The Ritual (2017)

The Ritual (2017)

Dir. David Bruckner

Written by Joe Barton, based on the book by Adam Nevill

Starring Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton

            THE SIGNAL is a 2014 American science fiction thriller directed by William Euban and starring Brenton Thwaites and Laurence Fish… no wait, that’s not it, what I meant to say is THE SIGNAL is a 1998 road-trip dramedy about life on an American Indian reservation based on the stories of Sherman Alexi… wait, no, that’s, that’s SMOKE SIGNALS. What I’m actually thinking about is 2007’s horror-anthology THE SIGNAL, which found rookie directors David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry taking turns directing vignettes centering on the aftermath of a mysterious television signal which drives most of the population insane. If you are confused, I don’t blame you. This is why you give your movies original names, people.

            Anyway, THE SIGNAL (2007) was one of the most intense, effective modern horror movies I had seen in a good long time back when it came out, and I was really jazzed to see what each of the three directors would follow it up with. But it turned out to be a long wait. Gentry did a series of MTV movies called My Super Sweet Psycho 16 which sounded terrible and I never bothered with, Bush did some movie called THE RECONSTRUCTION OF WILLIAM ZERO in 2014 which I’m just now learning about as I’m writing this, and the dopey James Franco ghost/heist mash-up THE VAULT in 2017. And Bruckner, who did the obvious standout vignette in THE SIGNAL, did… almost nothing. A couple short films and anthology segments, but so little of note that I ended up forgetting all about him. And then, without any hype or anything, whammo, suddenly THE RITUAL is on Netflix.

            THE RITUAL is a 1977 survival/horror flick starring Hal Holbrook and... wait no, actually I mean THE RITUAL is a 2002 Tales From The Crypt movie with Jennifer Grey and Craig Sheffe… no no, scratch that, it’s a 2002 Filipino thriller, or.. Wait, wait, actually it’s a surrealistic 2015 Russian-German co-production, or… goddamn it, this is why you give your movies original names, people! There are well over 100 movies and TV shows with that name or a similar derivation of it listed on IMDB. And I bet none of those other ones ends with (mild spoiler?) a Scandinavian demigod that lives in a moose’s face (more on that later). I refuse to believe the makers of this movie thought the fact that a ritual happens was the most noteworthy thing here.

            (There were two movies named SOLO in 2018 alone. The cheap irony alone should have been enough to scare one of them off).

            Anyway, 2017’s THE RITUAL is Bruckner’s first-ever full-length directorial gig, and if it lacks the breathless ferocity of his segment in THE SIGNAL, it’s still an unusually strong and vivid little exercise, sticking comfortably to tried-and-true horror formula but providing enough texture and imagination to make it distinct. Considering Netflix’s extraordinary, almost unbelievable track record of taking exciting directors and facilitating turgid disappointments (Kim Jee-Woon, Duncan Jones, Jeremy Saulnier, Jonas Åkerlund, Martin Zandvliet, Adam Wingard and David Mackenzie are all among its victims), just having this come out pretty good seems almost like a miracle.

            The premise is simple enough: four old friends get together for a hiking trip in Sweden in the wake of the death of a fifth friend, who was fatally beaten during a random robbery while one of them (Luke, played by Rafe Spall, ANONYMOUS) watched helplessly (if it had been Steven Seagal in there, this movie would have gone in a very different direction). That’s already a pretty grim reason for a get-together, and the austere Swedish wilderness ain’t exactly lightening the mood, so there’s some tension brewing not very deep below the surface. Petulant, whiny loudmouth Dom (Sam Troughton AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR) openly blames Luke for the tragedy, and while Phil (Arsher Ali, FOUR LIONS) and Hutch (Robert James-Collier, Downton Abby) seem to have more ambiguous feelings, it’s not exactly a cheery woodland jaunt even before they find a gutted elk hanging from a tree and a bunch of BLAIR WITCH style hanging totems.

For quite a long time, that’s what the movie offers: an emotionally fraught journey with four grieving men who aren’t in the habit of expressing themselves very openly, wandering through a strange, nebulously threatening wilderness. But it gradually, almost imperceptibly, migrates from drama to survival thriller to horror movie with a remarkable steady seamlessness, mostly through a deft control of tone and a mercilessly steady escalation of new and more explicit perils. This task is aided immeasurably by the excellent atmospheric photography of cinematographer Andrew Shulkind (THE VAULT), which does a phenomenal job of capturing exactly what’s so irresistibly scary about the woods at night, and also, a few vitally important times, what’s so comfortingly beautiful about nature during the day.

This is not a thing to be overlooked; many horror movies are set in the woods, but very, very few ever seem to have a good sense of how to shoot nature in a authentic way. Everything that something like IT’S IN THE BLOOD misses about the experience of being alone in a forest is vividly present here, especially in the night scenes, where the small circle of illuminated vertical tree trunks vanishing into an endless black abyss manages to feel both claustrophobic and agoraphobic at the same time. It ignites something very primal in the brain, a sense of being alone and helpless and vulnerable, surrounded by inchoate malevolence lurking just beyond perception. The effect is cumulative, and the longer the movie lingers, the more it builds a powerful feeling of helpless isolation, a sense of ancient, timeless horror hovering just on the outskirts of modernity. And the safety of the familiar, predictable modern world is never excessively remote –the hikers, of course, are only a few days’ trek from civilization!—but it is always hopelessly out of reach. You get the feeling that just over a few hills, there are trendy bars and shiny impersonal office buildings, but they might as well be a world away. It adds a hint of cruel irony to the usual feelings of backwoods helplessness; they’re so close to comforting society, but it helps them not at all.

            That’s important, because for most of the film, the vibe is the real star. The actors are uniformly capable, but like HEREDITARY --and, let’s be honest, a lot of these serious, slow-burn modern horror movies-- quite a bit of time is spent on character drama which doesn’t really link up, narratively, to what ends up happening. It’s a mildly interesting (if somewhat clichéd) detail that our protagonists are dealing with the death of their friend and processing the guilt and blame about Luke’s role in it, but for how much of the movie is devoted to this plot, it doesn’t turn out to really be important at all. You could replace it with basically any standard horror movie backstory and the plot here wouldn't change in any meaningful way. The best of these modern, drama-savvy horror movies, like THE BABADOOK or THE CANAL, bridge that gap, and make the character drama an intrinsic part of the movie’s central conflict. Others, like THE INVITATION or HEREDITARY, spend a lot of time with character details which seem to run parallel to their actual point. They’re not worthless, exactly, since they make their characters richer and more interesting to watch, but they are extraneous, which, to my mind, inevitably makes the whole weaker than it could be.

In the movie’s defense, the standard flashbacks to a traumatic event are handled with slightly more imagination than usual; rather than just flashing back to footage from the opening, the haunted Luke sees his trauma physically manifest in the reality around him. So every so often he’ll turn around and there will be a couple shelves of liquor and a line of fluorescent lights sitting there in the middle of the woods. It’s a pretty neat image, and I approve. The concept may not be even remotely fresh (it’s about as standard as these things come… looking at you, DARK WAS THE NIGHT), but at least the execution is. And the movie deserves a little respect for showing a distinctly multicultural England; a couple characters are not what you would think of when you imagine “Anglo-saxon” Brits, and it goes entirely uncommented upon. It’s no cheap morality lesson, just a clear-eyed view of the modern, diverse world. Bravo. Still, for how much time gets wasted on the interpersonal drama, I’m not convinced that any of it is very insightful or well-written. In fact, the writing (by Joe Barton [iBOY] based on the novel by Adam Nevill) actually feels pretty clunky from time to time, though the actors do a splendid job of selling it naturally.

But never mind that, because the atmosphere is more than sufficient to run defense for the movie’s dithering first act (at 94 minutes it's not egregiously lengthy, but would certainly not suffer from a bit of tightening up in the first half), and well before its sense of primal doom has lost its punch the movie shifts abruptly into one of the best goddam creature features I’ve seen in years, and any little missteps from before are immediately and wholly forgiven. The creature itself is a magnificent design, utterly unique, instinctively captivating, and thoroughly disquieting. There’s enough ungulate in there to comfortably guarantee Larry Fessenden a hard-on, but it’s not quite any one thing. Its appearance and nature are revealed gradually, but by the end you get a good long look, and you’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s a bit of a hodge-podge, but it deftly and decisively avoids the modern curse of overcomplicated, over-designed visual gibberish, instead cutting a distinct and elegantly comprehensible figure (heightened by the film’s clever decision to reveal it first in silhouette). It’s this huge thing, but there’s like, something inside it, something kind of human, that you can never quite make out. A god, I guess. A Son of Loki, they say? Tom Hiddleston, you ol’ dog.

The monster is so great that it almost doesn’t matter about anything else, but it’s a nice bonus that the story works, too. Not that it’s some sweeping literary marvel or anything --it’s cliché at best, and possibly just badly written-- but that doesn’t end up mattering one iota, and in fact its sturdy simplicity helps give it a mythic, timeless quality that suits the material splendidly. It’s the perfect example of basic material executed beautifully; it’s certainly easy to imagine a version of the exact same story which feels like the most imaginatively barren slog possible,* but thanks to Bruckner’s impeccable direction, that’s categorically not the case here. The story may be simple, but the telling squeezes it for all the tension it’s worth, tightening the vice so subtly that you can’t quite put your finger on the point where things shift from inconvenient to dire; things seem bad but manageable, then worse but manageable, and then somehow everything goes to hell without anyone quite realizing what has happened.

If you haven't seen the movie, I don't want to ruin it for you, so no picture of the critter in question.

 And while all the drama may not amount to much, it does humanize the character and make them relatable. In fact, the movie reminds me of what Elil Roth once inexplicably claimed** about gialli; these characters really do make decisions that anyone might make. They’re not idiots, they don’t have some hubristical comeuppance, they just make a few bad calls which could just as easily have turned out fine, and then they’re fucked. Given that, there is a bit of that old fatalism here (in fact, it’s arguably something of an “Evil Town” story, with our characters invisibly being herded towards their own doom), but at least they’re active, doing the best they can, and in the end (spoilers) our surviving buddy is finally rewarded for it. I’m usually of the philosophy that unlikely “happy endings” are the coward’s way out, but I make an exception for horror movie protagonists who’ve really been run through the gauntlet. Let’s give this poor guy one win at the end, huh? He earned it.

All this adds up to one inescapable conclusion: THE RITUAL is a truly top-notch lost-in-the-scary-woods journey with a real humdinger of a destination, and no amount of flabby character development can take that away from it. Whatever reservations I have about the way they want to take me there, I’m 100% on board for the ride. With its sturdy construction, wild climax, and iconic creature, I think this is a rare horror flick which might just earn a cult following over time...

 ...If only it had a name anyone would be able to remember two weeks from now. Oh well, at least it’s guaranteed a long, venerable existence of being called “you know, that one where there’s a Swedish guy who lives in a moose’s head. I think it’s called THE RITE?”

* In fact, the movie almost lost every bit of goodwill it had gained from me when I read that they cut the part from the book where our heroes are tormented by the members of a satanic black metal band called “Blood Frenzy.” What the fuck were you thinking, taking something like that out? That’s so metal just reading it may have given me lead poisoning! You’re damn lucky I liked your monster, fellas. Damn lucky.

* “[In gialli] The girls are always going on some trip somewhere and they're all very smart. They all make decisions the audience would make.” -- Eli Roth, in one of the most preposterously indefensible statements ever made on a public platform by anyone other than Donald Trump.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	They Should Have Gone To Vegas. Oh well, save it for the sequel?
TITLE ACCURACY	There is a ritual, but wouldn’t HELLMOOSE been a little more descriptive?
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Yes, actually, from the 2011 novel by Adam Nevill (to be fair to the movie, the book is also titled “The Ritual”)
SEQUEL?	None yet, but it just came out last year (it had a festival release date in 2017, but premiered on Netflix in 2018). I’d be down for more.
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	UK production, but shot in Romania
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Creature feature, Evil Cult, “Evil Town,”
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None.
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	None
NUDITY?	None
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	If you wanna count this thing as an animal, sure.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	None
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	Yes
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	None
MORAL OF THE STORY	If your friend is ever bludgeoned to death in front of you, do not, I repeat, NOT give into the urge to go sadness-hiking in a grim Scandinavian forest with your three most emotionally repressed friends.

Marianne

Marianne (2011)

Dir. and written by Filip Tegstedt

Starring Thomas Hedengran, Dylan M. Johansson, Sandra Larsson, Peter Stormare,

What we got is here is an interesting and enjoyable Swedish family drama, with a very, very light sprinkling of horror. Probably in all honesty a little too light, at least for me. The horror is pretty well done when it comes, but cumulatively there’s probably only 10 minutes spread out across the 103 minute runtime. The rest of the time, it’s a quiet and prickly family drama about a father (Thomas Hedengran, FROSTBITE) estranged from his teenage daughter (Sandra Larsson, MARIANNE) following the death of his wife. And it’s a good quiet and prickly family drama about a father estranged from his teenage daughter following the death of his wife. But that’s what you’re gonna get here, so fair warning.

Basically, Krister, the dad, is a very repressed, reserved guy --even by Swedish standards-- trying to deal with his pain over the recent death of his wife and his guilt that he has been a pretty shitty husband and father. The first thing we see in the film is him ruining his family’s vacation by secretly sneaking away to call his mistress. But he’s not all bad; he seems to be trying the best he can to be a good father to his daughter now. It’s just that he hasn’t really earned the right to be taken seriously by her, and she resents him trying to step into her life now that her mom is gone. She’s openly defying him and mostly living with her dorky pothead boyfriend “Stiff” (Dylan M. Johansson, Swedish citizen) despite her father’s obvious need for help caring for his newborn child, her baby brother.

Sittin' Pretty

But Krister has another problem, too. When he goes to sleep, he’s visited by a mysterious ghost, who likes to stand around grinding its horrible teeth almost touching him. This is the horror part, but boy, just like THE CANAL it seems likely there’s another explanation for why he’s experiencing this. When he’s pushed into seeing psychiatrist Peter Stormare (BAD BOYS II, BRUSIER) to help him deal with his stress, he’s gently told that this is a common phenomenon called “sleep paralysis” and that many people suffer from it, particularly when they are experiencing severe stress, hint, hint. Unhappy with that explanation, he turns to his daughter’s boyfriend, who suspects a more supernatural explanation and has some experience in this realm because he once saw an elf. When he was young.

All this raises a very important question: who the hell would ever go to Peter Stormare for psychiatric help? Absolutely guaranteed to leave you more crazy than you began, that’s been his M.O since at least the early 90s.* But also, are we really supposed to seriously entertain the idea that this man is being menaced by a literal ghost? It sure doesn’t seem like it, especially since his best source of information on the subject is the goofy pothead boyfriend. It does have some interesting discussion of Swedish folklore -- the experience of sleep paralysis has long been known as “Mare” in that country’s legend-- but come on, I’m pretty sure we’re not meant to believe this is real just because some Swedish stoner (and not even an acceptably metal one) claims an elf sighting somewhere in his past. I mean, I saw Bjork once too, but I dunno man.

Not that the ambiguity is a bad thing, exactly -- the movie treats the haunting episodes very seriously, and has a nicely creepy aesthetic for them (the tooth-grinding noise is genuinely a bit rattling, expect to hear it ripped off in an American movie soon). You certainly believe Krister is traumatized by the experience, but from our perspective his story is more tragic than terrifying -- he’s a flawed guy grappling with his guilt and subconsciously projecting this turmoil into his dreams. There’s actually something kind of sweet and vulnerable about this closed-off, macho guy feeling so persecuted and cornered that he’s turned to some moron teenager in a desperate attempt to free himself. Yes, he looks ridiculous chanting and throwing seeds around to dispel the evil spirit, but it’s sort of sad, too. He’s so desperate that he’ll submit to the indignity of talking about elves and fairies, but he still can’t bring himself to look inward for an answer -- the stuff inside is just too painful.

No, no, happy trees!

So it’s an interesting and effective character piece, but as a horror movie it leaves a little to be desired. I think writer/director Filip Tegstedt is serious about making a real horror film --he personally financed the film by liquidating his assets and taking loans, in part as a protest to the Swedish Film Institute’s perceived failure to support the genre -- but unfortunately I think this particular scenario doesn’t make for a very effectively structured horror movie. Horror is all about escalation; it’s about drawing the noose ever tighter, forcing the characters into more and more desperate and frightening situations. This one starts off not very horrific, and then actually gets less horrific as it goes along, as we learn more about who this guy is and why he’s probably experiencing these things. An abrupt and mostly unsatisfying ending doesn’t help things -- and trying to shoehorn in one last scare to this mostly dramatic tale only serves to disrupt the genuine pathos that has been building with the family conflict. You always gotta appreciate an attempt at a horror film with real dramatic weight, but this one might have been wiser either focusing more on the scary stuff or just dropping it altogether and contenting itself with being a solid relationship drama.

But even though there’s plenty to criticize here, there’s a lot to like, too. The cast is uniformly strong -- both father, daughter, and boyfriend are smartly cast and expertly craft complex characters who feel quite at home in the movie’s universe. There’s a subtle streak of deadpan Swedish humor anchoring the slightly exaggerated tragedy to an earthy, likeable tone that keeps things from getting too grim and self-serious. And the incorporation of Swedish folklore and mythology into the horror genre gives it something fresh and interesting, even if its anthropological tone is maybe a bit at odds with the movie’s apparent desire to terrify (it also makes it an interesting comparison to this year's other interesting-but-too-uneventful Scandinavian "horror" film, THALE). So It’s not a total waste of time by any means. But I wish it were as sure-footed with its genre conceits as it is with everything else. Then we might really have something here.

*OK, I think he’s pretty normal in his tiny role as “young man” in FANNY AND ALEXANDER. But that movie is 312 minutes long and stars the entire population of Sweden at the time, so not a huge surprise that he didn’t get a chance to do his Peter Stormare thing quite as hard as he would in later films.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: No
• FOREIGNER: Swedish
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None, although it was nice they could get Stormare for this little movie. he even speaks his native language! But he's not in it much.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: No
• BOOBIES: None... I don't think so anyway.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: None
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: No
• HAUNTED HOUSE: This is a distinct possibility, or at least implied
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: Yes, the titular characer
• POSSESSION: No
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
• EVIL CULT: No
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: No
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High. Swedish indie horror.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: When you have a guaranteed living wage, free health care, and lots of easy-to-assemble furniture you have to get creative to find some problems in your life.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Marianne is a character in the movie.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Yes

This is pretty borderline, but it just didn't feel right to give it the same three thumbs I've been giving to uninspired genre junk. It has some strengths, just not horror. Call it B-. 

Prison

Prison (1988)

Dir. Renny Harlin

Written by Irwin Yablans, C. Courtney Joyner

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Chelsea Fields, Lane Smith, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Ivan Kane, Tommy “Tiny” Lister

Well, can’t blame me for trying. Renny Harlin, one year before he directed the delightful NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, directing Viggo Mortensen (in his first starring role!) in a haunted prison movie? Sign me the fuck up. In fact, forget the whole “can’t blame me for trying” thing; shame, shame on me for allowing even a day's time when I was aware of this movie but hadn’t yet watched it. And hey, can’t blame Renny for trying, either; he’s obviously working hard here, filling his first American movie* with nice lighting, a good cast, a couple funny bits. There’s stuff to like. But not much, not enough. And obviously not as much as there should be, based on the parts assembled here.

There’s definitely a distinct whiff of effort. The opening sequence of a guy getting executed is pretty intense, mostly thanks to Harlin’s exaggerated camerawork and a nicely evil set design. One guy later tries to escape, only to find the prison’s pipe system turns against him and brutally perforates his body before dumping the bloody mess into, appropriately, I guess, the mess hall. There’s voodoo, lots of implied prison rape (though no shower scenes, weirdly), fancy lighting shots, a guy climbs up a barbed wire rope with his bare hands, and it does have one phenomenally inspired kill which involves a chair, barbed wire, a shotgun, electricity, and two separate prison floors. And Kane Hodder shows up in the finale with that delightful cheesy 80’s animated lighting every movie made between 1979 and 1994 had. But unfortunately nothing here is able to overcome the anemic storyline, which wanders around a number of pointless tangents which lead to nothing interesting before finally settling down for the most rote possible outcome, unpredictable only in that it bafflingly has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the ostensible main characters.

Viggo and Lasagna, contemplating the different directions their careers will go.

Seriously, it’s weird, because Viggo is playing this new prisoner who looks and sounds exactly like a notorious killer who was executed in this very prison under dubious circumstances years ago (and in fact, Viggo plays that role too). You got to assume he’s a reincarnation or a son or something, and it seems like his presence must be the catalyst for all this weird stuff happening. But nope, I guess not, the fact that he looks exactly like this other dude is never addressed. In fact, he has fuck all to do in the entire movie, he just sort of stands around glowering most of the time and contributes exactly nothing to the plot (of course, he shouldn’t complain. Chelsea Fields has even less to do, she’s not even on premise for most of the movie, although at one point her home computer blows up for no reason, so that’s fun). The two people who actually have anything to do with the narrative are both old guys, a prison inmate and the asshole warden (surprise!) but the movie really wants to be about everyone else, from the Stallone-worshiping Travolta-wannabe Italian guy (I swear to you I’m serious, his name is “Lasagna.” Look it up if you don’t believe me.) to the rapey bearded guy (“Rhino,” as far as I can tell not related to the Spider-Man character recently played by Paul Giamatti) to the mild-mannered giant (“Tiny,” played by Tommy Lister**). None of these people have any relevance to the meager plot, nor are they even used as cannon fodder, nor, honestly, does anything interesting or dramatic come of them. They’re just there, taking up time. OK, Lister does have a pretty good death scene, although weirdly it’s not related to the whole haunted prison thing.

Still a less horrifying prison movie than INTO THE ABYSS.

Harlin’s infectious enthusiasm for chaos and spectacle means that this one isn’t a total wash; at least he knew to throw in an exploding computer for no reason. But a lot of this one wants to be some kind of atmospheric suspense ghost story, which isn’t really Harlin’s strong suit and anyway is a lost cause from the start because the story is so dull. At 102 minutes, the whammies are far too scant to keep any energy going, and gradually the whole thing sort of peters out.  Little surprise that it got only a limited release and promptly vanished from the face of the Earth. Weird, since writers Irwin Yablans (producer of HALOWEEN and TOURIST TRAP) and C. Courtney Joyner (writer of FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM) surely knew their way around a decent horror movie, and of course Harlin would go on to make some damn entertaining ones (including another one that same year, and as recently as last year). But I guess this just shows you can’t simply assemble a bunch of fun elements and expect to have a movie. You also got to figure out how to make it work.

On the other hand, there’s a moment when some asshole steals Viggo’s football, so he goes up to him and grabs his nuts and says “You let go of my ball, and I’ll let go of yours.” Now that’s a whammy. The movie as a whole needed a couple more of those, but at least they’ll be able to put that scene in Viggo’s Hollywood retrospective someday.

*And only second film overall, after his appropriately named Finnish debut BORN AMERICAN.

**What the fuck, I’m looking at his filmography right now, and he’s gonna be in HUMAN CENTIPEDE PART III?! With his DARK KNIGHT co-star Eric Roberts? And it’s a prison movie? What is happening to the world?

In Soviet Russia, Lighting Rides You!

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Someday Renny's gonna make that adaptation of Ulysses that he's always dreamed of, but that day was not today.
• SEQUEL: None, I guess Viggo got too expensive after TEXAS CHAINSAW 3
• REMAKE: None
• FOREIGNER: Nope, despite the fact that Harlin could barely speak English at this point in his career, this is pure Hollywood.
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No.
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Viggo, in his first starring role.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None. Well, I guess Viggo was in this, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3 and THE PROPHECY, maybe he counts?
• BOOBIES: No.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: Lots of implied non-consensual prison sex, but nothing explicit.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Plenty of blood, but no limb loss I don't think.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: Haunted Prison, but sure.
• MONSTER: Nah.
• THE UNDEAD: Vengeful spirit of a wrongly-executed prisoner.
• POSSESSION: No, this ghost just wants to kill you.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No.
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Nah.
• EVIL CULT: None.
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: None.
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: No
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: High. Limited release only, out of print for years.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't conspire to execute innocent men in the electric chair, because they come back with ironically electric-themed vengeance. Unbelievably, this will be the theme for the next movie as well.
• TITLE ACCURACY: There is a Prison. Product was as described.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Nope.