Welcome everyone to October and the first of 31 posts on horrror movies. I came up with a few ideas on what I should do as something special for Halloween and instead of doing my favourite horror/thriller movies or listing a few cult gems that no one has heard of I have decided instead to do combination of both with 1 post each day. Each post will either highlight a cool horror/thriller movie that I enjoy or else I will write about a horror/thriller movie that I have never seen until now. There will also be one exception where I talk a bit about one of my favourite TV series.
I want to thank Serena Whitney from Dread Central for giving me some suggestions of little known good horror movies. So far I’ve worked through 4 off of her list and I’ll be covering them. My intention was to originally write about all of them but I ended quitting Campfire Tales part of the way through just because if felt like a bad version of Twilight Zone or Creep Show so I’m dropping it for some other choice of horror that I will come up with mid month. If there is some little horror gem that you love then feel free to send me an email and perhaps I’ll do that one.
Okay, that is way more than enough preamble on to the first movie.
One of the movies that Serena suggested is a small low budget horror click called My Little Eye. My Little Eye stars Sean Cw Johnson as Matt (all around nice guy and jock), Kris Lemche as Rex (troubled rebel who is in it for the money), Stephen O’Reilly as Danny (quiet geeky loner), Laura Regan as Emma (repressed quiet girl who wants to be liked) and Jennifer Sky as Charlie (party girl who wants fame). The five of them are brought to a house in the middle of the woods where they have to stay for 6 months. If all of them stay they are awarded $1 million dollars. During the 6 months their entire lives will be put on the web like a version of the television show Big Brother.
Everything seems to go fine for the majority of the six months but right near the end everything starts to fall apart as external stresses come into play. It seems that someone has started to stalk the 5 contestants. Is it Emma’s childhood friend who has come back for revenge after she had humilated him. Is Matt really as good and nice as he seems or does he have some secret history. What is Danny working on in the basement? Is the stalker just part of the show perhaps even one of the 5 is trying to keep the others from winning their money or is there something else at play that is much darker than any of them can imagine.
My Little Eye is really two movies combined into one. The first three quarters plays out like a thriller and it is very compelling. There is a real sense of fear in not knowing what is going on and in the rising suspicions amongst the players. I was totally drawn into the character development and the relationships that were being formed. Unfortunately the last quarter turns into a fairly standard stalker story with a conclusion that was pretty obvious. I will definitely not say that it ruined the overall movie for me but it did lessen my enjoyment. I still recommend checking My Little Eye out if you get the chance.
As one final note about My Little Eye it is interesting to find out that it was originally a 4 hour movie that was set to go direct to DVD but after initial testing (and subsequent poor comments) it was cut back to 92 minutes and was released in theatres.
Be sure to check back tomorrow for Day 2 of the 31 Days of Horror.
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OH, how exciting! 31 days of Horror – huzzah! Can’t wait to see how the month goes.
Great review, I enjoyed My Little Eye quite a bit when I caught it a while ago. If I remember correctly it was a Midnight Madness film at TIFF a few years back.
Hopefully I don’t get sick or killed by some axe murderer.
I was really into the way MLE was handling everything and the overall atmosphere. If the movie had kept it up right until the end I would have loved it but when it jumped it really jumped and like I said it was too easy to see it all coming at that point.
I like parts of this film, but it is pretty flimsy at best. I remember getting in a pretty heated argument (from my end anyway, kudos to Marc for remaining cool as I voiced my list of complaints) with the director after the TIFF MM screening back in the day.
I dig that Kris Lemche (Ginger Snaps, The Last Casino) has a solid role.
Evans went on to direct Trauma with Colin Firth and Snow Cake with Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman. I must admit that My Little Eye didn’t make me get up the energy to watch either of those other films.
Oh, and most clumsy set up for sex scene in a film. Ever.
Do you ever not get in a heated debate with the director?
And as for the sex scene. They had been locked up in the house for 6 months with no sex so she was probably just horny.
What can I say, I always take advantage of Q&As!
kurt – SNOW CAKE is worth a watch. Alan Rickman is GREAT in it.
aww geez…Kurt are like that a*shole who kept questioning the Martyrs director at TIFF?
Hey John, thanks for using some of my picks….I sent you an email about Torso…but Campfire Tales rocks! You don’t know….LOL 
Even though I was not a fan of Martyrs, I didn’t get aggressive in my questions for the director there, I was curious as to his intent with the Bourgeois French Family, and his answer confirmed exactly why I didn’t like the film. The Funny Games condescending guy who asked the controversial question at that Q&A went into interesting territory with the comparison; but totally took the wrong approach and thus looked like a bit of an idiot there. Actually, I think Laugier and Haneke are coming from the same place: That is preaching to their respective choirs in blunt ways (Haneke to the art-house crowd, Laugier to the gore-grindhouse crowd –I happen to have a foot in both camps, there are a few of us out there–) and then trying to justify why the other side should listen. But that’s just me.
Wow Kurt, I’m in total agreement with you. We didn’t get to talk afterwards at the screening, but I really wasn’t impressed with Martyrs either. Everybody in my group were chilled….one of my friends was shaking….I felt like a monster for not being affected by it. lol However, I talked to some other people there and they felt the same way as me. I preferred the first half and I found Inside to be far superior than Martyrs.
“I’m in total agreement with you” — Words I don’t hear very often!
But yes, I didn’t find it to be violent, the last half I found rather boring. It’s the pacing suspense thing. And because the director doesn’t give up the game until the final few minutes, any dialogue between the viewer and the director is nullified (unless you wanted to sit thru it again). If felt the opening half which was more conventional thriller/ghost story was more honest, when Laugier tries to shoehorn in some depth to things, it gets pretty unpalatable due to its own shallowness.
I’ve heard some people with some compelling allegorical explanations for the films intent and meaning, but I’m not buying it. I consider the creators of the film were far more intested in “Fuck Yea!” violence than in honestly communicating/dialoguing with deep themes. I felt the same way with Xavier Gens Frontier(s) which kinda-sorta tries to get allegorical and message-y but really, it doesn’t graft onto the film properly and just looks really ungangly.
I’ll give Martyrs this though, from a production design standpoint and the construction of the first half. It was pretty top shelf. As a movie, well, it sucked.
A L’Interior (aka Inside) was a much better movie-movie. Great pacing, solid integration of subject matter with construction, inverting the genre-tropes a bit and making the whole thing compulsively watchable. Yea, I liked that one.
Yeah…I found the second half boring too to be quite honest…too repetitive….too mechanical. Although I praise the director for trying to scare people without using the “rape” element, (he tries to replace this with the man beating her up everyday) I think the movie would have left a deeper scar on viewers like ourselves if they actually had taken that route. However, it would have been too much though if used the same way as the other torment tactics were.
Murph comment #6 is right on. Rickman rules in that movie.
(yes I’m alive)
@Campfire Tales rocks! – Here are the reasons why it doesn’t
1) The generic werewolf story that had nothing and I mean nothing to really add to the genre. About the only good thing about the story was the fact that it had the guy from Office Space in before he was in Office Space.
2) The story about the 12 year old girl was created by someone who wanted to push the wrong buttons. I do not think that I am a prude or anything and I like a lot of sick shit in movies but when a movie feels like they are putting a 12 year old girl in the shower and then showing her in a towel as a means to play with sexuality I have a bit of a problem with it. It just felt wrong and dirty. Now give me someone in their 20s or 30s or hell even old and I’m all for it but I felt that the second story just wanted to push that button and it was cheesy.
3) In the second story there is no reason why the stalker should know about the dog licking bit. That felt totally contrived and was only there because it provided a twist.
4) I didn’t even bother to get to the third story because I was bored by the end of the second one.
5) The whole concept of why they are there telling the stories with the twist is just plain overdone and generic. Now I will admit that I didn’t watch it but I read how it ends and it really just looks like another twist for twist sake.
Onto Martyrs….
I really enjoyed the first home invasion bit because it was also combined with the creature who was hunting the woman at the same time. I thought this was an interesting twist and I thought the violence while really brutal was not over the top silly.
I’m with you and Kurt on the second half. I know what the director was going for but I don’t think he was able to achieve it. After the first 5 minutes of torture I had tuned out. I didn’t tune out because I couldn’t stand it but because it was boring. I really did not get a sense of emotional stress out of it which is something it really needed. I was able to distance myself from it too much.
And yeah I also really get ticked at what everyone always says about Haneke and how he is telling you that you are evil or bad for wanting to watch horror movies. I personally believe that he wants us to simply be involved and to really think about what we are seeing. Why are things always done the same way. Why is it always the woman who is able to escape and fight off the bad guy. And most importantly to think about why we can take enjoyment from watching violence.
Come to think of it I think I can understand why I don’t like the second half of Martyrs based just on the director’s response to the Haneke question. He basically said “fuck Haneke” or at least that is what I remember it basically coming down to. I really don’t think he delved deep enough into the violence and the emotional impact and that is what he really should have done. Perhaps I’m wrong but I really think this is what Haneke wants from both his audience and also the people who make horror movies.
@ Torso – I added it to my zip list and I’ll check it out… perhaps it will end up as one of my movies this month.
Thanks again for all the suggestions even if I did hate Campfire Tales.
Meh, this flick is all sorts of suck.
I third Murph and Andrew on Snow Cake. It’s completely different from My Little Eye. I didn’t even realize they were done by the same guy until I saw MLE recently (which I picked up for $1 in the bargin bin at No Frills). MLE bored me to tears, but I’ve never been a fan of horror/thriller flicks, I only got it for Kris Lemche. He’s great in A Simple Curve by the way.