2012 was a year notable for how few of the horror films were notable. A couple excelled, and a couple outright stank, but most were middle-of-the-pack affairs. As with previous years, I didn't bother too much with Hollywood horror sequels and remakes; hopefully you spent your time searching for old films unseen, overseas films, and indie attractions. So here's what I thought of the year, going from the least impressive horror flicks to the most essential.
In terms of release date, I go by when a film is released theatrically in the USA, or, in the event of no theatrical release, video distribution. E.g. The Innkeepers wasn't released to theaters until 2012, despite its late 2011 on-demand release.
Goofy? Maybe, but hey, life is goofy.
NOTE: 2011's best-of list can be viewed here.
15. Entrance
(Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath, USA)
An ambitious idea - how a city can oppress and swallow its displaced loners - gets too obvious of a treatment in "mumblegore" mess Entrance. Or maybe the treatment's too oblique. Handheld cameras capture Suziey (Suziey Block) as she trudges from one lower-middle-class obligation to another. Feed dog, work job, sip wine, go to bed, wake up, make coffee, start over. Meant to showcase an aggressively bland life, Entrance becomes what it analyzes: a dull trek through a repetitive, unenlightening lifestyle, with a climax that only hints at the suspense-skills the directors might possess, if only they weren't so determined to document every single moment of this woman's tedious business. The dialogue is dull, the events are unremarkable, the photography is unimpressive point-and-shoot. This would like to be a mood piece that evokes a life of quiet desperation, but it's too quiet, and not desperate enough. A slow burn film should at least ignite.
RATING: D
RATING: D
14. Prometheus
(Ridley Scott, USA)
Nitpicked by viewers like a cow skeletonized by piranhas, Prometheus is now a vestige of its inflated ambitions and hype. With its simultaneous pursuits of 2001-style big questions and Alien slasher tropes, the film lumbers awkwardly from noble ideas of God and man to facepalm-inducing scenes with morons splitting up and petting space-snakes. In theory, these two might not be mutually exclusive, but it's hard to take seriously the Religion 201 considerations when the characters haven't mastered Exiting Caves 101. Director Ridley Scott, uninterested in the deliberate rhythm of his original Alien film, pushes this story's events at warp-speed, losing important plot pieces in the process, like why Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) must pretend to be dead. Credit where it's due: the production design and special effects impress, as do the performances from Michael Fassbender and Noomi Rapace, and the film's biggest idea - the paradox of infinite regress - is a good subject that deserves better treatment.
RATING: C-
13. The Devil's Carnival
(Darren Lynn Bousman, USA)
With the gore-comedy-musical Repo: The Genetic Opera now a minor cult hit, director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II) and playwright Terrance Zdunich team up for their second screen collaboration, The Devil's Carnival. Like Repo, The Devil's Carnival shows plenty of high-energy Skittle-colored music video trappings; its rambunctious attitude points up an enthusiasm missing from Bousman's studio-guided Saw pictures. Still, the film runs into two problems. Firstly, the music guns for a bouncy circus sound. This is appropriate given the story, but Carnival lacks the heavy-metal edge that gave Repo's best songs a toe-tapping vibrancy. Secondly, the Aesop's Fables approach grows repetitive; after the viewer see characters enact a fable, the carnies re-relate the fable in full, through song and dance, just to be sure that everything is completely understood. This is potentially the first of a series, and although I didn't like this film, I hope Bousman and Zdunich nail it with the next one.
RATING: C-
12. Beyond the Black Rainbow
(Panos Cosmatos, Canada)
More sci-fi phantasmagoria than horror movie , Beyond the Black Rainbow deserves mention because of its debt to horror directors like Dario Argento and John Carpenter, and because, as a horror fan, come on. I'll take a movie like this to dinner. Hell, I might even invite it home. Director Panos Cosmatos deserves credit for finding simple ways to evoke mood - the film's trailer became famous in internet circles for its geometric aesthetic and synthesizer beats. At times, Beyond the Black Rainbow truly feels like a time capsule from 1983. It also feels slow, weary...even dull, thanks in large part to heroine Elena (Eva Allen), who examines her Wonderland with drugged-out passivity; Michael Rogers proves more memorable as the crazed doctor studying her. Beyond the Black Rainbow is better in some ways than the higher-ranked movies here, but it's too brazenly strange to appeal to many, too relaxed to seduce the brave souls willing to buy it a drink.
RATING: C
After four Resident Evil movies, two of which I've seen, and two that went unseen on account of the other two, Resident Evil: Retribution proves there is no subtitle too vague for this saga. Alice (Milla Jovovich), once again retributing (sic) the supremely inefficient Umbrella Corporation, strives to escape yet another underground maze loaded with enemies both monstrous and human. The film doesn't work as drama, with the way its dialogue replicates the mind-numbing trailerese of a hundred action movies...and the way its its mission-objective plotting replicates the homeworky feel of too many video games...but the film almost works as an amiable, lunk-headed pastiche of a hundred little inspirations. Dawn of the Dead opening. Inception score. Aliens climax. Matrix speed-ramping. Anderson's never been a great fit for the atmosphere and style of the Resident Evil game series, so the more he moves away from that and indulges his own interests, the better.
RATING: C+
Penumbra, a Polanski-style parade of claustrophobia and dark humor, follows Marga (Cristina Brondo), a lovely young apartment manager. She meets two mysterious people, who speak on behalf of a mysterious man, who leases an apartment for mysterious reasons. The title alone gives away much of the game, and the Boglio brothers tip their hand early, showing the surrogates scowl and plot while Marga makes a phone call. These decisions hurt the film's potential to put the viewer in the same position as Marga; they justify her paranoia too early, making her suspicions feel obvious. Rosemary's Baby had an obvious destination, sure, but it didn't act like it did. The best element of Penumbra is Cristina Brondo, who plays her bratty, self-righteous "hero" without any sense of self-awareness. And I guess some kind of credit goes to the Boglios for stopping the story to grease up Brondo's boobs, for no good reason, other than the obvious one.
RATING: C+
RATING: C
11. Resident Evil: Retribution
(Paul WS Anderson, USA)
After four Resident Evil movies, two of which I've seen, and two that went unseen on account of the other two, Resident Evil: Retribution proves there is no subtitle too vague for this saga. Alice (Milla Jovovich), once again retributing (sic) the supremely inefficient Umbrella Corporation, strives to escape yet another underground maze loaded with enemies both monstrous and human. The film doesn't work as drama, with the way its dialogue replicates the mind-numbing trailerese of a hundred action movies...and the way its its mission-objective plotting replicates the homeworky feel of too many video games...but the film almost works as an amiable, lunk-headed pastiche of a hundred little inspirations. Dawn of the Dead opening. Inception score. Aliens climax. Matrix speed-ramping. Anderson's never been a great fit for the atmosphere and style of the Resident Evil game series, so the more he moves away from that and indulges his own interests, the better.
RATING: C+
10. Penumbra
(Adrian y Ramiro Garcia Bogliono, Argentina)
Penumbra, a Polanski-style parade of claustrophobia and dark humor, follows Marga (Cristina Brondo), a lovely young apartment manager. She meets two mysterious people, who speak on behalf of a mysterious man, who leases an apartment for mysterious reasons. The title alone gives away much of the game, and the Boglio brothers tip their hand early, showing the surrogates scowl and plot while Marga makes a phone call. These decisions hurt the film's potential to put the viewer in the same position as Marga; they justify her paranoia too early, making her suspicions feel obvious. Rosemary's Baby had an obvious destination, sure, but it didn't act like it did. The best element of Penumbra is Cristina Brondo, who plays her bratty, self-righteous "hero" without any sense of self-awareness. And I guess some kind of credit goes to the Boglios for stopping the story to grease up Brondo's boobs, for no good reason, other than the obvious one.
RATING: C+
9. The Possession
(Ole Bornedal, USA)
RATING: B-
8. The Pact
(Nicholas McCarthy, USA)
The Pact is so simple a ghost story that it plays at times like an outline of a ghost story. The familiar details include dark family secrets, ouija boards, secret rooms, absent serial killers, and girls wearing needlessly skimpy outfits. I'm not complaining, only observing. Thing is, director Nicholas McCarthy believes in these tropes, and, with cinematographer Bridger Neilson, he makes The Pact into a stylish suspense piece, executed with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of uneasy wordless sequences. Characters glance sideways. They pause. They narrow their eyes and walk with care toward secrets better left uncovered. Lead actors Caity Lotz and Casper Van Dien match the spirit of the film: she plays the determined girl, he plays the grizzled veteran cop, and their quiet energies make the cliche roles function (even if they aren't exactly renewed). The Pact doesn't have any genre-busting goals, but on its own modest terms, the film's a success.
RATING: B-
7. The Woman in Black
(James Watkins, UK)
RATING: B-
6. The Hole
(Joe Dante, USA)
Joe Dante's The Hole is a diverting little chill machine that should appeal to fans of his previous family flicks. Like Matinee and Small Soldiers, The Hole deals with plucky young kids whose light-hearted nightmares carry dark, real-world undercurrents. Instead of nuclear bombs and hoo-rah war-mongering, The Hole deals in abusive relationships. See, if someone enters the ominous trap-door in a house's basement, her or his worst fear comes to life. One child (Nathan Gamble) fights off a grinning jester doll, i.e. an evil clown. His older brother (Chris Massoglia) confronts his loathsome father. Small problem: abusive dads will never be as scary as evil clowns. The only thing scarier than evil clowns? Centipedes. That's a scientific fact. The bummer with The Hole's manifested monsters is that they're exactly that: projections, which gives the climax a slightly flat quality. There's little genuine sense of danger. Dante compensates by pursuing an expressionist angle in the final act, re-imagining the heroes' old house as a twisted nightmare-scape.
RATING: B-
5. The Tall Man
(Pascal Laugier, USA/Canada/France)
The Tall Man follows director Pascal Laugier's genre-breaking crueltacular Martyrs, and while it's less graphic (and less of a horror film), The Tall Man similarly uses genre as a way to needle and provoke the viewer with thorny questions. The story proper traces the dark adventure of Julia Denning (Jessica Biel), who lives in a town besieged by a cloaked child-kidnapper called the Tall Man. What she discovers reveals not just the identity of the Tall Man, but her own secret motivations as well. Chase scenes on moonlit blacktop provide plenty of visceral drama, but the film's real shocks are cerebral, not carnal. Once the Tall Man's plans become clear, hidden dimensions take on new meanings; the film has some uncomfortable ideas about poverty, child abuse, and upward mobility. Laugier's script is sure to inspire heated reactions. The man's nothing if not bold. The Tall Man is reasonable as an entertainment, but like Martyrs, it's after the movie ends that it really begins.
RATING: B
4. The Road
(Yam Laranas, Phillipines)
The Road opens like a firecracker, and it closes like burnt ash settling in the dark. Its first twenty minutes are a freakish sequence of scares, almost Lynchian in their discordance, as a ghost's face appears above, below, to the side, and behind the heroes. No cheesy fade effects - the ghost is gone, and suddenly it's right there. Like The Pact, The Road deals in spectres left over from a family trauma, and as the film motors along, the story plunges deeper and deeper into that trauma, which surrounds a sick young man and his spiteful mother. The descent into dark melodrama surprises after the simpler surface pleasures of the opening, but the tragedy frightens in its own way. The closing minutes feel obvious - without giving anything away, it's inevitable that certain past characters must re-appear in the present. Apart from that brief lapse, The Road honors its elegant images and restraint with an scary, involving tragedy.
RATING: B+
3. The Innkeepers
(Ti West, USA)
The Innkeepers is a witty ghost story that builds wonderfully and ends haphazardly. In terms of style, director Ti West holds onto images, lets scenes build and fall and rebuild with tension. He trusts his viewers. There's a scene in The Innkeepers that qualifies as the scariest of the year, and it consists of a character describing what's happening off-screen. In terms of character, West adds texture to familiar types. Claire (Sara Paxton) fits the "manic pixie dream girl" cliche, but she carries hints of willful ignorance and selfishness. Luke (Pat Healy), plays a sad puppy dog type who longs for Claire, but he recognizes his desperation. Like The House of the Devil, this film abbreviates its third-act confrontations, and some have cried foul. I sympathize, but I get the feeling that West wants to live in the second acts of his movies, where events can be eerie instead of loud, and characters can behave like people instead of plot pawns.
RATING: B+
2. The Cabin in the Woods
(Drew Goddard, USA)
RATING: A
1. Kill List
(Ben Wheatley, UK)
In its own way, Kill List is as surprising as The Cabin in the Woods. Its opening scenes of kitchen sink melodrama and a familiar hit-man duo lull the viewer with the calm of pond waters on a windless day. You've seen this before, the film whispers, right before a detail drops into the water and disturbs the surface. Dead animals litter a hero's lawn. One of the "targets" eagerly awaits his death. The hero, Jay (Neil Maskell), verbally abuses his wife and physically attacks "best friend" Gal (Michael Smiley). Smaller violences parallel larger crimes, and cellos undulate, hinting at depths unknown and almost surely unavoidable. When the final quarter of the movie begins, ripples grow into waves, and a cascade of shocking violence reveals a story unafraid of gazing into the abyss of human behavior...and showing how the abyss gazes back. Director Ben Wheatley risks drowning in his pursuit of moral judgment, but he and his film emerge triumphant. This movie kicks ass.
RATING: A
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