the life of one of the main character's children, and struggle to discover a way to reverse the disease that is plaguing the neurological fonctuinality of their societal sprawl.

Response to The Invasion was lackluster at best, as critical malice spread quickly to horror fans and star-watchers alike faster than the film’s alien virus itself. Surprisingly, after a recent viewing, I saw through many of the negative veils and scabs caked on top of it and found an intriguing film. Compared to its preceding influences, it could be considered a foible, but many critics and audience members looked passed some rather potent assets that help to piece together a flawed yet feral horror / sci-fi nerve-grabber.

There’s no denying that The Invasion’s editing style flickers and clips backwards and forwards with enough annoying brashness to make your eyes twitch in hysteria, no matter your approval level. You know that clever cutting-room technique that features two settings -- a simple, calm setting that usually features a conversation or moment of thought, and a subsequent series of actions that visualize the “topic at hand" -- clipped together to flash between the two in an explicative and meaningful fashion. The Invasion takes this mechanic and does it to death, making nearly every other scene an exercise in keeping track of the spliced narrative.

Kidman and Craig do little to really boost up the cluttered cinematic flow of this borrowed-tale-of-a-borrowed-tale to new heights, though their performances do provide a dash of spice over blandness in the acting department. Especially Kidman who, though expressing stone-like features at many points, handles several scenes where she must project apathy through bloodshot frustration with surprising strength. To say the least, you never really forget that Craig is Craig and Kidman is Kidman, but that’s not all that dreadful considering the projection of their naturally striking carriages.

Even down to the rudiments of the “body snatcher” formula, we’re working with capably-rendered characters; the married lady who introduces us to the prospect of danger through a complaint about her husband’s mood, the young boy who, though in danger, doesn’t understand the science and gravity behind the situation, and the stalwart scientist who discovers the core reasoning behind the infection – all support the wild pins-and-needles science-based tension admirably. Scientifically speaking, I rather liked diving into the mechanics lying underneath this body-controlling alien invasion. Jeffrey Wright, a rising star in Hollywood sparked by fluid character efforts in Syriana and Casino Royale, verbalizes the little intricacies of the science that, surprisingly, don’t make you want to throw your hands in the air and curse the fallibility of it all.

This ushers in discussion about the possession of America’s citizens, a key theme in Invasion, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Finney’s novel, et al. There’s a key scene in the film where Kidman’s character, playing the stoic non-infected human role as she’s surrounded by many “conquered” people, strains her piercing red-eyed emotions as she witnesses a couple commit public suicide by falling from a roof. An emotional woman cries out as Kidman’s character plugs along. The entirety of The Invasion is an allegory of conditioning and desensitization in society, especially in America.

It becomes much more blunt and forthcoming about its thematic intentions as it complicates -- something it must do to land some form of thoughtfulness in its 95-minute time -- which makes it a very “digest and continue on” mechanic. Whether the suicide was a plot by the “pod people” isn’t revealed, yet a certain competence behind the scripting of the alien force’s resolve would lead me to believe it. What's great about the ambiguity of this infection's significance is the assumed reasoning behind it all, which builds off of the "peace / love / flaccidness" flawed ideal. It even builds an environment thick enough to accentuate the fluctuating dynamic

It’s nowhere near the bubble of substantial achievement in cinema, but the struggling thrice-adapted exercise in eerie population consummation isn’t nearly as bad as some postured critics liked to doll it up to be. Purists will not favor its alterations, for sure, but when taken with a peeled-off layer of slimy alien skin (topical grain of salt remodel, my apologies) The Invasion really lathers up its viewers with tingling, tension-mounting terror void of gore and gross-outs -- aside from some rather nauseating usage of its vomit-spore transfer tactics. Plus, it admirably tacks on the omnipresent individuality / duality conundrum that could potentially eliminate conflict and parasitism by way of sacrificing individuality for a blithe symbiotic existence. Not too shabby for an hour-and-a-half thrillride through other-worldy biological domination.