"Miracle Mile"

1988; written and directed by Steve de Jarnatt

My first experience with Miracle Mile came some time during the close of the 1980s. I remember watching it on a rented VHS and being blown away -- no pun intended.

Back then it was little more than a surprisingly effective low-budget thriller about two star-crossed lovers who finally meet mere hours before the end of the world.

Twenty years later it's still a surprisingly effective low-budget thriller, one that still shocks with the strength of its convictions. But the passage of two decades has added a sweet nostalgic ache to the thing that only ratchets up the film's tragic aspects.

Anthony Edwards plays a jazz trombonist who accidentally intercepts a panicked phone call from a missile silo employee. The bombs -- yes, those bombs -- are about to drop. After convincing himself it's no joke, Edwards first tries to warn a motley collection of diner customers about the impending disaster, then rushes through the city to rescue his new-found love, the spiky-haired Mare Winningham.

All the fast-paced action takes place in a pastel Los Angeles of palm trees, monumental architecture and flashing neon lights that feels like spending a long night inside Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In addition to its throbbing soundtrack by Tangerine Dream, the film is a showcase of perfectly preserved Reagan-era collectibles.

Denise Crosby shows up as an executrix with a cell phone the size of a Wii. A television station signs off at the end of its broadcast day to waving flags and the national anthem. Eyeglasses and earrings alike are big and round, red shirts are paired with blue suit jackets, dresses are purple and teal. Two people meet and fall in love and run from disaster through the streets of an eerily sleeping Los Angeles. It's hard to believe we once lived in a such a strange and candy-colored time.

When time finally runs out -- and it does -- two worlds are gone forever: de Jarnatt's sleek nightmare of stylish annihilation, and the version of it many of us lived in back then.

"Begotten"

1991; written and directed by E. Elias Merhige

Begotten isn't frightening because it contains violence and gore, even though there's plenty of both. Begotten is frightening because every image and sound within it is so alien. It almost seems impossible that the film was created by a human being on planet Earth, and yet, you know it was. And it's terrifying.

The synopsis does about as much justice to the film as describing the Mona Lisa as a picture of a woman smiling. But here it is just the same. "God disembowels himself with a straight razor. The spirit-like Mother Earth emerges, venturing into a bleak, barren landscape. Twitching and cowering, the Son Of Earth is set upon by faceless cannibals."

Every word is true, but falls far short of actually experiencing Begotten for yourself. Shot in the grainiest of black and white, and accompanied by a soundtrack made up primarily of nature sounds (and not a bit of dialog) Begotten seems more like a nightmare burned directly onto film than a mere motion picture.

Occasionally compared to David Lynch's Eraserhead -- the way one might compare hard-core porn to a Harlequin romance -- Begotten can be confounding and frustrating. But surrender to its bizarre rhythms and imagery and you'll find yourself in a new world, one that distorts your view of the real one long after the film's 78 minutes are done.

(Another apt comparison would be to the videotape in The Ring. Both share a similar style of images and editing techniques, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the makers of The Ring were influenced by Begotten.)

I don't expect you to add Begotten to your Netflix queue based on my recommendation alone. So take a look at the clip below. It's ten minutes long, but you should know by the end of the first whether Begotten is something you want inside your head. Because once you see it, that's exactly where it will stay.

(Some images may not be safe for work.)

"Ever Since the World Ended"

2001; directed by Calum Grant and Joshua Atesh Litle; written by Calum Grant

What everyone enjoys about end-of-the-world tales isn't watching the world wind down, but seeing how a small band of survivors rebuild it, and imagining what it would be like to be among them.

This is the fantasy that Ever Since the World Ended appeals to, explores, satisfies, and then improves upon. Presented as an amateur documentary, the film is set in San Francisco 12 years after an unnamed plague has eliminated most of the human race, leaving only 186 people within the city limits.

Choosing the documentary form was a brilliant move. Not only does it circumvent a lot of budgetary limitations, it allows the filmmakers to make the most of their special effects shots of eerily deserted streets, a decomposing Golden Gate Bridge, and a rusting ship in the harbor. It also gives viewers license to transform what might have been considered technical shortcomings in a big-budget film into a sense of immediacy and the feeling that what we're seeing is real.

The film opens with just enough individual recollections of the plague's history to set up the premise, then quickly introduces us to a world that is recognizable, yet radically different and sometimes humorous.

Bike mechanics are considered extremely valuable, as are those with a knack for sniffing out caches of liquor, prescription drugs and cigarettes inside the deserted city's thousands of abandoned homes and buildings. The last American Indian has grown weary of people expecting him to be some kind of mystic. Those who couldn't tolerate the demands of our current workaday world are now thriving. And everyone has lots and lots of time on their hands.

Yet people -- and their interactions with one another -- are much the same. They still enjoy dinners together, suffer petty jealousies, and engage in gossipy conversations, and it's within these very human relationships where much of the film's plot lives.

A single woman is ready to raise a child, and searching for a suitable sperm donor from the city's remaining men. A small group has decided to venture outside the city, and encounters a long-lost friend living wild in the branches of Muir Woods' canopy. A troubled community member who had left (or been chased out) has returned, presenting the survivors with the dilemma of keeping watch over him, banishing him again to become some other city's problem, or performing an outright execution.

The film's ending is both a surprise and surprisingly bittersweet, and I won't give it away here. But by the time we get there, this strange new world has become a place that looks like home. The only problem is, you have to go through hell to get there, and there's no guarantee you'll arrive. Better to watch the film and dream.

"The Dark Knight"

2008; directed by Christopher Nolan; screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan

If nothing else, The Dark Knight is loud. Throughout its hectic 2-1/2 hours bombs explode, engines roar, glass shatters, cars crash, mobs scream and characters shout at and beyond the top of their lungs. In this respect it's the perfect summer movie for both teenage boys and the hard-of-hearing.

Like all summer blockbusters, The Dark Knight excels in its technical aspects. Fans of special effects, pyrotechnics, sound design and editing, cinematography and sheer volume (in both senses of the word) will certainly leave the theater feeling they got their money's worth.

However, audiences hoping to find a compelling story amidst all the sturm und drang will leave feeling not only cold but confused, since the screenplay is little more than one massive action sequence after another.

In this installment of the series, Gotham has been overrun by organized crime. The mob is involved in a multi-billion dollar corruption ploy in cahoots with the Chinese, Gotham's crooked police force can't be trusted to fight them, and the Joker is stirring it all up -- not for monetary gain, but only because he enjoys the thrill of chaos. (Judging from the results, he surely must have been pleased.) Only Batman and the tough new District Attorney provide any hope for justice. There are several character reversals and double-crosses that seem to come out of left field, some nonsense about Gotham getting the kind of hero it deserves, and a deus ex machina device that brings the whole thing to a close. None of it amounts to much.

I was most interested in seeing the late Heath Ledger's penultimate performance as the Joker, which did not disappoint. He brings an array of vocal and physical techniques to the role that make him the most interesting and entertaining thing in the picture. He commands our attention, controlling every room he enters, filling the screen and literally crowding out the other characters. Even beneath his smeary make-up his face is so expressive, his eyes so quick and intelligent, we can almost see the synapses firing inside his head. One wishes he had not only more scenes in the film, but more roles to come afterward as well.

However, I also think a bit too much has been made of it, with some going so far as to suggest that the performance required such physical and emotional demands that death became the logical result. This is not the case. Ledger does an outstanding job, eclipsing every other actor in the film including Christian Bale, who's been known to suffer for his art as well. Ledger's performance will serve as a thrilling end to a too-short career. But this is not acting to die for.

Let me be honest. It's rare for me to go to any film on its opening weekend, especially one as over-marketed as The Dark Knight. Invariably I sit there in the theater, feeling shoveled in by all the hype, and ultimately walk out wondering why I wasted my time, patience and $9-$10.

The Dark Knight was no different. The film tells us very little about ourselves, but says a great deal about what Hollywood thinks of us. To quote Shakespeare, it is "a tale of sound and fury... signifying nothing."

"Jack Ketchum's The Lost"

2008; written and directed by Chris Siverston; based on The Lost by Jack Ketchum

The only reason I'm writing a review about this film is because it took away two hours of my life that I'll never get back, and I feel like I should at least get a blog post for enduring it.

Also, warning others about it may be considered some type of community service.

Here's the plot: small-town sociopathic teen kills two girls, gets away with it, and kills a bunch of other people four years later. In between, the film rambles for an hour and forty-five minutes before ending in a drawn-out scene of torture porn.

I was suckered in by Jack Ketchum's name on the front of the box. Ketchum has been writing horror fiction since the '80s and is finally becoming something of a brand name for his efforts, including the novel on which The Lost is based. I can only imagine that this book is not one of his best or, if it is, that the film adaptation was woefully botched.

If you're looking to be bored for an hour and forty-five minutes then grossed out for fifteen, The Lost will probably be your bucket of blood. If you're looking for something else -- and honestly, who isn't? -- I recommend letting The Lost stay that way.

The best thing I can say about this film? The DVD cover looks mighty nice against my site design.

"Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz

I've never read a Dean Koontz book. I've always been a Stephen King reader, supposing, incorrectly, that you could only be one or the other.

But when someone recommended Odd Thomas to me after hearing my novel idea, I knew I had to check it out.

Odd Thomas is the first of what is currently four Odd novels and a comic book slated for publication in June of 2008. After striking gold with one stand-alone book after another for years, it seems Koontz hit platinum with this character, and is more than happy to keep mining the vein for as long as it produces.

Good on him, I say, even though the publishing industry's desire for -- or insistence on -- series books is a trend that leaves me cold.

Odd -- whose name was supposed to be Todd before it was botched on his birth certificate -- is a twenty-year-old fry cook in Pico Mundo ("little world"), California. He's adjusted to his strange talent for seeing the dead by limiting himself to a small-town existence, where ugly deaths from murders, suicides and car accidents -- and the restless spirits they produce -- are a relative rarity. Life, for him, is just more peaceful that way, and Odd confesses he could never live in a large city, where unhappy souls are produced by the dozens on a daily basis.

And yet, despite Pico Mundo's picturesque calm, the disgruntled dead have a way of finding Odd just the same. The book opens with the appearance of a murdered twelve-year-old girl and Odd's heroic pursuit of her assailant through the town's tract homes and swimming pools.

Because of thrilling captures like this, Odd is trusted by the local sheriff as someone who can help solve -- and occasionally prevent -- crimes. So when a stranger arrives and Odd gets a whiff of his less-than-savory plans, it's practically no time at all before he and the reader are on another chase to get to the bottom of things and save the day.

Though Odd is a likeable character with a good head on his shoulders, a girlfriend to whom he's eternally devoted, and a strong desire to do right by the wronged spirits he encounters, his actions often strained my own suspension of disbelief. He laments getting involved in crime and punishment, yet seems eager to break into a suspect's house in search of clues. He enjoys the sheriff's respect and friendship, yet when confronted by a dead body in his apartment he goes to great lengths to conceal the evidence, as if the police wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt.

Koontz tries his darnedest to justify these odd reactions in order to keep everything moving swiftly forward, but in the end it required more than a bit of indulgence on my part. However, when it comes to learning from an author who's got the mechanics of plot and story down cold, there are plenty of worse examples out there to follow.

Though his writing and character work seem less polished than King's, Koontz doesn't get bogged down in the drive for literary importance that has marred some of his contemporary's latest efforts. (This may have changed, however, with the release of The Darkest Evening of the Year, which appears to be chasing some of the same ambitions.)

Still, the book is a satisfying enough read, and even though I saw the ending headed down the tracks from miles away, it still managed to be a surprisingly emotional moment for me. This was my first Dean Koontz book, but I'm pretty sure it won't be my last.

"Southland Tales"

2006; written and directed by Richard Kelly

It's hard not to open up a review of Richard Kelly's second film without mentioning his first, Donnie Darko. Released a few months after 9/11, Darko's strange mix of time travel, teen tragedy and a giant rabbit named Frank was just not the movie America wanted to see at that point in history. Even given the presence of an unknown Jake Gyllenhaal in what is still one of his best and most appealing roles.

But time passed and the film caught on after its DVD release, becoming a cult hit that challenged viewers to solve the puzzle inside a high-school romance within a satire that was all part of a larger and lovingly recreated late-eighties period piece. What audiences ignored shortly after 9/11 became, a year or two later, a very necessary and relevant film for a lot of people in their twenties and thirties.

So it's difficult to dismiss Southland Tales as a fractured and uneven piece of political criticism and speculative storytelling, put together by a hot young writer/director who suddenly found himself the Next Big Thing with a budget to match. Even though it is all of those things.

The film opens with the 2005 nuclear bombing of Abilene, Texas, but takes place three years later in a 2008 that is both comfortably familiar and eerily different. America the brave has become a country where governments and corporations profit from a climate of fear. Interstate visas are required of all travelers, black-clad cops roam the streets of Los Angeles, and a new federal entity, USIdent, now controls television and the Internet in an effort to combat terrorism.

Dwayne Johnson, AKA "The Rock," plays a movie star named Boxer Santaros who's married to a woman with strong connections to the Republican party. Only he's been missing for three days and has a girlfriend, Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Geller) who's a porn star with a public access TV show and a thriller script she's shopping around town.

Meanwhile, a radical left group known as the New Marxists has kidnapped one of the black-clad cops named Roland Taverner, played by Sean William Scott, who also plays Roland's twin brother Ronald. Oh, and there's a new source of limitless energy powered by ocean waves called "Liquid Karma" that has somehow also become a hot new street drug.

And there's a presidential election going on. And a conspiracy to release video of Boxer and his girlfriend to influence the election. And the whole thing is narrated by Justin Timberlake, playing a wounded Iraq War vet.

Or at least, I think so.

Through most of Southland Tales I felt like I was seeing a fantastic mess unspool in front of me. It was strange and beautiful and smart, like a date with a hottie who's a great conversationalist but doesn't always make sense and might just be more than a little crazy.

At times, I felt like Kelly wanted me to feel like I was watching a David Lynch film -- specifically Mulholland Drive, which also takes place in Los Angeles, plays with time shifts and dual identities, creates a mood of accelerating dread, and features a vocal performance by Rebecca del Rio. At others I saw glimpses of The Fifth Element, Soylent Green and Network.

It's not a film for everyone. But as a friend of mine occasionally says, "If you like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like." And I did.

Yes, to some Southland Tales might seem like a picture put together from the parts of two or more separate jigsaw puzzles. (It's not an unfair criticism). But just as psychologists say that fear and excitement are two different responses to the same stimulus, so too might be your reaction to Southland Tales. You may find it confusing or mysterious, sharply observed or blunt, surprising or bumpy. So much depends upon who you are and what kind of mood you're in when you see it.

One thing that's clear: Kelly's obsessions are on full display in Southland Tales, and some of them make Donnie Darko's questions about time travel seem like high-school stuff. Politics and the drive for power, entertainment and the desire for fame, the existence of the soul, personal freedom versus safety, even a character that gets shot in the eye like Frank the giant rabbit -- they're all here, writhing together beneath the heat of the California sun and under the gaze of a vast and chaotic universe.

The cast -- led by Dwayne Johnson looking like he just stepped out of a video game, and Seann William Scott looking better than I've ever seen him -- is largely made up of a dozen familiar faces from television sketch comedy shows: Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri, Nora Dunn, Will Sasso and John Lovitz, just to name a few. I have to wonder why Kelly chose these actors to populate his universe. Is he making a statement about the improvisational nature of political actions and their responses, a comment on the humorous nature of life during even the most troubling times, or merely saying the joke is on us?

Like so much about Southland Tales, I don't know the answer to that. I may have to see it again to make up my mind. Or a third time, or even a fourth.

"Being Dead" by Jim Crace

Joseph and Celice are zoologists, scientists and academics. They harbor few illusions about the meaning of life or death, seeing both as just two points so far apart on a continuum that they could conceivably be touching somewhere on the other side.

Married for 30 years, they've traveled back to the bay where they met and first made love, when a stranger finds them on the beach and brutally murders both of them.

So begins Jim Crace's Being Dead, which is both a detailed study of what becomes of two corpses left to the elements and a surprisingly tender love story that begins and ends in death.

Crace is a British writer with some half dozen well-regarded novels to his name and, judging from this book, someone who's both horrified and enraptured by humanity's place in a world that cares little for its fate.

The novel is structured as two interwoven halves. The first opens with the murder of Joseph and Celice and catalogs with detached specificity the changes their bodies go through as they first die and then succumb to the forces of nature over the course of six days. The second chronicles their meeting 30 years earlier as graduate students doing fieldwork at the same spot they would later die.

Just as their meeting was not a typical -- or even entirely romantic -- story, nor is their life or death. Crace describes Celice as something of an Amazon, tall and muscular, with a prickly demeanor; Joseph is smaller physically, but the superior one when it comes to intellect and career. These complementary aspects -- or imbalances, depending on how you want to look at it -- combine to make a marriage that is not always happy and passionate, but one built on mutual respect, understanding and, most of all, enduring love.

Reading Being Dead I was often reminded of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, another novel composed of intertwined stories that move forward and back in time and somehow manage to merge so completely that it seems everything is happening to everyone. Eventually the connections between the characters -- and by extension, us -- become so overwhelming that they almost completely obliterate the differences separating them.

Though told on a much smaller scale, Being Dead has the same effect, especially once the couple is noticed missing and their daughter, an unsteady combination of both parents' physical and emotional make-ups, strikes out to discover what's become of them.

Crace's emphasis on the decomposition of Joseph and Celice's bodies is a fitting tribute for two scientists who have always believed that death is simply another stage of life. He follows them in precise, but never gory, detail as their bodies first give way to a great darkness, then become food for crabs and gulls, grow stiff and bloat, and finally begin their return to the earth.

And yet, this clinical tone sets the reader up for some very emotional moments, such as when police are removing Joseph's hand from around his wife's ankle, which he reached out for in the last moments of life. But six days of decomposition have caused their flesh to meld, and the two must literally be torn apart. It's an image that manages to be both sickening and unspeakably sad at the same time.

Crace's British vocabulary did cause me to scratch my head on more than a few occasions. For example, I have no idea what an "unmetalled road" is, though several of them appear throughout the book. But the world he describes -- one in which nothing on earth lasts or matters except for love -- is one I'm familiar with, and it brings me a small measure of comfort to learn I'm not completely alone in it.

"Bully"

2001; directed by Larry Clark; written by David McKenna and Roger Pullis; based on the book Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge by Jim Schutze

When eight teens in suburban Florida kidnapped and beat a classmate on video just so they could post it on YouTube, America was outraged and riveted.

I was too, but less than most, because I'd already seen Larry Clark's Bully.

Clark is also responsible for the equally controversial Kids.
Like its predecessor, Bully is populated by soulless adolescents with too much time and hormones on their hands. The few adults who are present are too clueless and consumed by their own lives to do much more than pretend an interest in their kids' lives, and so they grow wild. But while Kids takes place in a grimly oblivious New York City, Bully is set in a dystopian Florida suburb of middle class tract homes and downscale strip malls.

Based on a true story, Bully revolves around a group of high-school students and dropouts who decide to kill an emotionally, physically and sexually abusive classmate. The cast -- led by Nick Stahl as the bully and the late Brad Renfro as his best friend, with Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner and Michael Pitt -- are a fearless bunch, who meet the demands of the script's blistering story and dialog as well as Clark's own coldly erotic and slightly creepy directorial style.

Disturbing and titillating, shocking and even occasionally funny, the film progresses from one scene of graphic sex, violence and/or drug use to another, yet never feels exploitive. It's more like hanging out with the worst kids in school, watching as they have sex, get high, play video games, and plot to kill the guy everyone hates most.

After inexpertly bludgeoning, stabbing and shooting Stahl's character, everyone discovers just how difficult killing someone actually is. Almost immediately the characters begin unraveling as they struggle with fear, guilt, paranoia and the impulse to avoid responsibility while assigning blame to everyone else in the group.

Bully isn't a horror film, but it is horrifying, with young and attractive monsters who turn out to be something both more and less than human. They're seductive and repellent, ignorant and far too worldly. Lost, angry, cruel, and everywhere.

"30 Days of Night"

2007; directed by David Slade; written by Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson; based on the comic book 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith

Friends and long-time readers of this blog know I think vampires are so tired they can barely drag themselves out of their coffins of an evening. That's why I skipped 30 Days of Night when it came to theaters last October.

But on Friday, with the film staring me in the face on Pay-per-View and nothing else to watch, I decided to give it a try. The story does have an interesting twist: it takes place in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in America, which (according to the film) goes without sunlight for an entire month each winter.

This single insight conjured up all kinds of fantasies in my imagination about the film. I pictured a small town in a hostile environment, its citizens caught in a month-long siege against the forces of nature, darkness and the undead. And while the film satisfied these expectations, it also steadfastly refused to exceed them in any way whatsoever.

Josh Hartnett stars as Barrow's too young-looking sheriff, who's trying to keep a lid on things while most of the town's population vacates it before darkness falls. Left behind with him are his younger brother and grandmother, a pot-growing cancer patient; a few assorted townspeople with various skills which will come in handy later on, his ex-wife, who missed the last plane out of town, and a mysterious stranger who predicts death and destruction for everyone left behind.

No sooner does the sun set than the vampires -- a group of normally dressed folks with ragged choppers and slightly feline features -- descend upon the town, wreaking havoc and drinking their fill of the townspeople's blood.

It's after this initial string of attacks -- when Hartnett and his band have set up camp in the attic of an abandoned home -- that the story fast-forwards a number of days, a technique used throughout the rest of the film which, frankly, caused me to say, "Huh?"

In the screenwriters' defense, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to show a little bit of every day during Barrow's month of darkness. In a 90-minute film, that would leave only three minutes of screen time for each day. But neither is the chosen tactic of skipping huge swaths of time -- seven, nine, ten days at a stretch -- an ideal solution. By only showing the story's high points -- i.e., the action scenes -- I found myself more involved with wondering what happened during the gaps and less interested in what was unfolding on screen.

Perhaps a better approach lies somewhere between these two extremes. With some glimpses of the day-to-day (or night-to-night, if you prefer) life of the townspeople, I might have been able to develop a deeper understanding and sympathy with these characters, and share in their sense of desperate isolation.

As it is, the film devolves into one noisy action sequence after another, with barely a moment taken to reflect on what's happened or the lives that are lost. It left me feeling disengaged from the characters and their story and, frankly, bored. In fact, it was at some point toward the final third of the film that I actually fell asleep, despite all the noise and sturm und drang.

It was Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire that first injected new blood into the vampire mythos some thirty years ago, and it seems that every film and book released since has either tried to cash in on Rice's original vision or one-up her in the reinvention game. 30 Days, with its unusual setting and intriguing premise, was obviously trying to accomplish the latter. Unfortunately, it failed to do so, leaving me to wish that the bloodthirsty undead would just die already. At least for a little while.

"The Ruins"

2008; directed by Carter Smith; written by Scott B. Smith, based on the novel The Ruins by Scott Smith

I've been looking forward to The Ruins ever since hearing late last year that it was being adapted for the screen. The novel was one of the best "horror" books I read in 2006 -- or any year -- and I was hoping the film would, somehow, be as intelligent and relentless as its source material.

The film didn't disappoint me, not much, despite what the majority of critics are saying. Yeah, some of them are faulting it for being too similar to other tourists-in-trouble films like Turistas (which I haven't seen) and Wolf Creek (which I have) and Shrooms (which I reviewed a while back). And they may have a point. But for someone who tries to avoid the stuff that's obviously born of schlock and greed, The Ruins was an enjoyable trip.

Tourists-in-trouble ought to be enough to tip you off to the film's premise. Two young, nubile couples vacationing in Mexico have tired of their pre-packaged vacation and yearn to experience something off the beaten path. An attractive German provides them the opportunity to do so via a hand-drawn map from his brother, who's gone off with a young, nubile archaeologist to explore an ancient Mayan temple. They pick up a sixth group member -- a Greek named Dimitri, to provide an early victim and hope for eventual rescue from his friends who may or may not be following in a day or two -- and strike out for adventure.

Trouble starts as soon as they arrive, and once gun- and bow-and-arrow-wielding natives have backed the group up against the temple and into the vines choking it, they're unable to leave. There's a terrific moment at this point in the film, where one of the women (Jena Malone) throws a clump of the vines at the group in frustration. She hits a young boy who's looking on, and the natives' leader promptly shoots the boy in the head. It's a shocking development that proves to the group -- and audience -- just how serious the natives are about keeping them there.

After Dimitri takes an arrow to the chest and a gun blast to the head, the rest scrabble up the temple stairs in terror. At the top they discover the remainders of the previous explorers' camp, much it covered with the same vines they saw at the base which looked -- at least to me -- like silvery-green pot plants.

Through a combination of misadventure, attempts to save themselves, and the vines' own blood-thirsty instincts, the group is picked off one-by-one while also suffering from hunger and dehydration. Despite everything at risk, the film does lag a bit in this lengthy middle section. But the episodes of amateur surgery to save one character's life -- and to remove the vines that have begun appearing beneath the skin of another -- manage to liven things up and are some of the most cringe-inducing scenes of gore I've seen for some time.

Some readers saw an Iraq war metaphor in the book, about what happens when thoughtless Americans stumble into a land and culture they know little about, with nothing to protect themselves except for delusions of entitlement. This is, sadly, present in the film in only the barest of sub-text, and would have helped bring depth to an otherwise straight-ahead tale. The book also played on the main characters' suspicions and jealousies of one another, too. Again, this is something only somewhat present in the film.

The film skips out on the book in another, more profound, way. In the novel the vines are completely lethal, something the natives are desperate to keep quarantined, and it leads to all the characters' grisly end. But the film version allows one character to escape, though we don't see anything that happens afterward. I can only believe this change was ordered for two reasons: 1.) To satisfy Hollywood's unending need for some kind of a happy ending, and 2.) Create an easy set-up for a possible sequel.

Like some vacations, The Ruins wasn't the dream getaway I was hoping for, but it wasn't a completely wasted trip to the theater, either. Like a lot of travel, it provided just enough enjoyment to make me want to go somewhere else again.

"The Invasion"

2007; directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel; written by Dave Kajganich, based on the novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

The 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- starring Donald Sutherland as a San Francisco health inspector who finds himself caught up in a hippies-turned-yuppies nightmare -- is one of my favorite films.

So it was only natural that I looked forward to seeing the 2007 version. At least until the reviews came out and The Invasion disappeared from theaters faster than aliens can colonize earth. Consequently, I had to wait until it showed up on Pay-per-View this Friday to see it.

Jack Finney's novel has enjoyed -- and survived -- four screen adaptations. In addition to the 1956 original and 1978 remake, it was also loosely adapted as Abel Ferrara's 1993 Body Snatchers. I love this kind of story, probably for the same reason that filmmakers do: because the central metaphor is so strong and flexible.

At the height of the Red Scare in 1956, the body snatchers served as stand-ins for the fear of communism. In 1978, as the Baby Boomers were losing the last of their faith in flowers and free-love, the invading aliens presaged that generation's move toward the greed-is-good ethos of the 1980s. (And it was no mistake, I think, that this was set in San Francisco, the birthplace of hippiedom.) Ferrara's version -- probably the least well-known -- is remarkable for setting the story in an anonymous military base and making the aliens an uber-army intent on conquest and conformity. (Shades of early 21st-century patriotism and foreign policy, anyone?)

The Invasion turns Ferrara's version upside down, setting the story in Washington, D.C. and casting the pods as space shuttle hijackers who only want to create a world of peace and unity. A fair enough reflection of our times, but one I wish the script had taken more advantage of. The film's D.C. setting presents all kinds of nasty tie-ins with government and the media, but this seems to be something the film only plays with tangentially. (On the other hand, the film does do a nice job with peppering small bits of news reports throughout to let us know how far along the alien invasion has come.)

Nicole Kidman plays psychiatrist Dr. Carol Bennell (named after Sutherland's character in the 1978 version). Dr. Bennell's first sign of trouble is a patient claiming that her husband has changed, one Kidman quickly deals with by prescribing an anti-psychotic and some additional sessions. But as she takes her son trick-or-treating and interacts with an ex-husband who suddenly reappears, things begin adding up pretty quickly and before we know it Kidman is plunged into the classic paranoiac's fantasy. (Again, The Invasion doesn't make enough of the similarity between what the aliens want and what Kidman does every time she writes a prescription. Another near-miss in my book.)

The Invasion does have some great moments. Just as in the 1956 and 1978 versions, there's an early scene in which an hysterical stranger runs up to Kidman's car, desperate for help and screaming that "they're coming." This iconic moment shows up again when Kidman finds herself doing the same thing on a crowded Washington, D.C. street, a smart and chilling take on the source material.

In another early scene, Kidman's character Googles phrases like "my son is not my son" and finds millions of blog posts repeating her and her client's worst fears. In fact, it's those moments when the terror isn't yet full throttle and Kidman is still catching on that hold the film's most scares and enjoyment.

But once things get going, annoyances start to take a toll. The film's editing has a tendency to jump back-and-forth during major scene transitions, something the audience doesn't need and that only ends up calling attention to itself. The casting of Kidman's son's best friend seems off-kilter at exactly the most crucial moment, when he's supposed to be menacing her in the bathroom of a train and instead seems more like the most annoying kid in class. And Daniel Craig looks much older than he did in that Bond film.

Another gripe: It seems like Hollywood serves up two types of endings these days, happy and with a twist, with rare exceptions like The Mist, which seem to cause panic in the streets and box-office rejection. The Invasion has the former, with everything returning to normal thanks to a miracle vaccine. Instead of Sutherland's chilling identification of Veronica Cartwright, all we get is Kidman haunted by the echoey repeat of a character's dinner-party speech about the necessity of evil in humankind. Meh.

And yet, there are things to relish. The aliens are faster, and attack by projectile vomiting into their victims' faces. (As he's stalking her through a large house, Kidman's ex-husband describes being on the receiving end as "like catching a cold.") Veronica Carthwright plays Kidman's client, and I'm always happy to see her and her barely restrained hysteria. And Kidman is as smooth and beautiful and vulnerable as she was in The Others.

The Invasion could be a little shorter -- at 99 minutes it seems too long by ten. This could be due to script, direction and editing not not taking advantage of the story's underlying simplicity and clarity, as well as most audiences' familiarity with it. But if you're looking for the story about what happens as zombies/aliens/whatever are taking over the world, The Invasion isn't a bad version of it.

"Right at Your Door"

2006; written and directed by Chris Gorak

I don't know what happened to Right at Your Door. I don't know why it wasn't given a larger theatrical release and why the DVD has hit video stores without any support. Could be that it hit too close to too many people's post-9/11 terrors and, as a result, was just too damned scary.

This incredibly tense apocalyptic thriller follows what happens to a happy, middle-class couple when a series of dirty bombs explode in Los Angeles. Rory Cochrane plays Brad, a musician/slacker who's recently moved into a new home with his wife, Lexi (Mary McCormack). When the film opens he's staying home to finish unpacking boxes and she's driving downtown to go to work.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Working within an indie budget, first-time writer/director Gorak -- whose previously worked as an art director on films such as Fight Club and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- keeps the focus of his story tight and uses creativity to suggest the large-scale disaster he can't show. As someone once said, it's the horror you can't see that's most frightening because your imagination is always worse than the real thing, and the film takes advantage of this at every turn.

Gorak creates an in-the-news tension and terrific mood by describing the bombs' destruction and chaos in a series of radio broadcasts that continue almost uninterrupted through the entire film. Brad first notices something is wrong when his morning news is interrupted by the urgent tone of the Emergency Broadcast System.

The phones are jammed and Brad can't contact Lexi, so he jumps into his car intending to drive downtown and get Lexi at work. He tears through the streets of his neighborhood as the radio announces additional explosions and greater destruction. When his rescue mission ends in police blockades just a few blocks away and the shooting of a man from downtown who's probably "infected," Brad returns home.

Turns out the bombs are dirty, packed with radiation, chemicals and/or biologic agents. (The film never makes the exact mix clear -- another smart choice, because it mirrors the confusion that would actually follow such an event and makes the terror that much more effective. It also helps set up the film's dark ending.)

The radio warns listeners to seal up their homes and avoid contact with anyone who may come to them for aid. Brad and a handyman from next door wait for Lexi and watch as the fallout heads their way. When they can't wait any longer, they reluctantly seal up the house with duct tape and plastic tarps, but not before Brad puts a few supplies outside in case Lexi does make it home.

Which, of course, she does, frantic and covered in ash, grateful to finally be home, terrified and enraged when she realizes that Brad has shut her out and can't open the door. Even though the story lags a bit at this point -- the first 30 minutes' screaming panic just can't be sustained indefinitely -- it soon builds up steam and interest as Brad and Lexi struggle with the reality of their situation, negotiating their stand-off and figuring out a way to survive until help arrives.

Not everything disaster-related happens off-screen. Gorak gives us some eerie shots of the Los Angeles skyline shrouded in gray clouds and a lovely but upsetting scene when toxic ash falls onto Brad and Lexi's backyard like snow.

Like Cloverfield, Right at Your Door makes a virtue of its limited perspective. But unlike this winter's big horror hit, there's not a lot of metaphor at work here. Gorak admits in the DVD's bonus materials he was inspired by 9/11. Maybe it's because his monster is all-too plausible that executives got cold feet when it came time to market and release Right at Your Door, even though it had been nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and won for its cinematography. (This last one I don't get -- if I have one criticism it's with the film's sometimes muddy look.) For whatever reason, Right at Your Door came and went with a limited U.S. theatrical release and nary a word in August of 2007, virtually guaranteeing viewers would miss it. But don't be one of them. Right at Your Door is one of the scariest films I've seen in a long time.

"Shrooms"

2006; directed by Paddy Breathnach; written by Pearse Elliott

This is what today's post was originally going to be, before that NPR story got me all riled up.

Shrooms was released in the U.S. on Feburary 1, 2008, but for some strange reason has also been playing on HDNet the past month or so. I was actually kind of excited to see that, because I'd seen the trailer a couple weeks earlier and was looking forward to what appeared to be a different kind of horror film.

And it is at first, and then it's not.

Shrooms combines The Blair Witch Project (there's that film again) with that crazy-sexy-cool LSD segment from Easy Rider. Ghosts and hallucinations? I think that qualifies as a full weekend in just about anyone's book.

The film opens with six attractive college students driving a van through the Irish equivalent of Appalachian back-country. It's shroom season on the Emerald Isle and the cast has come to par-tay!

But then weird things start happening. The van hits a strange animal in the woods and is dragged away for cleanin' and cookin' by two mush-mouthed locals, slobbering all the way. There's a legend that's told about an old orphanage nearby where a horrible massacre occurred. Oh, and something important: there's this one kind of mushroom that looks almost like the magic mushrooms they've come for, which they should stay away from because it could make them violent and go crazy and also see the future. So don't eat those ones, okay?

Early on, when someone manages to eat one of the dreaded manic mushrooms anyway, I was surprised. I'd been expecting the mix-up to happen later on and was looking forward to all the ensuing mayhem it would create, kind of like when everyone starts getting sick in Cabin Fever. When it happened, I wasn't sure whether the movie was suddenly smarter than me or had just made an error.

But following that one moment of surprise, everything else seems like an error. Soon enough good judgment takes its leave and people start making classic horror movie mistakes. They get separated. They go into dark, weird places all alone. Oh, and something important: they take strong hallucinogens in woods that are supposed to be haunted.

This last one I can forgive, because without it we don't have a movie. But the others had me looking at my watch and wondering how much longer this thing was going to last. And then there was the surprise! twist! ending! that's required by law for every horror film since The Sixth Sense.

Shrooms does have a few things going for it besides its terrific premise. The cast of unknowns makes it tougher to pick out the one or two stars who'll emerge from their adventure sadder but wiser. The cast sits around the campfire and complains about the Leprechaun series not being scary. And there's a lovely scene in the slack-jawed locals' cabin that would have made me squirm even more if I'd been able to understand what either of the actors was saying through all their dental prosthetics and Irish accents. (I turned on the subtitles, and it was worth it.)

Unfortunately, a good premise, an unknown but game cast, one genuinely weird scene and sharing one of my own deeply held beliefs isn't really enough to keep things from crashing, and Shrooms ends up feeling like the cinematic equivalent of a trip that never really takes off.

"Believers"

2007; directed by Daniel Myrick; written by Julia Fair, Daniel Myrick and Daniel Noah

Contrary to what some might think after reading this review, I'm not on the Haxan payroll. It was only a happy coincidence that Believers showed up from Netflix after I reviewed Altered. However, I'm a sucker for sets and neat progressions, so it's a nice extra that the first two reviews go from A to B and are directed by the guys behind The Blair Witch Project.

The scariest thing about religion is the possibility that it's right. Jesus will return; the world will end; non-believers will suffer in Hell for all eternity.

One of the most frightening things about religious converts – aside from their frozen smiles and corny senses of humor – is their conviction. And the possibility, however remote, that they could be right.

Believers, Daniel Myrick's first horror film since 1999's The Blair Witch Project, (and latest since 2006's idiosyncratic The Strand) takes this idea to its logical extreme. Two California paramedics, Dave and Vic, answer a call and are kidnapped by a doomsday cult just hours before its scheduled to transition from this world to the next.

The paramedics are taken to a rehabbed underground bunker run by a germ-phobic "Teacher" and locked up tight in the "Reflection Room," a washroom with strange mathematical equations scrawled across the toilet partitions. The other converts -- a collective of scientists and physicists -- talk about the ultimate truth of "The Formula" and try to convince Dave and Vic to stay with them and enjoy eternal life, which is scheduled to begin in three, two, one... Eventually they bust out, but Vic is turned into a true believer himself by the woman he tried to save (and who died) earlier.

Dave tries to escape with Vic and a little girl as the clock ticks down to doomsday or salvation, depending on which side of the religious divide you're on. Unfortunately only two of them get out alive before all Heaven breaks loose.

One of my favorite parts of The Blair Witch Project is its upsetting final shot, with Mike turned away to face the corner. I have to believe that final shot was Myrick's idea, based on the shocking final sequence of Believers, a nice twist that sets the movie and the audience on their ear.

"Altered"

2006; directed by Eduardo Sanchez; written by Jamie Nash

I was curious about Altered upon seeing that it was Eduardo Sanchez's first directorial effort since 1999's The Blair Witch Project. I love TBWP. Not only because it stays with you long after that classic final shot, but because Sanchez and his co-director, Daniel Myrick did so much -- cinematically and culturally -- with such a miniscule budget.

Altered uses a technique that fiction writing teachers have been sharing with their students for years: "start at the middle." Doing so prevents a writer from front-loading a story with too much exposition and instead forces him or her to work the explanations into the action. It almost guarantees a tale that kicks off when the action has already started and the audience is already hooked.

The film opens on an unnamed group of three men hunting in the woods at night. Where a lesser movie would spoon-feed the audience who these guys are and what they're after, Altered takes the opposite course. In doing so, the film forces us to pay attention to every detail and line of dialog in an effort to catch up with the action and makes the opening -- already fast-paced -- seem that much more frenzied. It also creates a fair amount of confusion and disorientation, putting us on equal footing with the hunters when all hell breaks look and they finally do track down, but don't kill, their mysterious prey.

The right questions can be more interesting than answers, and Altered uses this bit of wisdom to its advantage when the guys bring their quarry to the house of their friend, Wyatt. What exactly is that humanoid shaped wrapped in the tarp, a welding mask bizarrely duct-taped over its head? Why is it so important to keep it alive? Why is Wyatt so pissed that they've brought it to him? And why should no one ever look it in the eye?

As the answers surface (and it would be a disservice to reveal them here) Altered gradually unearths the mysterious 15-year-old tragedy that's deeply buried in the pasts of all four men. Sanchez and writer Jamie Nash deserve credit for deftly coordinating the Q&A so that by the time the film starts ramping up to its climax we're completely caught up and ready for the rest of the ride.

Too many contemporary horror films seem to assume a lack of attention or intelligence on the part of their audience. Altered does neither, and the result is a film that thrusts viewers into an off-balance world that feels as dangerous and alien to them as it is for its characters. This could be behind the iffy, but undeserved, reception some viewers have given this film. Sorry guys, but a horror film that's built for familiarity is a like a roller-coaster built for comfort. Neither one is very much fun.