Reviews

There is a dark force at work in the world today, gripping many, many people. It can strike anyone, and build up slowly over time or hit you in an instant. When it has you in its grip, it can take you over and make your life seem pointless and lifeless. It can change you into someone you're not, and all the things that once seemed enjoyable or true for you, don't matter anymore. This force moves among us, and can be a silent killer. One in six people will have it at some level in their lifetime, and through time and support can escape it. However, others will let it consume them entirely, and won't return from the dark place it holds them in. This sounds like some monster or malevolent being at work here, but rather, I'm referring to depression.

You might be wondering why I shared that as the opening paragraph for my review of horror movie "The Babadook"? If you've seen the creepy trailer or even just by the look of the poster above, you may have assumed it was just another run-of-the-mill horror movie. Well, it isn't. And my introduction to my review is well placed as a pre-cursor to the main theme of the story that is so cleverly worked into this chilling, frightening and intelligent scary movie.

Made in Australia and released quickly and quietly last year, The Babadook didn't take the box office by storm, and many have not heard of it, hence why it's in this section, "Down to the Basement". When I saw the trailer for it during one of my daily visits to the website IMDB, I was instantly taken by it. It looked good, and the fact it was an Aussie movie got me even more curious. Australian cinema is not typically know for its horror movies, and with a small industry churning out only about 25-50 films annually, it's nice to see something break out of the pack and make a splash overseas to show Hollywood in particular, that Australia does have considerable filmmaking talents at work here who don't always get the critical and commercial attention they deserve.

The really ambitions ones head over to the US, if they can break in and can make it big. And for feature debut director Jennifer Kent, she will certainly be a name to watch and should have no trouble getting Hollywood execs knocking on her door. Here, she has taken her own former short film entitled "Monster", and turned it into a feature length, psychological thriller that plays with many ideas and is not the horror movie you expect it to be at first glance.

But let's make one thing straight. The Babadook is a scary movie. It is about a monster or ghost of some kind. It is primarily set in a house. It does have a young boy who seems troubled or aware of what we can't see yet. And it does have a parental figure, a mother in this case, lost and alone, trying to figure out what's going on with her son, and in her own house during the night in the shadows.

So, there are some traditional and familiar horror movie elements at work here, but The Babadook takes it to a deeper level, and intelligently uses the actions of its villain as a reflection of the situation this woman and her young son find themselves in.

Essie Davis plays Amelia, a single mother who lost her husband to a car accident before her son was born. She works in aged care, has no friends, a sister who doesn't support her, and her only friendly contact is her next door neighbor, an elderly woman with Parkinson's disease. Not even the school her son Samuel attends lends a helping hand due to his troubling behaviours. He continues to rant on and on about The Babadook, a scary man who comes out at night which the boy learns about from a bedtime story his mother reads him.

She doesn't know where the book comes from, and puts it away after reading it to her son, due to its dark and graphic imagery. The story captures the mind and imagination of the boy, who claims The Babadook is real and wants to get in. He makes weapons at home, sleeps in his mothers bed every night, and physically pushes other kids away who pick on him; clearly, he's a frightened, and anxious little boy. But for good reason. Deciding to take him out of school until she can figure out what's going on with him, the woman and her son are holed up in their dark, damp house, as the menacing monster closes in.

The movie is expertly made and well acted, by the woman and young boy. It isn't full of spooky special effects, jittery jumps, of buckets and blood of gore, but rather, delivers its scares through the mental turmoil and anguish of the woman and her son. Once she starts to realize The Babadook might be real, she loses control and begins to act in ways that are both disturbing and violent, which is the intention of The Babadook; to get in, underneath your skin and make you do "bad" things.

Without revealing too much else, the ending hints at a few possibilities for the origins of this monster, but the film doesn't give you all the answers. Like a smart movie should, it assumes you are smart enough to figure it out for yourself.

Historically, the best monster movies don't reveal their culprit until the end, only showing glimpses of their form gradually throughout the movie to build suspense. The Babadook follows this method and uses it well. We don't often see the evil being appear on screen, but you know it's there. From the tiniest movement in the corner of the room, to a Knock! Knock! On the door at night, or even through the face of an innocent woman and child, this creation is conniving, faceless and ominous; everything a great movie monster should be. It certainly is one of the most original creatures to grave our screens for a long time, and although a new franchise isn't necessary, there is certainly scope and space for this monster to spread its dark wings a little further. We'll see...

And to tie things back in with my opening statement about the dark and menacing force that is depression, The Babadook is, at its core, about a woman still coming to terms with the death of her husband eight years earlier, and the grief, loss and guilt that has left her ridden with. Taking care of her son alone can't be easy, on top of working as a carer in a drab, dreary nursing home, so it's fair to say she has a lot of weight on her shoulders. This is the case for many people around the world, who through circumstances not entirely of their choosing, face terrible burdens every day, and very often, on their own.

It's out of these situations of helplessness and despair, that the light of life and happiness can disappear and the darkness of death and depression can creep in and in my opinion, this was the inspiration behind The Babadook; a monster born out or own our sorrows and pain, that will envelope you entirely and never let you go. That's a terrifying concept, that's used cleverly and creatively in this small but significant horror movie.

Do yourself a favour and watch The Babadook. If you watch it alone, leave the lights on and be prepared to keep one eye open as you lie in bed at night, trying to ignore the shapes and shadows you think you saw in the corner of the room.

Sweet dreams ;-)

The title tells you what this movie is about... and that's exactly what you get. Bats! Lots and lots of bats! A mix of Arachnophobia meets The Birds, Bats came out at a time where monster movies weren't big at the cinemas, but it has enough horror movie undertones to make it qualify for the climate of slasher flicks that were popular in the late 90's.

And for as many movies as there have been over the years with bats in the background (mainly vampire flicks or any of the Dracula pictures) the nocturnal rodents hadn't realy had their moment in the spotlight. In this film, it's all about the bats. Of course there are stock-standard human characters, who either battle the bats or get killed by them, but the movies soars best when it focuses on the flying killers.

Set in the small town of Gallup, Texas, the local bats are actually far from local. As we quickly learn, they were a science experiment overseen by a controlling doctor who wanted to see what would happen if he could make the bats better. Claiming they escaped the lab and were probably breeding with local bats, the scientist is joined by two wildlife zoologists and the local sheriff, who are all pulled into the dilemma to find the bats and bring their blood-soaked reign of terror to an end. And as you might have expected, these are no ordinary bats. They are highly aggressive, coordinated in their attacks, and seek out humans as a snack.

Our human characters in Bats are not very-well written, but most of the cast does their best within their cliched roles and limited character development. Some of the lines are downright garbarge in every sense of the word, or mostly just exchanges between characters which serve as providing key information to the audience. The film is most enjoyable when the people just stop talking and the bats start stalking.

The idea of thousands if not millions of vicious bats filling the night sky to the point they black out the moon, and descending on a small, unsuspecting town to wreak havoc, is enough to make anyone run and duck for cover. And it's in these scenes, even with their inconsistent special effects, that the director shows some talent at staging a variety of climatic moments. There is the standard attack at the beginning of the film, where the bats pick off a couple making out in their car. Then there's the attack on the towns people, followed by our heroes barricaded in a school they've boarded up with wood and electric fencing.

The film does explore imaginative ways to show bats attacking people, and whenever a close up of the feral creatures are on screen, you will see a face that is angry, evil and sinister, which can often come across as comical, but also a bit frightening when handled properly.

If you don't like B grade movies about bats killing people, you won't be interested, but if you're open to this kind of thing, you will have some fun with Bats. It's short, swift, often funny, occasionally exciting and never demands very much from you.

A man awakens in a hospital after being in a coma for about a month. Getting out of bed, he walks out of his room to an empty corridor, an empty hospital, then onto the streets of an empty London. He soon comes across the only living inhabitants of the city; savage, wild and red-eyed people trying to bite him. He's picked up by some other survivors, and we learn that England has fallen to some kind of infection, carried through people who bite others or spit blood on them. With no power, no phones, and no sign of any help, the survivors band together and live to escape, any way they can.

28 Days Later took this once tired genre into new territory in a blistering, no-holds bar kind of way, showing us what it might be like were zombies to be real. However, you won't hear the word zombie uttered once in the film, as they are simply called "The Infected" here. The film's stark imagery, realistic undertones, well-drawn characters carried by brilliant performances, and a never-ending sense of foreboding and dread, created a formula of zombie's films which took this genre to a new place. Suddenly, the fall of the world to the rise of the undead became seemingly possible, and we met characters who weren't just two-dimensional idiots posing as zombie food waiting to be picked off, but rather real people, with genuine emotions and motivations, trying to make sense of life after most had died.

Highly recommended.

Three friends, who love anything to do with aliens, UFO's and space, watch late night movies like "The War of the Worlds" and fall asleep with the TV on. In their dreams, they imagine themselves flying through a cloudy night sky. In one such dream, an idea comes to one of the boys, Ben (Ethan Hawke), which he cannot understand or decipher in his dream. As he awakes with a fright, knowing that he's dreamt something significant, he races over to his table, grabbing paper and pen, and draws down the image he dreamt, trying desperately to capture what he just envisioned in his sleep. After drawing an unusual image as best as he can, Ben grabs his walkie talkie and calls his mate Wolfgang (River Phoenix) who lives on the other side of the neighbourhood. Waking him up in the middle of the night to ramble off his idea, Ben tells Wolfgang he drew as much as he could remember and asks him to take a look at it the next day at school.

The next day at school, before Ben can talk about his visionary dream to Wolfgang, he is the target of bullies, and they are punks of the most delinquent sort. Outcast kid Darren (Jason Presson) steps in to break up the scrimmage, and leads the bullies away on a chase. Ben catches up to Darren to thank him, and the two get to know one another, walking through the woods, pushing their bikes along and sharing stories about their dysfunctional parents. As Wolfgang didn't show up to school that day, Ben invites Darren over to meet the junior professor.

The particular scientific discovery which kicks things into action in the film, is directing a force of energy to any location, anywhere, simply by entering its co-ordinates. As Ben and Darren arrive at Wolfgang's house after school, he shows them this amazing breakthrough, and here the other two boys decide they want to be a part of it. Ben claims the idea was his, given he described the image from his dream to Wolfgang who used it to make the discovery (and miss a day of school in the process), whereas Darren will go on to show he is the hands-on kid who can build things, like a mechanic or engineer. Ben is the dreamer, Wolfgang is the thinker and Darren is the doer. Together, this trio of explorers will each play an important part in the creation and take- off of a very special project.

Wolfgang's latest experiment has more power than he could have calculated himself, so gradually the three boys try to control the energy source, through a series of experiments. Accidentally, they discover the energy source acts like a sphere which can also be used as a travelling device. Wolfgang gets enveloped into it and whizzed around at high speed. Darren suggests devising a way to sit inside it, so the boys can travel around, anywhere, anytime and do, anything.

Off they go to the local junkyard, sneaking in to gather up some scrap parts and begin to build…. something. What they will build they don't know yet, but it will take them places they never imagined they could go. Maybe even into Outer Space…

Our three Explorers succeed in their crazy idea and manage to build a space ship, scraped together with a large, red chair from an old amusement ride, a garbage can and a NASA sticker as the icing on the cake. Installing their computer inside, the boys do the unthinkable – use their self-made craft to harness the power of the energy sphere, and take off! Up and away they go, rising above their local neighbourhood, soaring above hundreds of houses and spooked dogs that bark up at them from below. They fly across their town at high speed, and quickly learn how to control its accelerated path of flight. But the further and longer they fly around, the more their adventure gets out of control.

Back on the ground, and with a taste for adventure in the air, the boys think what the next best step should be. Ben, ever the dreamer, wants to go back up. Wolfgang, the cautious and calculating one, wants to run more tests, whereas Darren just waits for the other two to decide what's next. The three male actors do a great job with their parts, and have a very natural chemistry on screen.

After the boys have some fun flying around in their homemade UFO, the film takes an interesting turn, as they lift up off the ground again, but a little too high this time and discover themselves in space. Out of their depth and out of this world, they continue to Explore, each of them wearing their usual hat; Dreamer, Thinker and Doer. A winning combination when it comes to being the first human beings to meet some unusual and unorthodox aliens.

Explorers stands as one of my personal favourite childhood movies from the 1980's. The idea was a classic example of letting kids be kids and do the things they dreamt about. Ben, Darren and Wolfgang were heroes, because they took their idea, and made it happen. No adults could stop them, and with boundless persistence and plenty of dedication, it worked. Along with a dose of pure imagination and endless energy, the Explorers proved the sky wasn't just the limit – it was the destination.

After "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was a massive hit in 1982, most of its cast seemed to disappear from screens, save for Drew Barrymore who would go on to make some racy teen flicks and a string of personal problems before cleaning herself up. But E.T.'s main star, young Henry Thomas, would be offered the opportunity to play the leading role in a small Aussie film called Frog Dreaming. Thomas was the main draw card of the film, coming off the massive success of E.T and after arriving in remote Victorian towns such as Woods Point and various parts of Healesville and the Mornington-Peninsula, he must have been the superstar of the shoot, playing along side a string of amateur Aussie actors. The kid proved he could act in E.T., playing the passionate and juvenile Eliot, but his brilliant performance can also be attributed to the directing duties of one Mr. Steven Spielberg. He does reasonably well in Frog Dreaming, but the amateur feel and look of the film can distract from the fact that his character Cody, is well thought out and compelling, but the young actor wasn't in the hands of an actor's director. Now onto the story…

The films opens looking out onto the deep, murky waters of an uncharted lake, where something sinister awaits. First, bubbles start to appear on the surface, slow and small to begin with, then stronger and louder. As the surface of water changes, a dark, grotesque shape materialises, rising above the surface to take whatever so happens to be floating on the surface. An absent minded man in a small fishing boat cannot escape the power of the beast coming from beneath him.

Young Thomas plays Cody Walpole. Moving to Australia from the United States after his parents died, Cody lives in a small country town where he spends his time inventing things and breaking as many rules as he can to see those inventions realised. We meet him as he's about to embark on one of these elaborate stunts, where he's fitted out his BMX with an engine and wheels that can attach it to the nearby rail tracks. Whizzing along the tracks, with no regard for whether or not a train could come along and flatten him at any second, the whole town turns out to watch Cody. He completes his silly stunt without a scratch, but not without getting a telling off from the local chief of police.

On one of his local nature hikes through Devil's Knob National Park with two girls in tow, Cody just so happens to stumble upon the previously mentioned lake. It is an eerie place in every sense of the word, but also strangely beautiful. Brown muddy water is towered over by tall yellow stone cliffs and rugged trees that could only be as old as the land itself. Always with a sense of adventure, Cody ventures to a cliff top and jumps into the water. Fun and excitement soon turn into fear, as there is clearly a presence lurking not just in the water, but all around the lake itself. A rusty old windmill starts to spin, with no breath of a wind to help it, and objects are seamlessly pulled towards the centre of the lake. Cody and the girls get away, but as any fourteen year would, Cody must get to the bottom of the truth of what he saw, even if that means venturing into the bottom of the lake itself.

He asks around the local town, but no one seems to know this waterhole exists, as it doesn't show up on any maps. Turning to some of the local Indigenous peoples, Cody hears about the truth behind the mysterious lake. He is told there is something down there, and it's known to the Aboriginal locals as "Donkegin". Whatever, or whoever, enters its territory will not live to tell the tale. However, the fearless and enterprising Cody isn't phased by this and will discover the truth of the legend of Frog Dreaming, whatever it takes. But before he can, he will first have to Dance with the Devil himself.

Like the mystery of the Loch Ness monster, playing with the question of "Is it there, or is it not there?" Frog Dreaming toys with this idea as well, and has a lot of fun with. The director builds up a great sense of atmosphere throughout the film, that is both tense, mysterious and foreboding. Cody is probably a little too curious and daring for his own good, and even goes as far as to rig himself an underwater breathing apparatus out of a fishbowl and oxygen in barrels he creates from pressuring water – seriously, this kid is smart and can make anything out of just about anything. Again, another appealing aspect of this film to me as a kid. Remember the times in your own backyard when you thought how cool it would be just to invent something? Or wondering if you could sneak into that old junkyard, pick out a few parts and build something cool? I might have attempted that as kind at some point, nothing to rival the technical skills of young Cody.

Although small in scale and amateur in its production, Frog Dreaming is still effective in it's stronger parts and continues to hold up today almost thirty years later as a great family film. It pays respect to the legends and ideas it toys with, and although not everything is as it seems in the lake as Cody discovers, there is surely a spirit there of some kind; connected to the Dreamtime, which the Aboriginal people's speak of and protect, with only a select special few, including Cody, coming to know the real truth of Frog Dreaming.

The big surprise about "Tremors" is actually how good it is. Despite the plot, which sounds simple and quite ridiculous, it's a very entertaining little film. The cast were picked to perfection, led by Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward. Joining them is Michael Gross; the dad from "Family Ties" who plays a gun-happy enthusiast, along with his wife, who aides the towns fight for their lives with his massive collection of weapons and explosives. There's also a young female Seismologist, who was originally drawn to the town of Perfection to investigate the course of all the earth tremors that had been recorded in the area. Then there are a few other assorted characters that either get eaten or scream and run away from the monsters.

The premise of the monsters coming from underground is a clever one. When you stop and think about it, we humans are limited to the ground we walk on by that thing called Gravity, you follow? So when our right to walk along the surface of the earth safely gets taken a way, we climb a tree, get on top of our car or high-tail it to the roof. The characters in Tremors do this to avoid getting gobbled up, but these underground beasts are cleverer than they look, and find ways to bring down buildings and force their prey back onto the ground. The various ways in which the characters stay off the ground and play to the monsters sense of movement and vibration is clever and crafty. At one point, they make a lot of noise and stamp their feet on the ground to draw the attention of the monsters, allowing their friends to run away. Or my favorite was when they turned on a small mower, let it drive off on its own and watch, as the monster instinctively follows it, allowing one of them to make a run for it.

Tremors was not a hit in it's time, but went onto to garner a massive cult following over the years. It gave way to three sequels, which all went straight to DVD, but are worth a watch. Over the following films, the monsters changed and evolved, but the characters we met and fell in love with from the original film remain the same, and this is probably the biggest attraction of the "Tremors" series.

Released in 1990, It starred a cast of television well known's. The filmmakers condensed the book into a 3 hour film and split it into two parts. It follows the story of seven adults who are called on to reunite in the town they grew up in as kids. They are asked to return on the strength of a promise to deal with It, if It ever came back. It being the monster that occupies the sewers and drains of a small Maine town called Derry. This monster can take on any form, tapping into the fear of its prey to assimilate what scares them most. However, It usually showed up in the guise of a dancing clown, called Pennywise.

As the adults receive the call that beckons them to face their past, they start to remember their childhood; how they all met, outrunning local bully Henry Bowers who terrorized them all, and of course… how they first encountered It. The children form a club – The Loser's Club - made up of seven outcasts. Together, they battle It to prevent It from killing any more kids in the town. They believe they have It beaten, but swear to come back to Derry if It did return. Thirty years later, the monster does come back and these seven adults who would rather forget their childhood, must confront their past once more and tap into that power and magic they discovered in their youth, to stop It once and for all.

The portrayal of It in the form of Pennywise the Clown by Tim Curry is what made this film what it was. It was scary, funny, demented and conniving. I believe many people developed a fear of clowns after seeing this film… that's how effective Tim Curry's performance was.

I'm guessing most people have seen It at some point, probably when it first came on television in the early 90's. If you're about my age, you would have watched it as a child, even when your parents told you not to. If you've only viewed it once, that's enough to remember the images of that clown with the red, fuzzy hair and ghostly-pale face, peering up from a storm drain offering a balloon to a young boy in yellow rain coat… and as the boy reaches down to grab it, the clown utters those fateful words before grabbing his arm and pulling him into the dark depths of the sewer, "We all float down here… and you'll float too". Scary stuff.