'Cabin in the Woods' kills at premiere

After languishing for over two years on a shelf thanks to the MGM bankruptcy, the highly anticipated horror film The Cabin in the Woods finally played to a raucous, rapturous crowd Friday night at its world premiere at the SXSW film festival. There’s just one problem, summed up by co-writer/producer Joss Whedon’s introduction of the film: “I hope you enjoy it, and then sorta keep it to yourself.”

A twisted take on the horror genre, Cabin in the Woods is so riddled with genuine spoilers that talking about the film without ruining in some way it is an exercise in futility. (Which is why I’m going to put up the requisite SPOILER ALERT now, even though I’m going to try my darndest to avoid spoiling anything.) After the screening, Whedon and co-writer/director Drew Goddard — joined by costars Bradley Whitford, Richard Jenkins, Kristen Connolly, and Anna Hutchinson — were reticent at first to talk at all about the film’s many twists and turns. But Goddard did at least manage to sum up his feelings about seeing with an audience for the first time. “I’m trying very hard not to cry on stage,” he said. “That was a dream come true, thank you.”

Eventually, everyone more-or-less loosened up, discussing many elements of the film that I dare not mention here. When asked if they intended to make “the last horror movie of all time,” Whedon cracked, “Yes, yes, that’s it for horror. I hope you like romcoms, because that’s what you’re getting!” Whitford said that he was drawn to the project in part because of Whedon’s involvement and the strength of the script. “And I really wanted to work with Richard Jenkins,” he added, to much applause. “I didn’t realize until I got to Vancouver that I’d confused him with Richard Benjamin.”

The most poignant moment of the Q&A came when Whedon and Goddard talked about writing the script together in large part over just three days. “There was no back-tracking,” said Whedon. “There was no second-guessing. There was no question about what we were trying to do. Every day was an act [of the script]. Every day we would break [the story], split it, and each of us had to write 15 pages that day, no matter what. Which is not an easy thing to do, except when it’s the easiest thing that you’ve ever done.”


And for Goddard? “This came from a place of love,” said the director. “We just love horror movies. Joss and I were sitting around saying, ‘If we can do whatever we wanted to, what would we do?’ We didn’t develop this for a studio. We just did it because we wanted to entertain each other and pray to God that somebody would let us make it. So it came from this place of, ‘All right, f— it. We’re going to do whatever we want to.’ And it seems to have worked out.”

You’ll be able to judge for yourself when Lionsgate releases The Cabin in the Woods wide in theaters on April 13. Until then, I implore you: Don’t let anyone ruin this film for you. After such a long wait even to make it to theaters, it deserves at least that much.
Adam B. Vary

The Thing 2011

The Thing (2011)

The Thing Blu-ray delivers great video and superb audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release

At an Antarctica research site, the discovery of an alien craft leads to a confrontation between graduate student Kate Lloyd and scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson. While Dr. Halvorson keeps to his research, Kate partners with Sam Carter, a helicopter pilot, to pursue the alien life form.

For more about The Thing and The Thing Blu-ray release, see The Thing Blu-ray Review

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen
Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

The Thing Blu-ray Review
A frost-bitten remake... reboot... um, reimagining... no wait, reverential prequel to 'The Thing.'
Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, January 20, 2012

"You're not here to think. You're here to get this thing safely out of the ice." It's a line the inexplicably careless Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) spits at paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) early in director Matthijs van Heijningen's critically panned prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 horror classic. But you can almost hear producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman spitting the same line at van Heijningen early in the film's development. The Thing, circa 2011, is utterly devoid of ideas; a film running on the fumes of awe and devotion, and little more. It's a competent Antarctic alien thriller, sure, and it would make for a decent horror flick... if it existed in a genre vacuum. We aren't in a genre vacuum, though, and van Heijningen's Thing pales in comparison to Carpenter's frightfest. As a pseudo-remake, it fails. A variety of iconic scenes have been lifted from the original, some beat for beat, yet none are as gripping, chilling or terrifying. As a reboot of sorts, it fails. It sacrifices itself on the Altar of Carpenter so dutifully that it creeps when it should charge, bristles when it should attack, and flails when it should go in for the kill. As a reimagining, it fails. The few deviations it makes from Carpenter's course turn out to be the worst aspects of the film. And, yes, as a prequel, it fails. Fails to justify its reason for being, fails to enrich the story, fails to expand the mythos, fails to live up to its predecessor in every way, special effects included. I hate to say it, but Abraham and Newman should have just doubled down and produced an out and out remake. Anything would have better than the conciliatory mashup that is the new incarnation of The Thing.


Burn it. Burn it all.

"Oh, come on! It's not that bad!" I'll concede a bit. The Thing isn't awful, at least not as awful as my score might initially suggest. But it isn't all that good either, especially when you consider its lineage, budget, potential and access to CG. The story itself begins just days before Carpenter's version, answering a number of gruesome questions about the first five minutes of JC's Thing very few filmfans were actually asking. Winstead plays dress up as a Ripley-esque porcelain doll scrambling to convince her superiors and colleagues that the alien they discovered frozen beneath the ice can assume the form of any person it absorbs. She seems to be the only one at Dr. Halvorson's Norwegian research facility with any sense, though, as the good doctor and his team are all too anxious to crack the ice, take a tissue sample, stupidly give the beast an opportunity to thaw out and, in the process, risk exposing themselves to God knows what alien biohazard is lurking within. But it isn't infection they have to worry about. The creature escapes -- naturally -- and begins picking off researchers one by one, posing as its latest victim, and trying to escape the base and presumably reach a larger population center. Unfortunately, plot holes and shortfalls open en masse. What are we supposed to gather from the creature's spaceship? Or the Tron-like command center on its bridge? How is it the Thing can spear a man from ten yards away yet can't overtake our heroine when she turns and runs? Why are its abilities seemingly unlimited one moment and so terribly limited the next? Is checking for metal fillings really the best are you an alien test a group of research scientists can come up with?

More to the point, why is a lifeform with such radically advanced technology so barbaric and animalistic? Why does its intelligence drop so drastically the moment it drops its guise? Carpenter's chameleon was a cerebral predator that favored blending in, imitating the dead, toying with the living, and laying low until all options were exhausted. It revealed its true form out of desperation, and only when it needed to fight, survive, gain the upper hand or take out a threat. Van Heijningen's beastie is a dumb brute that pops its tentacles the second someone looks at it sideways. It gets worse. Carpenter's team of researchers were a likable band of good-natured rough-and-tumblers; friends and co-workers that, while certainly at odds on occasion, had functioning relationships that predated the start of the film. The same can't be said of van Heijningen's creature fodder. Joel Edgerton is a meek pilot with zero charisma (Kurt Russell he is not, much as screenwriter Eric Heisserer eventually wants him to be). Thomsen is an obnoxious blowhard, one who doesn't even enter Donald Moffat's orbit. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje gawks, limps and makes it clear he should have stuck with Lost and sharpened his craft. Kirstofer Hivju is all nerves and shivers (credit his fantastic beard for the bulk of his performance). Trond Espen Seim -- not to mention half-a-dozen other forgettable corpses -- plays a sneering Norwegian tasked with accusing our poor, hapless Americans of being aliens. And Kim Bubbs nearly falls asleep on set as a weepy French geologist that couldn't meet her maker soon enough. Even Winstead is an irritating pushover, fawning one minute, taking command the next, and ultimately acting as if she's in way over her head. You won't mistake any of van Heijningen's humans for dear MacReady, Childs, Blair, Clark, Nauls, Palmer, Norris, Cooper, Windows or even Garry. No, this cast of misfits lines up at chow time, dies with disgrace and generally asks for whatever grisly end they receive.

Effective horror, despite all the forms it's taken over the decades, hinges on three common elements: ordinary men and women thrown into extraordinarily horrific situations, a threat or evil beyond their understanding, and a sense that the anointed final survivor or survivors have a chance, however small, to survive the night and see the dawn. The scares, the tension, the atmosphere, the jolts, the dread... the things most often associated with great horror are just byproducts of good storytelling and a grasp on what makes the genre tick. Pacing and plotting are crucial, no doubt, performances and visuals go a long way, no argument here. But horror rises and falls based on those three simple elements, and those three simple elements alone. Van Heijningen's doesn't give us anyone to care about, doesn't serve up anything horrific or extraordinary (other than horrific dialogue and extraordinarily bad CG), doesn't understand the alien or the things that actually made it such a terrifying creature in Carpenter's original film, and doesn't leave any room for any of the characters to survive. We know everyone is dead when Carpenter's Thing begins, making van Heijningen's version a gory but unnecessary history lesson at its best and a tragically predictable meat grinder at its worst. Oh, one person walks away from the fiasco, his or her fate undecided, but it's a joyless victory. We know the character doesn't appear in Carpenter's Thing, so unless Kurt Russell, Keith David and this unidentified cast member are planning on making a sequel, his or her survival is meaningless. (Even Russell and David's survival amounted to something. The image of two battle-weary soldiers staring cautiously at one another -- each man wondering if the enemy he risked his life to defeat is somehow sitting across from him -- is one of the classiest endings the genre has ever produced.)

The Thing, circa 2011, is a waste of time and talent. Battlestar Galactica overmind Ronald D. Moore was attached to the project at one point, and I can picture exactly how his version of the prequel would have gone down. Language barriers, enigmatic identity, waning trust, split factions, an alien that imitates whatever it kills... can you see it? Imagine an episode of BSG as channeled through Carpenter's Thing; smart, psychological horror with character-driven twists and turns aplenty. The ending may still have been set in stone, but the journey would have been far more interesting and, I suspect, far more unnerving. Instead, Abraham, Newman, Heisserer and van Heijningen have slapped together what every horror junkie feared: an uninspired bit of misguided inspiration, a brainless A-to-Z prequel that adds nothing of note to the mix, and a mediocre rehash of a Carpenter classic that didn't really need to be touched in the first place. If Prometheus wanders down the same path as The Thing this summer, you may have to talk me down from a ledge.

The Thing Blu-ray, Video Quality

Universal's 1080p/VC-1 encoded transfer may look like a striking high definition survivor, but look closer and you'll spot the flaws in its disguise. Mild noise reduction is apparent throughout, clarity takes a few small hits, and slightly smeared facial textures -- not soft, although there's a bit of that as well -- put a damper on the image and its otherwise decent detail. The DNR, though, was visible in the theater, meaning it was applied in post by the filmmakers, not as a last-minute touch-up tool for the film's Blu-ray release. For the most part, closeups come away unscathed (despite some errant waxiness), delineation is relatively revealing (at least as revealing as a horror movie slathered in shadow tends to be), edge definition is crisp and clean, textures are reasonably resolved, and a faint graininess persists. Blood, bile and flames give the icy palette a nice kick of color too, and chilling whites, all-too-human skintones, raw primaries and ominous blacks make every kill, splash of blood and explosion a thing of visceral beauty. There aren't any significant encoding mishaps to point to either. Artifacting and banding aren't an issue (even through some compression anomalies creep into a midnight blizzard or two), aliasing and aberrant crush are nowhere to be found, and edge halos are held at bay. All in all, The Thing looks the part. It isn't a perfect presentation, but many a viewer will be fooled.


The Thing Blu-ray, Audio Quality

Universal's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track revels in eerie silence and sudden fury, introducing scares where few exist, ratcheting up the tension when there's little to be had, and adding some surprise where there's none to be found. LFE output lunges, strikes and retreats with disarming ease, infusing roaring flames and ground-shaking explosions with power, granting beastly bellows and heavy footfalls convincing weight, and giving van Heijningen's creature some much-needed presence. The rear speakers steal the show, though. An ever-present wind howls and batters the research station's walls, a ship's systems hum to life, the clik clak shink of claws on metal echoes in distant corridors, scattering debris hurtles across the soundfield, and interior acoustics are immersive. The sound designers rely on volume over sonic prowess a bit too often, but it's in keeping with the tone of the film. Pans are also a tad abrupt at times, albeit not to any great detriment. Dynamics deliver, directionality is just short of thrilling, and dialogue doesn't falter, minus the few instances -- almost all of which are intentional -- when a storm surges, a shape-shifting monstrosity screeches, or something more sinister swallows voices in the ensuing insanity. All things considered, fans and detractors alike will be pleased with the lossless results.

The Films He Lives In

"Except keeping a woman against her will inside a room," Banderas says of his character in Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In (on DVD now) "the rest is completely different."



The actor references many other directors’ filmographies, many other styles, but in the end he creates his own. He never wanted to do a movie with a “boo” coming at you. The horror is something more eerie and in your subconscious. "I see something like a scalpel, and if you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t even know that something is cutting you, and then you go, 'Oh, my god'."



When it came to references, Almodovar gave Bandaras "One movie, but it was for acting not the context, and that was THE RED CIRCLE. It’s a movie starring Alain Delon. Pedro gave me the movie because the actors were almost expressionless in drama about gangsters but there almost nothing happening to them. So there were times when Pedro referenced those actors to me, and American actors in film noir movies from the 40’s and 50’s. Characters you can read and put on them more of you, because not everything is cooked. It’s half cooked. So you can actually get into their minds."



QUESTION: What was the most difficult part of doing this role? You do, sort of, feel sorry for the character, and then that simply starts to fade and he rises and falls throughout the movie until the very end. So what was the most difficult part in playing such a complex character?



ANTONIO BANDERAS: Well, the most difficult part was understanding what we wanted to do. Where we wanted to take the character. It was Pedro who proposed that we keep the character very contained and very laid back. Almost like a white screen that the audience could write whatever their horrors were onto it. Limitless. So you don’t have the parameters of the character. You cannot measure him, and that makes him very unreadable. Because as an actor when you see the character in the script, which is bigger than life, you want to play big. That’s what you instinctively want to do, and you say something like “oh, this is a character where I really want to show muscles here.” But Pedro goes, “No, no, no!” That was one of the reasons concerning narrative. But the other reason was directly attached to the character’s personality and his psychology. These type of characters, which we’ve seen many times, in the news – serial killers – basically when they are caught by the police and are put in jail and then people interview the neighbors, they normally describe them as wonderful people. Charming guys. Well dress, well mannered. Polite. They go to church on Sundays. But they have 5 guys mutilated in the fridge. (Laughter) So, Pedro said to me, we have to go there, because these people melt effortlessly in the society, and there is a friction of hypocrisy there. It’s not how well you look. It’s what you are, and normally for the people you have around. For the people you have inside you, and the character is true. But that is because of the narrative process that he follows, which startled me when I read the script for the first time.



The first part of the movie is a question without an answer. But you start knowing that this character lost his wife, his daughter is in a mental institution, because of that problem. The guy taking care of his wife, burned in bed. So, he starts locking up this woman, like she must have done something. Because all of these older ladies are coming to him and saying, “why did you kill her?” So, Pedro starts positioning you in terms of morality in that way, and then as the story unfolds and all of these disturbing answers start coming and he takes an entire audience on a position and then again. Yet something remains from this tormented guy. But in reality, he’s a sick person. He’s a monster, but a sick guy.



Like that salad that we have on the table, there’s always floating a reflection about creation. A reflection of “yes, this guy has a monster personality”, and he has this creation and in the end you may feel like he is falling in love with her, but he’s not . He’s falling in love with himself and the masterpiece he has done. It’s kind of a sick game that he’s continuously playing in the movie. The relation of this to movies is directing. I mean, I could have in my bedroom a TV set that is like this just to check it out. No, no, no, it’s not just a TV. It is a movie screen, which he is watching this, and Pedro realized this, almost photographed this from the back. It’s almost like a director watching his own movie, and then jumps in to be part of his own movie. If you remember in the mind of the guy, he doesn’t see the possibility that this woman is taking the lead. But she does. What happens, in terms of narrative at the beginning of the movie, but in ‘real time’ happens at the end, there is a scene where she says, “why don’t we leave like two normal people?” But we’re not normal, and the guy tries to escape and she is actually saying, “I am yours”, and he cannot take this. “How is this possible? How is my creation is talking to me?”



This guy who is playing God is attacked by his own creation and that cannot happen. There’s all of these kind of reflections in the movie aside from what it is trying to tell you specifically about the life of these particular characters.



QUESTION: Do you have that kind of passion with your own work?



ANTONIO BANDERAS: I do. I have passion with my work. Pedro gave me a key when we were doing the press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s true. Directing movies makes you think very much. He says, “directing movies is like becoming God.” Why? Because you create a universe in which you established the rules, the rhythm and the codes that you’re going to follow. Pedro specifically has been breaking the rules of movies since he started working, and the reaction of the audience is often very radical. They love movies and put us on that alter, or they want to crucify us. Because you need time to metabolize and digest what he has thrown at you. One of the reactions that many people had to this movie in Europe is that the movie travels with them, with audience following for two or three days. It stays there and sometimes you are afraid to look. That doesn’t happen with mainstream movies. You enjoy the 2 hours, but five minutes after you leave the theater, it is gone. It just flies away out of your mind. But this type of movie is very disturbing, not only because of the issue that he’s talking about, but also the way he tells you the story.by stacy wilson

Rob Zombie's "Lords Of Salem"

We all know Rob Zombie loves to pimp out his flicks during production. Hell I've lost count of the number of pointless updates regarding THE LORDS OF SALEM, but you can go ahead and tack another one on the list!

With the flick now heading into post-production Zombie has once again decided to treat us all to another behind the scenes shot. In the latest picture we've got our director standing beside Patricia Quinn, Judy Gleeson and Dee Wallace Stone. Talk about one hell of a four-way! Just scroll on down below to get a look at the shot for yourself.

Heidi, a blonde rock chick, DJs at a local radio station, and together with the two Hermans (Whitey and Munster) forms part of the "Big H Radio Team".

A mysterious wooden box containing a vinyl record arrives for Heidi, "a gift from the Lords". She assumes it's a rock band on a mission to spread their word. As Heidi and Whitey play the Lords' record, it starts to play backwards, and Heidi experiences a flashback to a past trauma.

Later Whitey plays the Lords' record, dubbing them the Lords of Salem, and to his surprise, the record plays normally and is a massive hit with listeners.

The arrival of another wooden box from the Lords presents the Big H Team with free tickets, posters and records to host a gig in Salem. Soon Heidi and her cohorts find that the gig is far from the rock spectacle they're expecting: the original Lords of Salem are returning, and they're out for BLOOD.

Along with the three genre Scream Queens the flick also stars Sid Haig, Bruce Davidson, Christopher Knight, Ken Foree, Billy Drago, Richard Lynch, John Five, Lisa Marie, Maria Conchita Alonso, Sheri Moon Zombie (below), Ernest Thomas, Michael Shamus Wiles, Barbara Crampton, Brandon Cruz, Jeff Daniel Phillips and Michael Berryman.

THE LORDS OF SALEM still doesn't have a release date so I'm sure we're in for a lot more pointless SALEM updates in the coming months. How exciting!

Source: RobZombie.com