High-concept teen techno horror (shit)
Monday, 31 March 2008
I went out on Saturday night. I know. It was a revelatory experience. I went to the cinema (rather than on an acid garage-soundtracked Prodigy video-inspired junk binge) to see a creepy Spanish film called El Orfanato, or The Orphanage.
I was taken aback by three trailers that preceded the film, all of which were for ludicrous looking movies in a similar and possibly hitherto undefined genre which I’m calling “high-concept teen techno horror (shit)”. They all involve the possibility of hideous death upon twenty-something hotties in tight t-shirts. But in each case the terror is caused by the injection of implausible supernatural/horror phenomena into an everyday scientific/ technological concept, like a mobile phone or a hospital operation.
The films are as follows:
1. Awake
Concept: “During surgery, more than 60,000 people domestically each year experience “anesthetical awareness,” a condition when anesthesia fails during surgery, leaving one completely conscious and feeling every incision, but paralyzed and incapable of doing anything about it.” (Yahoo! Movies UK)
Trailer synopsis: Girlish, perma-tanned Hayden Christensen, looking like Jude Law on oestrogen, is farcically cast as a multi-billionaire someone-or-other (mumble mumble) who vaguely “owns half of Manhattan” or some such. He wakes up halfway through an operation to find the surgeon plotting to scalpel his heart deadwards but can do sod-all about it. Creepy flashbacks shot in bleached technicolour, featuring Jessica Alba as the hot girlfriend, ensue. Looks shit.
Concept: “In this remake of the Japanese horror film Chakushin Ari (2003), several people start receiving voice-mails from their future selves - messages which include the date, time, and some of the details of their deaths.” (IMDb)
Trailer synopsis: Immediately it becomes obvious that this is a crapper version of Ringu and its American remakes. Phones ring, screams are heard, weird little semi-humans appear. Young women get dragged away to obvious death. Is shot in permanent bluey half-darkness. You’ve never heard of any of the cast - which is hardly surprising since this looks so shit even Sarah Michelle Gellar would have turned it down. NB This trailer is not to be confused with one of those Orange cinema adverts that inappropriately injects a mobile phone into a movie screenplay with vaguely amusing consequences.
3. The Eye
Concept: “Blind since childhood, Sydney undergoes a corneal transplant in both eyes that allows her to see for the first time in years. But when she begins to see things - freaky things - she suspects her anonymous organ donor passed on more than just a pair of eyeballs…” (Rotten Tomatoes.com)
Trailer synopsis: Jessica Alba (again) is improbably cast (again) as an orchestral honey with unconvincing white contact lenses to show she is blind. Of course, they can cure that these days, but after the operation on her peepers, Jess quite literally “sees dead people”, meaning her eyeballs perhaps once belonged to a murderer. Or a ghost. Or something. By-the-book fast editing and ropey stab-stab music fail to elicit any sense of terror. Alba has dark hair, to signify she is a serious musician and not just the FHM-approved wank siren we have come to know and admire. Unintentionally hilarious.
If you want to be scared ’til your wits bleed by this torrent of high-concept teen techno horror (shit), then all three films are released in British cinemas this spring.
Personally, I find it hard to watch trailers at the best of times because the pacing, tone and predictability of their rhythm kind of makes me a bit uncomfortable and fidgety. Also, I’m one of those people who prejudges the film they are about to watch by the trailers that precede it and, after this trio of humdingers, I was feeling a little perturbed about the two hours that lay ahead.
Luckily, The Orphanage, produced by Pan’s Labyrinth director and cinematic half-god Guillermo del Toro, is really rather good.
No. 1 — April 1st, 2008 at 11:10 am
The Eye sounds like another take on a familiar horror trope seen most obviously in the Hands of Orlac. I thought the Orphanage was excellent.
This reminds me of when I went to see Silent Hill - a film I was eager to see as I loved the game and had been impressed by Christopher Gans’ work. While it’s not awful, it’s really not that good.
Most notable about the whole exercise was the parade of what must have been about five trailers preceding the main feature, all of which seemed to be of largely identical films. All of which looked shit.
No. 2 — April 1st, 2008 at 9:50 pm
You see the mistake you’ve made there is you’ve gone to watch a film that’s based on a video game. They are always shit.
No. 3 — April 5th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
The Orphanage was brilliant. Unfortunately Hollywood has already spilt pritt and glitter on it and is doing a remake in English.
The only thing that makes me slightly interested in going to see it and what might ultimately save it from being a big pile o’ heavily made-up poo is that Guillermo del Toro is directing.