Mirror Mirror III: The Voyeur

Mirror, Mirror 3: The Voyeur (1995)

Dir. Rachel Gordon, Virginia Perfili

Written by Steve Tymon

Starring Billy Drago, Mark Ruffalo, David Naughton, Monique Parent

As you have perhaps gathered by this point, I have something of a weakness for franchises, and for grinding them out to the bitter end. Early on I reviewed the entire PUMPKINHEAD and HELLRAISER sagas, then Hammer’s FRANKENSTEIN sequence, and more recently, I watched every single fucking RINGU and JU-ON sequel, a fate which I mercificully spared you from having to suffer through with me. I also spared you from reviews of MIRROR MIRROR 1 and 2, 90’s direct-to-video filler about a haunted mirror so bereft of worth that it didn’t seem worth bringing up. But then MIRROR MIRROR 3 showed up during October, and you know I’m honor-bound to review every movie I see in October, no matter how obscure or worthless, even if it takes me a whole year like it did last year because of laziness, physical infirmary, pontification, etc.

So, lucky you! You get to hear about MIRROR MIRROR 1-3 all in one breathless, ecstatic binge, to bring you up to speed! What’s that, you say, you don’t care at all? What if I sweetened the deal a little by mentioning that beloved Hollywood superstar Mark Ruffalo (MIRROR MIRROR 2: RAVEN’S DANCE, MIRROR MIRROR 3: THE VOYEUR) is in parts 2 and 3? That do anything for ya? Probably didn’t do much for his career, but if it was reason enough for me to watch ‘em, surely it’s reason enough for you to read about ‘em?

MIRROR MIRROR 1 is mostly pretty boring, it’s just the story of a angsty high school girl (Rainbow Harvest, a couple TV movies in the 90’s*) and her dysfunctional mom (Karen Black, Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE, IT’S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE) who move into a new house and discover an obviously evil mirror which gives the daughter mild Carrie-like powers to punish her enemies (including GROUNDHOG DAY alum and one-time Seagal adversary Stephen Tobolowsky) in fairly dull psychic ways. BLADE RUNNER’s William Sanderson and CELLAR DWELLER/THE TEN COMMANDMENTS Yvonne De Carlo are in there too, but there’s pretty much nothing interesting or fun there, just a low-budget no-imagination 1990’s Carrie ripoff with ugly overlit lighting like they did in the 90’s. (Alternate opinion: “I loved this movie!!! 'smiles'... Rainbow Harvest was erotic and powerful in this one. I'd have to say this movie is her best. She's all goth/punk if you will, she's hot. I like the plot, its kind of '80's but its a cool flick... I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys Gothic erotica or just plain fun…” -- IMDB commentator Jade-30 from Florida, 18 January 2003.)

But MIRROR MIRROR 2: RAVEN’S DANCE gets interesting. It’s still ugly and cheap and garish and 90’s, but rather than just follow its predecessor’s CARRIE ripoff structure, MIRROR MIRROR 2 strikes out on its own and creates a… plot, I guess, (?) which I would argue is pretty unique. Or at least, I would argue that, were it decipherable enough to tell what it’s actually about to begin with. You know it's a pretty good movie when 50 minutes in, I was still grappling with basic questions like "wait, where is this set, exactly? Is this, like, a nunnery / mansion / dance studio / punk band practice space?" Let’s take a look at the conversation me and my stalwart franchise buddy Dan P had afterwards, trying to interpret what we had just seen:

And all that is before I even mention that Mark Ruffalo (Brian Yuzna’s THE DENTIST, in only his second film appearance) shows up as a mysterious teenager who is always sneaking into the protagonist’s (Tracy Wells, the beloved role of “Schoolchild” in GREMLINS) room at night to say ambiguous and vaguely insinuating things to her. Well, you’ve seen a movie before, so you know he’s obviously the physical personification of the evil mirror which is trying to seduce her to evil. And she knows it too, so eventually she up and stabs him. But then it turns out he’s not related to the mirror, he’s just some local weirdo who spends his time sneaking into church orphanages (?) at night and chatting up whoever he finds in an elliptical but subtly menacing way. Huh. Also Roddy McDowell is in there. And Veronica Cartwright. And William Sanderson is back as a different character, a mentally ill custodian/groundskeeper who is enlisted to gaslight our heroine and is filled with remorse and rips the heads off his extensive doll collection but then feels bad and tapes them back on. It’s a weird movie, but the more I think about it the more I’ve convinced that it may actually be some kind of dada masterpiece. Well worth your time. Thumbs up.

MIRROR MIRROR 3, our main dish this evening, continues the tradition of radically changing up the formula, in this case going even more starkly minimalist in the plot department. How do you top a movie where it’s not even clear what the basic setting is, let alone why or how any Ravens are dancing? Well, by substituting any remaining remnants of ostensible horror movie for a long string of softcore sex scenes with various nude women riding a mostly-out-frame Billy Drago (INVASION USA, THE UNTOUCHABLES), who’s a producer on the film for whatever reason. Considering how little he actually figures into these scenes (he’s barely visible laying on the floor or bed while the camera pervs out on the boobs halfheartedly swaying above him), you could probably have shot all his sex scenes (and hence, 50% of the movie or more) with a double and saved a little cash on your big star, which you would think he would be in favor of, as a producer. But fortunately Billy Drago is a real pro and knew that the actresses’ sense of the scene would be seriously undermined if he did some diva shit like that, so for the good of his craft it looks like he stayed for every one of these scenes. Probably even multiple takes, that’s what kind of artistically generous big famous movie star Billy Drago is. Good to see some professionalism in this industry from time to time.

Unfortunately --or maybe fortunately?-- it’s the only professionalism anywhere in the movie, which is a hilariously uneventful dreamy 90’s mess of empty, overlit rooms --some of them with an evil mirror in there which sits around looking evil without specifically doing anything-- and an inexplicably convoluted series of flashbacks to what I can only think to call "the real plot", since nothing actually happens during the ostensible A-story. The nothing that happens is: Billy Drago moves into a mansion which used to be owned by his former lover, who was murdered by her drug-dealer boyfriend two months earlier. He then spends his time having sex with his new girl, but also sometimes the ghost of his old girlfriend comes along to judgmentally also have sex with him, and sometimes we see flashbacks of them having sex in the past. Mark Ruffalo (A FISH IN THE BATHTUB) returns to the series in a hilariously pointless role as his shifty younger brother who also has sex with one or both of the women, so yay for you, you get to see that if you can make it to the climax of the movie. Also David Naughton (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, THE SLEEPING CAR) is on hand, continuing his Shogun-like quest to wander the Earth proving that even when he’s only got a worthless supporting role in absolute unmitigated shit DTV 90’s softcore movies, he’s still irresistibly charming for some reason. At least he gets to walk with a cane here, that’s new for him.

Anyway, that’s it, that’s the whole movie. There’s an ongoing series of flashbacks which gradually explain the non-mystery about what happened with the drug dealer girlfriend and serve to fill the movie out to feature length, so I guess they're valuable in that regard. But I am not exaggerating when I say the movie is mainly softcore Billy Drago sex scenes where nude women straddle him in a room with that mirror from MIRROR MIRROR 1 and 2 off in the corner. I guess the mirror is probably the titular “Voyeur” here, because it spends a lot of time watching people have sex but doesn’t really do anything except sit there and provide a different motivated Point-of-view angle and occasionally leak some blood that no one notices. At the end I think it eats somebody like in PRINCE OF DARKNESS, but I can’t help but notice that to the extent there is any conflict at all here, it comes from the ghost girlfriend and her annoyance that Billy Drago is banging some blonde in her house two freakin’ weeks after she died. If the mirror is secretly the criminal mastermind behind the drug deal gone wrong or whatever I sure didn’t pick up on it, and the only official plot description I could find for the movie is only 6 lines long, so maybe they didn’t know either.

Here we see our beloved evil mirror, sort of the Freddy or Chucky of this series, ostensibly the villain but so universally beloved we can't help returning to it again and again. Remember those innocent years in the 90's when this mirror turned up everywhere and all the kids had toys of it and dressed as the mirror for Halloween and it had that hilarious series of cameos on Married With Children and all that? Man, the 90's were great.

To compensate for not having a story of any kind, co-directors Virginia Perfili (Special effects on MIRROR MIRROR, graduating to co-writer on MM2, and now co-director here, and also I think it worth noting that her one other directorial effort is a movie called “BIKINI WITNESS”) and Rachel Gordon (director of films with titles such as DUNGEONS OF DESIRE and ANIMALS ATTRACTION III, but obviously most beloved for her one acting role as “severed head” in 1991’s NUDIST COLONY OF THE DEAD) appear to have decided to make the film as visually scattershot as it is narratively sparse. Much of the film (and particularly all the flashback footage) is composed of every type of video effect 1995 was capable of producing, from stretched images to color-corrected nonsense to endless inversed footage of an unidentified car driving through Los Angeles. Fuckers think they’re Oliver Stone here. I would like to assure them definitively that they are not. It's pretty brazen stylistically though; the title doesn't even appear until a solid 18 minutes in. Power moves.

Anyway, you don’t care about that, you want to know about the Ruff. I get that. The good news is that Ruffalo’s ineffable Ruffaloisms are already in full effect by this time, and he gets all the twitchy, eccentric babbling you could want. The bad news is that Hollywood had not yet figured out how to film them so he doesn’t look like a total goofball. Probably doesn’t help that he has nothing whatsoever to do in this movie except be a small part of one sex scene. Not that anyone else is much better served. Frankly, although there is a ghost, this is barely a horror movie, and in fact barely a movie at all, let alone a MIRROR MIRROR movie, not that it would be any great shakes if it was. It’s terrible and baffling, but not in a stunning way like part 2, more in a 90’s softcore cinemax kinda way. A lot more like that, actually. You’ll be sorry to know that we have been so far unable to locate any copy of the fabled MIRROR MIRROR 4: REFLECTION (yes, that’s the real subtitle) so I cannot tell you if the series gets any better.** But I can tell you that Billy Drago returns in a new role! I’m sure that he found his experience on MIRROR MIRROR 3 so ...artistically satisfying... that he couldn’t resist returning one more time.*** This may be a really shitty franchise, but at least it’s inspiring to know that you got folks like Billy Drago out there who care enough about their craft to put in the legwork.

APPENDIX A: Alternate opinions:

“UGh [sic] all it is is these 2 people having sex for an hour and a half then some people die. The mirror does look the same as in the other films but that does not matter.” -- IMDB commentator whammy666 [very possibly Renny Harlin using a pseudonym] from United States, 13 February 2005

“Mark Ruffalo's half-naked body is the only reason I stuck with this… Literally one of the most dumbfounding experiences I've had watching a movie. Monique Parent spends virtually the entire film naked, so there's that, and Ruffalo also shows his body off at the end, serving as proof that he's always looked great.” --- IMDB commentator Robert_Lovelace from New York, NY, United States, 7 July 2016

“One point worth mentioning: Billy Drago is in it. He was absolutely great as the vicious bad guy Ramon Cota in "Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection". But let's face it: besides that, his career is not great.” --- Anonymous IMDB commentator from Belgium, 23 February 2010

*IMDB Trivia: Many are surprised to know that her real name is indeed "Rainbow Harvest".

**It doesn’t have enough ratings to even list an IMDB star ranking, so I don’t think I’m the only one who can’t seem to find it. I think it may well have played only a time or two on cable and never become available for home viewing.

***EDIT: in early 2017, my buddy Dan Prestwich actually bought the "MIRROR MIRROR boxset" which contains all four films, even the mysterious and otherwise unavailable MIRROR MIRROR 4: REFLECTION. Yes, I have seen it. No, I don't want to talk about it.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2016 CHECKLIST!

Good Kill Hunting

TAGLINE	Forbidden desires are unleashed ...and unspeakable evil is watching. Well, I don’t know how “forbidden” normal vanilla cis sex with a steady partner is, but I guess an unspeakable evil IS watching. It just doesn’t really do anything, because it’s an evil mirror and can’t even touch itself.
TITLE ACCURACY	There are a few shots of a mirror, but calling this MIRROR, MIRROR is laughable. We do get a few shots of the mirror’s perspective while people bone, so I guess that’s the Voyeur part? Sure as hell don’t know what else it would be.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Ha.
SEQUEL?	Yup, and followed (supposedly) by MIRROR MIRROR 4: REFLECTION
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Haunted/ Cursed Item, I guess. Realistically, “erotic thriller”
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None, because Mark Ruffalo wasn’t famous yet. But now, Mark Ruffalo.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	David Naughton!
NUDITY?	Constant
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	No
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Ruffalo finds a stuffed Raven in a cupboard while he spends a whole scene dancing and making a peanut butter jelly sandwich. He seems happy to see it, perhaps remembering the raven imagery in part 2. But while it does provide a lame jump scare, it does not attack or come to life or anything.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Definitely a ghost, possibly a haunted mirror which never does anything
POSSESSION?	Surprisingly no, just regular haunting.
CREEPY DOLLS?	No dolls, or even furniture of any kind except beds for fucking and that stupid mirror.
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	The movie is called “The Voyeur,” which I guess translates to the mirror sitting in the bedroom watching people fuck, but never doing anything.
MORAL OF THE STORY	Not all franchises are created equal, but if they go on long enough eventually one of the later sequels will have an embarrassing early performance from an actor who will go on to be beloved and famous and that will keep them from ever entirely slipping into obscurity.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)

The Town That Dreaded Remakes (2014)

Dir. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Starring  Addison Timlin Travis Tope, Spencer Treat Clark, Ed Lauter, Veronica Cartwright, Gary Cole, Anthony Anderson, Denis O’Hare

Some things just won’t stay dead. Disco. Hindus. Maxi-dresses. Star Trek. Anything laid to rest in an ancient Indian burial ground. The presidential aspirations of Rick Santorum. And of course, intellectual properties from the 70’s and 80’s with even a hint of name recognition among the lucrative 18-34 white urban male demographic. This last category has a particularly insidious method of reincarnation, and one with which you are no doubt already all too familiar. I speak, of course, of the dreaded postmodernist reimagining. First they came for NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and I did not speak out because by that point, the franchise really needed to be put to bed anyway. Then they came for Fat Albert, and I did not speak out because really, who gives a fuck about that. Then they came for HELLRAISER, and I had to admit that they had discovered a legitimately novel way to humiliate that series further even than part VII had been able to. And now they’ve come for THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, and by this time there were no franchises left to speak up.

Yes, I’m tired of postmodernism too. In fact, I’m beyond tired. I mean, I’m fuckin’ done with it, man. Every time some big expensive movie comes out that spends most of Earth’s money on some half-imagined framework for self-referential bullshit hoping to leech off the real deal with some sycophantic in-jokes, I keep thinking “this is gonna be it, this is gonna be the one that sinks it.” I mean, how much further can the culture go up its own ass? Surely there’s some intrinsic physical limit, beyond which the accumulated mass of all the lazy metatextual clutter will just collapse in on a black hole of its own narcissism. Right? I mean, fuck, postmodernism is almost older than modernism by this point. Are we really going to accept a society which spends longer critiquing and deconstructing and self-indulgently commenting on art than actually making new art? Is this how civilization ends, when we forget how to actually create new ideas and just build an ever-more-cluttered perpetual motion machine of masturbatory pseudo-intellectual claptrap?

Remember that time this happened in that other movie? Pepperidge farm remembers.

Anyway, my point is that THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (2014) is actually pretty good. Not really because of its callow faux-critical meta-references, but definitely in spite of them. The meta-ness of it all doesn’t actually turn out to be all that important, because fundamentally this is just a nicely-made shiny modern slasher which just lifts a few too many specifics from another source to get away with just calling itself merely derivative. Openly acknowledging its daylight highway robbery of an older movie’s best moments and iconography is just a self-conscious coward’s way of following in the venerable horror movie tradition of ripping off other movies and simply adding your own twist, but I forgive it because its somewhat cumbersome desire for an overbuilt meta-narrative is actually pretty reflective of the movie as a whole. For better or worse, this is a agreeably ambitious film debut from venerable second-unit director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (2nd-unit on BABEL, STATE OF PLAY and ARGO, director of many American Horror Story episodes) which is intent on throwing absolutely every trick in the book at you. One of those tricks happens to be postmodernism, but if that starts to annoy you, you’ve got every other trick in the book to entertain you in the meantime.

The movie announces its intentions with a long, show-offy TOUCH OF EVIL take, where the camera wanders inquisitively through a crowd of drive-in moviegoers who are watching the annual Halloween showing of Charles B. Pierce’s original 1976 THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, something of a tradition in the titular town itself. Texarkana (which straddles the border between Texas and Arkansas) has been free of Phantom menaces since 1946, and has happily contented itself with normal meth-fueled desperate redneck murders (at approximately 3 times the national average) which people seem to accept as normal and wholesome. They’ve made peace with their notorious past as both the site of the infamous Phantom Murders of the mid 40’s and their popular depiction in the beloved proto-slasher film from ‘76. But someone out there isn’t happy with this state of equilibrium, and sets out to re-create the Texarkana Moonlight Murders with a few modern twists. The first target is perky young high school senior Jami (Addison Timlin, ODD THOMAS, but most noted as the recipient of the prestigious national award for “most millennial name that modern science has yet been able to devise”) and her handsome jock boyfriend Corey (Spencer Treat Clark, veteran of the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT REMAKE). They’ve left the movie early and headed out in their car to makeout point, which is a normal thing that modern couples would do, when suddenly -- what the fuck, this can’t be happening -- it’s the Phantom! The burlap-masked maniac murders (and rapes?) Corey, but lets Jami go with a message: "This is for Mary. Make them remember."

Speaking of making them remember, remember the last time you saw this logo? It was 1999. THE TOWN THAT DREADED REMAKES is actually their flagship re-launch film.

Jami makes it back home alive to her grandmother (Veronica Cartwright, ALIEN, CANDYMAN 2), but can’t let things go. Before long, she and a suspiciously helpful stranger (Travis Tope, the upcoming INDEPENDENCE DAY SEQUEL!!) are investigating the resurgent crime wave along with the help of local police played by Joshua Leonard (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), Ed Lauter (MAGIC, THE LOST, THE ARTIST in his penultimate film) and Gary Cole (TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA [“man chased by Richard Chance," uncredited], OFFICE SPACE) and a visiting Texas Ranger played by Anthony Anderson (THE DEPARTED, KANGAROO JACK). That’s right, this cast has Veronica Cartwright, Ed Lauter, Joshua Leonard, Gary Cole, and Anthony Anderson, and I haven’t even mentioned yet that venerable character actors Edward Herrmann (NIXON, THE CAT’S MEOW, THE PAPER CHASE) and Denis O’Hare (MILK, EDGE OF DARKNESS, CHANGELING) appear as possible suspects. Holy shit, that’s a dream cast of distinguished b-movie players. Basically every adult role in this movie is played by a profoundly overqualified character actor. Almost none of the roles here require any particular acting prowess, but someone was smart enough to get that cast anyway. That’s hustle, right there.

Anyway, while most of the cast sits around without much to do (Anderson’s sheriff character actually takes some time to watch an old VHS copy of the original TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN!), Jami starts to put together a list of suspects, all of whom relate in some way either to the original murders, or the original movie. Meanwhile, the phantom killer continues to strike in a series of splendidly orchestrated kill scenes, many of which are elegant riffs on scenes from said movie. So we’ve got a fictional meta movie, set in the “real” world, which acknowledges the existence of the original fictionalized movie and also the original real-world murders which were fictionalized by both movies. That’s some ripe, rich, overthinking, there. It’s playful in a kind of predictable way for this kind of thing, but there is a certain cheerful cleverness there, which is helped by a pretty light touch which doesn’t underscore how ridiculous all this is. You’re allowed to have fun with the concept, but the movie itself is taking it pretty seriously, for the most part. Even when the murder mystery’s twists and turns brings them to the point of interviewing the fictional son of real director Pierce (O’Hare) for information about a fictional suspect for the real murders, the movie plays it straight, as if this was a normal exposition scene that would happen in a slasher like this.

Hence, the emphasis is really on the slasher part of its meta-slasher pedigree. And that actually ends up being fine, because it’s a much better actual slasher than it is a postmodernist deconstruction. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s actually one of the best-made slashers I’ve seen in a good while. The movie never quite matches the technical hustle of its assured opening shot, but it’s nonetheless quite an impressive production all the way through, from its handsome cinematography by Michael Goi (prolific Z-movie and TV DP, including 40 credited turns on American Horror Story) to its smartly-constructed kill scenes, to it’s sharp editing and moody score. Gomez-Rejon and co. just seem to get the internal mechanics of slashers in a way which is surprisingly rare in modern times. It’s not just that the film has an elegant, almost Spielbergian sense of cinematic grammar, it’s that this is a rare modern slasher that understands the thrill is in the chase, not just the kill.

I love a gory death scene as much as anyone, but the slasher genre slowly ate itself alive during the 80’s as one-upmanship on imaginative gimmicks replaced actual suspense as the raison d'etre for the genre. With those gimmicks came a focus on the money shot, with all that entails -- but in doing so, the art of building up to those moments got shuffled to the background. And of course, that’s where the actual terror lies; once the stabbing starts, there’s no conflict anymore, you’re simply left with grim spectacle. But the chase -- the chase has the ability to actually get your heart pumping. Gomez-Rejon seems determined to reclaim that nightmarish sense of pursuit. The movie excels at crafting top-notch stalking and fleeing sequences in various colorful milieus, from a moonlit cornfield which turns into a disorienting maze, to a junkyard of iconic 50’s detritus, the latter of which also conveys a subtle meta-joke about the recycled plotline.

Gomez-Rejon even goes out of his way to concoct endearing victims --the exact opposite route most slashers take, but crucial to cultivating actual suspense. Even totally disposable characters who materialize just in time for their demise (for example, the young couple who are murdered moments after fucking each others’ brains out at a local motel) are given a few moments to humanize their characters beyond the stereotypical meat wagon conceit. It doesn’t take much; not even any dialogue, sometimes. Just a moment or two of earnest human vulnerability, and suddenly we’re rooting for them to get away, rather than waiting like disinterested scavengers to see the lurid details or their demise. I mean, it’s not exactly high praise to say that a horror movie actually comprehends the basic mechanics of suspense, but these days it seems like a  mildly revolutionary concept in this genre, especially for an explicitly postmodern attempt.

Its strong focus on classically structured stalking and slashing sequences manages to keep everything pretty grounded and earnest, despite the trapping that make it seem suspiciously like an attempt at a millennial answer to SCREAM.* Or at least, it does riiiiiight up to the end when it kinda maybe ruins things with a ridiculous reveal of the killer that might as well have come from a SCREAM sequel. The original TOWN THAT DREADED SUNSHINE, for all its eccentric missteps, knew that the whole reason anyone even cared about any of this is that a mystery killer is always more interesting than some prattling red herring who wants to tell you his life story. The remake can’t resist trying to come up with some outlandish twist to justify the whodunit angle it drapes the lank vestiges of a plot upon, and hence suffers in comparison. I’ll warrant the explanation is respectably outlandish, but while it might succeed in surprising you, it’s way too silly to really stick with you or offer a satisfying conclusion to what up until this point has been a pretty sincere effort.**

Even so, on average this one is still way ahead of the competition. I’ll forgive its transgressions as unavoidable overreach resulting from an excess of ambition, which isn’t always a bad thing. I’m not really convinced that the meta elements add anything meaningful or have anything especially interesting to say about the medium or our strange collective obsession with dramatizing real-life murders in a schlocky genre format. Maybe there’s a meta-horror remake which could be made that explores that stuff, but this ain’t it. No problem, though, because at least it adds a mildly amusing little wrinkle to what is otherwise an assured and highly successful reminder that modern slashers needn’t be either grueling downers or smarmy pastiches. And that’s my final word on the subject. At least, ‘til I come back and do another version of this review years later, which obsessively references the original review without really commenting on it in any kind of meaningful way. Look, postmodernism may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but someday I’m gonna be out of ideas, too.

*Interestingly enough, the remake also appears to take place in a world where THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (1976) is the only slasher movie ever made -- otherwise they’d have no choice but to admit the ending is (spoiler) cribbed straight from SCREAM. All the characters are super aware of the 1976 movie, but seem to have a total ignorance about any other slasher movie, and the very existence of the slasher genre in general.

**Still, the focus on the killer’s identity does result in one charming quirk. From his first appearance, we can see that the “Phantom” is a white male with striking blue eyes. You’d think that would be a useful clue until you gradually realize that  every single possible suspect character ALSO has blue eyes. Man, is this town filled with Swedes or what?

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• TAGLINE: From the producers of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and INSIDIOUS and the co-creator of AMERICAN HORROR STORY. Not too catchy as taglines go.
• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: Yes, though with that meta element
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: USA
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Maybe Anthony Anderson? He was in THE DEPARTED, after all.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Veronica Cartwright for sure. Ed Lauter's been in MAGIC, CUJO, THE LOST, and GLEAMING THE CUBE which I'm going to assume without looking is a CUBE sequel. I don't know if that's enough to count as a horror icon, but shit, we all love him, let's just agree that he's earned it. Danielle Harris supposedly cameo's as "Townperson #2" although I didn't notice her.
• BOOBIES: Yep
• MULLETS: None
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: The killer makes his first victim take his pants off and it seems kinda like something sexual is happening there, although the twist makes that seem unlikely.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Head cut off and thrown through window, cool!
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: No
• POSSESSION: No.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: Yes.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: No.
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• EGYPTO-CRYPTO: No!
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: None
• VOYEURISM: Yeah, the killer does a little watching, though he pounces pretty quick.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid, had a fairly large rollout for a DTV horror movie last year.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: The killer should definitely have said "Postmodern? Try Postmortem!!" at some point.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Yes, both fairly accurate to the story and a good reference to the beloved original.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

Timilin and Cartwright discuss her college plans. It's a little iffy because they kind of acknowledge the (spoiler, male) killer, but I think we can let it slide.