Cirque du Freak - The Stepfather - Saw VI -- Movie Reviews
Cirque du Freak - The Stepfather - Saw VI -- Movie Reviews
Horror Movie Review Roundup - What To See This Weekend
|
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant Movie Review
Admit One… once
When best friends Steve (Josh Hutcherson) and Darren (Chris Massoglia) gain admission to the carnival of curiosities that's traveling through their generic little town, the young teens leap at the chance for some forbidden fun. In opening sequences somewhat reminiscent of the childhood 80s classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, the boys sneak peeks at freaks they ought'ent.
While Something Wicked truly was as advertised, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is relatively tame and beautified — perhaps to reflect these Twilight and Harry Potter cinematic 'tween times — making for an entertaining, but certainly not nightmare-inducing, monster adventure.
Once Steve and Darren are trapped and have fallen into the wrong hands, we learn that they are fated to become pitted again one another as pawns in the eternal war between the vampires and the "vampanese" — all suck blood to survive, but one fraction has chosen to hone the craft of catch-and-release, while the other is all about the killing.
Let's just say I'm a bit beyond the demographic of author Darren Shan's YA novels upon which the film is based (squishing three stories into one relatively short movie), but if I were to slip my feet back into my 12-year-old's Vans, I think I'd definitely love Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. As a high-heeled film critic I have a few plotting and pacing issues, but overall I've got to say I liked the actors and the characters. Also I thought the cinematography, CG, and score were dead-on.
Writer / director Paul Weitz (The Golden Compass) is the weak link here, but the movie is more than passable thanks to snazzy performances by John C. Reilly as Larten Crepsley, a world-weary yet sweet-natured 220-year-old vampire; and Salma Hayek as his girlfriend Madame Truska, the buxom bearded-lady and resident pre-cog. Other "freaks" in the ambulatory family unit include Evra the Snake Boy (nice to see Patrick Fugit doing something so different, and his makeup is great); lovelorn Girtha Teeth (glum yet winsome Kristen Schaal, from Flight of the Conchords); and the gruesome Alexander Ribs (Orlando Jones, as affable as ever).
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is worth seeing once for the kid in everyone… and the actual kids will probably think it's twice as nice.
The Stepfather
Wait till your father gets home… on DVD
Ready for another remake? There's certainly nothing wrong with the original 1987 version, but everything old is always new again. Especially in the horror genre. And while Terry O'Quinn was undoubtedly redoubtable as the title victimizer back in the day, Nip/Tuck's leaner, meaner, more handsome Dylan Walsh brings a completely different mood (he knows how to switch gears like nobody's bloody business, thanks to his long and winding stint as Dr. Sean McNamara)
In case you are not familiar with the plot, The Stepfather is loosely based upon the real-life crimes of John List (who was still at large in '87 but has since been sentenced, served, and finally slabbed). List brutally murdered his entire family, then moved on and seamlessly slipped into a fatherless household to resume is daddy duties. While Donald E. Westlake (credited with story on the original Stepfather films, and here) was doing an amped up twist on Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, today's screenwriter J.S. Cardone is going more for the 90210 vibe with a little extra teen angst. That's OK — it's what he does (Cardone wrote The Covenant and the recent Prom Night remake) — and for what it is, he does it well.
Following a stepson instead of -daughter, yet adding a little jailbait perv-factor with the boy's girlfriend (played by the adorable Amber Heard), the thought is basically the same: a wolf in sheep's clothing slinking into suburbia, a psycho amongst the sane trying to fit in and not succeeding for very long.
The R-rating of the first string of Stepfather flicks has been watered down to appeal to a larger PG-13 audience now, and it suffers from the dilution. Had the fine actors (distaff to Dylan's demonized-dad is the wonderful Sela Ward) been allowed to really bite into some meatier material, The Stepfather would have been worthy of a recommendation. As it is, I say: Wait for the DVD.
Saw VI
Open 'er up!
"Yes, there will be saws." Literally! While the first Saw film involved the blood-soaked Sophie's Choice between life-and-limb with a hacksaw, Saw VI rocks an awesome action sequence which pits a desperate woman wielding a whirring circular saw against a man who stands between her and freedom from Jigsaw's chamber of horrors. Guess who dies?
Actually, that's an unfair question because nearly everyone dies — quite horrifically — in Saw VI. This is nothing new, yet somehow the filmmakers have managed to rally from the abysmal death-knell of Saw V and come back fighting.
In case you stumbled upon Horror.com by mistake, here's the requisite intel: The Saw conceit is that John Kramer (Tobin Bell), dubbed the "Jigsaw Killer" by the police and press, murders in a much more sadistic and voyeuristic way than most: Rather than kill his victims outright or by his own hand, he traps them in elaborate situations which he calls games, then sits back and watches the terror unfold as their wit and their will to live is tested via physical or psychological torment (for example: in one of the movies, a man had to carve a hidden key out of his own eyeball in order to unlock a timer-tuned torture device that otherwise would have killed him).
My own personal taste in horror films is opposed to watching prolonged suffering and hearing people cry, beg, bargain, plead and scream. So by rights I should not like any of the Saw movies at all… but as a reviewer covering each and every one from the very start, I feel like they've assimilated into my consciousness quite seamlessly and I can put my personal biases aside and judge them pretty objectively. As such, I have to say Saw VI is one of the better entries in the series — Saw IV and Saw I are still my favorites, but the latest definitely delivers in answering all the questions in a suspenseful and ultimately satisfying manner.
Obviously I am not going to give any details away, but some of the things I liked best about Saw VI were the scenes in which John (Bell), Amanda (Shawnee Smith), Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), and Jill (Betsy Russell) all share screen time. It's a Saw fan's dream come true to not only see all the major players together, but watching the high caliber of their one-upping villainy. It's the icing!
Longtime Saw screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton have done themselves proud by incorporating a political message into the horror (along the lines of George A. Romero's success on that slippery slope) while still delivering dividends + on the deaths. On top of that, new director Kevin Greutert does something just a little bit different, and more daring, with the level of tension and the payoffs.
= = =
Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson