The Email of Doom: Arang

So, I went off a bit about ghost stories not long ago and feel the need to make amends because I actually do like the genre. Many have flawed endings, but few other horror subgenres can get under your skin like a ghost story. The one thing these stories do better than any other horror stories is play with the limitations of human vision. Because ghosts are supernatural and basically ephemeral, they can pop up at any moment in any degree. The classic trope is the bathroom mirror. Whether a character opens it for a moment or ducks down to spit water into the the sink, said character loses sight of what's in the mirror and  instantaneously a vision can appear in the reflection without a sound. The same holds true for a character who hears a noise and instinctively moves to search for it. Each turn of the head, each peak around a corner leaves open a whole world of unseen space in which the ghost could inhabit. Ghosts live in our periphery until they choose to be seen. It makes the viewing experience unpredictable, suspenseful, and best of all, scary.



Arang is a Korean horror movie that follows the "Asian-girls-are-terrifying-if-you-comb-their-long-hair-in-front-of-their-faces" guideline for effective ghosts (see this and this for more examples) and it's really hard to go wrong with that. Even the ghosts in the otherwise awful The Grudge 2 stayed with more for a few days. There's lots of creepy ghostly stalkings that stop short of being actually scary. The problem is that we know the ghost is getting revenge on a group of people that wronged her in some way, so the ghost isn't that threatening of a force since no one else feels at risk. Going back to The Grudge, just going into the house is enough to doom you to a terrifying existence no matter how good and innocent you are. There are some really cool devices used to spook the audience though many are slightly listless or the camera cuts away before tension builds to a breaking point. Director Sang-hoon Ahn clearly isn't in the same league as the big three of Korean filmmaking (Joon-ho Bong, Jee-woon Kim, and Chan-wook Park), But he's still able to ring some nice moments out of the movie which prevents it from being a waste of time.

Calling the rest of the film a waste of time may seem harsh, but the moment it tries to explain itself, the film falls to pieces. There's flashbacks and twists and plot points that don't make any sense. It's like they were just throwing in everything to see what would stick around the hauntings. Even the hauntings start off ridiculously with the victims getting an email about an old salt shack (the email of doom). That's when you know their time has come, because ghosts like to telegraph it through modern technology. In fact, Asians have a weird relationship with technology in their ghost films. Shutter features mysterious images in photographs. In One Missed Call, characters get phone calls of their deaths. The Ring has the video that starts the countdown to your demise. It's like they don't trust technology. I actually really like that they tie a lot of the supernatural folk tales in with these modern devices. It's a nice juxtaposition.

Still, this is one of the few horror movies that I watched with someone else this month and it was fun watching the other person (my fiancee) hiding her eyes and getting spooked. There's a lot we miss when we watch movies that are best served in a group by ourselves. In some ways, I'm sad that watching movies has changed to an individual/small group activity. I can't imagine what it must have been like to go to a movie with 1500 people (the old capacity of my theater before the balcony was turned into two smaller theaters) and experience the highs and lows collectively. I bet it was marvelous.

Netflix tangent: Once again, Netflix Instant View drops the ball. the subtitles for Arang are cut off at the bottom of the screen and there's no way to fix it. You can still read them all, but it shouldn't even be an issue. Just another example of why they should have waited to roll out their new pricing plan.

Stay 100 Feet Away From This Movie

There's plenty of people who think it's silly to over-think entertainment based around the supernatural. To them, it's ridiculous to argue say, why slow zombies are more realistic than fast zombies since both are made up and can react however their creator wants them to. The rules for entirely fictional creatures, planets, characters, etc. don't have to be set in stone from one narrative to the next. I'm not one of these people. I believe that rules should be created for fictional things and followed. It enhances the realism and the tension. If you know that their are no boundaries to what something can do, then there is really no surprise when it does anything.

I've been thinking about these supernatural "rules" a lot lately because, starting with the House series, I've been watching my share of ghost/haunting movies. The more I watch, the less I understand about how ghosts work and the more unrealistic the scenarios become. I'll try my best to explain, but there are many different kinds of hauntings, so I hope this doesn't all become confused.

The first issue is do the deceased get to decide to come back as a ghost? There are enough horror movies that have someone vowing revenge as their executed (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Shocker, The Horror Show) that it seems willful. And if they are allowed to come back, what does that say about the afterlife? Surely God wouldn't allow these criminals (and they're always criminals) to kill innocent people or even the people responsible for there demise. The first time I heard about "unfinished business" was from the movie adaptation of Caspar, but I hardly think this falls under that category. It's just vengeance against the people who most recently did them "wrong." The inference of this type of haunting is that they decided to forego that afterlife to kill (generally), but what happens to them when they are vanquished (if they are vanquished)? Limbo? Hell? Heaven? God did let them go back, after all.

As far as "unfinished business" goes, what happens if they can't finish their business? Can they decide to give up and return to heaven or wherever they go or are the doomed to haunt the earth just because they never told their sweetheart that they love her? Being a ghost is forever, in theory, so time will pass and the ability to complete the unfinished business is gone. What then? Is there a degree of importance to unfinished business? Is never learning to play guitar enough to come back or does it have to be something big and "meaningful."

And I really don't like the idea of people being haunted and the spirit follows them around. First, it ties in with my first concern where it was a conscious decision to be a ghost, but doesn't make much sense, either. Haunting a place where you were murdered or abused makes sense to me because that was a severe trauma and maybe you can't help but relive it. But following someone around indicates decision and basically everything above I already spoke of.

Finally, what are the rules of touching? If a ghost can move furniture around, what doesn't it just grab the person it's pissed at? Why do they spend so much time screwing with the haunted and not just finish the job right there? Do they get off on being a ghost (well... I guess the spirit in The Entity does)? This is a bigger problem for the ghosts seeking revenge because they must be filled with rage to seek it so badly they become a ghost.

As it stands, I can only really get behind the "unfinished business" ghosts (to an extent) or the "reliving past trauma" ghosts. There's at least some semblance of logic based around their existence and that suits me fine. All of which brings me to 100 Feet.



The premise is pretty amazing. A woman is under house arrest in a haunted house. That takes care of the "why don't they just leave the house" crowd as the alternative is going back to jail. The rest of the movie is crap. Eric Red wrote and directed 100 Feet and I had high expectations. This is the man responsible for writing The Hitcher! But instead of playing the movie for suspense, he plays it for "scares." The ghost is shown very early in a "boo" scare so there's not mystery as to what's happening. Red doesn't even try to infer that Marnie (Famke Janssen) is going insane being trapped inside all the time.

Of course, if the ghost wasn't shown so early, then we wouldn't have as much of that ghost-kicking-the-shit-out-of-a-woman action. You see, the ghost is Marnie's abusive husband who she killed in self-defense. Her husband was a cop and none of her abuse complaints were taken seriously leaving her no recourse and apparently a very bad lawyer. For some reason, he gets to come back to her and abuse her even in death and there's nothing she can do about it (except one thing, but that's the climax and I won't spoil it for you in all of it's terrible ridiculous-ity).

100 Feet is guilty of nearly all of my complaints above and it's incredibly frustrating to watch. The clear answer to many of my issues is "there would be no movie," but is there anything more frustrating that a movie that exists just because? I there isn't a convincing reason for making something and hour and a half, don't do it! Maybe it wouldn't be as big of a deal if every character wasn't so obnoxious and Janssen didn't speak with a terrible New York accent, but we'll never know.

There is some affective action if you can fight off the voice in your head saying, "this is stupid." and Red plays with the mirror trope (though not as well as House). There's also a neat parallel between no one believing that she was being abused by her husband to the fact that no one would ever believe she was being believe by the ghost of her husband, either. Other than that, 100 Feet is a hunk of disposable garbage. A massive

You Can Forget About Atari: Pitfall

Pitfall is a movie with ghosts but no haunting. It has more in common with a police procedural than a horror movie. I thought about not including it with the other write-ups but I figured that there has to be room for a supernatural drama in October at some point. Plus, I've already covered other thrillers and this one isn't so different. In fact, more people are killed in this than in Special Effects. And like Special Effects, Pitfall features doppelgangers, though much more effectively.

There is a startling amount going in in the 97 minutes of Pitfall. I hesitate to even try to write a synopsis. Briefly, a migrant miner is working for work and is killed. A reporter examine follows up on some leads and discovers that there is a head of a union that broke off from the main union who looks exactly like the murdered man. The reporter, the deceased, and the look-a-like are all trying to get to the bottom of what's happening for their own reasons. It's damn near remarkable that the film isn't a garbled mess by the end and wraps up quite nicely (some might say too nicely).

Pitfall loses steam when it tells the back story of the two unions, but then I've never been much for union talk. It's essential to set up what's to come, but very dialogue heavy and some interesting staging does little to pep the scene up. However, the rest of the film is cracking; steeped in dramatic irony. It's very easy to empathize with the characters and you almost want to shout out at the screen to explain what they can't (because they are dead and all). Having so many people with an interest in the murder really helps to keep the pitfalls of procedurals at bay. Pitfall also does some pretty ingenious things with the doppelganger (I particularly like when the dead man returns to the woman's store late in the film).

The music is terrific and interesting and the film is beautiful to look at with lots of really neat tracking shots of people moving through reeds and ghost towns and the like. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara has a masterful eye and I only wish that they'd spent more time cleaning the lens before shooting. Pitfall feels like it takes place in another time as it starts and the mention of a bus early on was very jarring. As the film progresses, we move into more modern spaces of industrialization. It's a little bit like moving through the evolution of mining. There's even some documentary footage of mining incidents in there for good measure. 

At one point, a (dead) character says to our dead man, "The more you know, the worse it'll be" (no wonder NBC dropped the last half for their PSAs). And of course, that appears to be true for everyone by the end of the film. The ultimate irony is that no one really knows anything at the end of Pitfall for all of their efforts. Save for one person who knows everything but never says a word during the film.

So, it's not scary, the ghosts don't haunt, and it's heavy on union politics. But it's beautiful, and involving, with great music and solid direction. Yeah there's definitely room in October for supernatural dramas.

Weekly Film Rec: Hausu

I feel like all I've been doing this past week is Halloween recommendations and really, I have (you can see for yourself here). This will be my last horror recommendation in this space for a while just to give you all a break. Fortunately, I saw Hausu before the end of October so I can squeeze it in before the self-imposed moratorium.

Without question, this is the most insane, off-the-wall, bonkers, nusto film I've ever seen and I took a whole semester on avant garde filmmaking (ok... so most of that stuff is just boring). It's a hallucinatory haunted house movie with an identity crisis. It's almost too wacky to be scary and too crazy to be funny. The effects are ridiculous but do their job completely.

The plot sends a group of girls (all named for their dominant feature or personality trait) to a friend's aunt's house which happens to be haunted. There's some ghostly back story about her aunt and an old love the doesn't really make too much sense, but nothing here really does. Eventually, the girls go missing through increasingly bizarre circumstances. My favorite has to be Kung Fu, who fights off an attacking horde of flaming logs, among other things, with her awesome kung fu skills. Also, there's an evil cat (aren't they all?).

Words can't do this film justice. You simply need to look at the DVD cover art to find out all you need to know. I'm kicking myself for not checking it out when a local theater showed a 35mm print. This will become a regular in the scary film rotation. And if you don't watch it on your own, I will eventually make you watch it. Thank you Criterion for bring this movie into my life!