Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Director: Philip Kaufman
Screenwriter: W. D. Richter
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy

This film is about aliens. Technically. But also, it isn’t.

This is the second adaptation of “The Body Snatchers” by Jack Finney (following the 1956 Don Siegel adaptation, also titled Invasion of the Body Snatchers). It follows roughly the same plot, where strange, plant-based life forms come to Earth after travelling across the stars, where they grow replicas of human beings in huge pods, each identical save for the removing of emotion (and so no war, no pain, no love). Their infiltration of the community they find themselves in is the scene of paranoia, of the discovery of a conspiracy, of the terror of realising that your family members may look and sound the same, but that they aren’t actually them. A small band of survivors must battle the odds when the system has been infiltrated and turned against them. The novel and original film, taking place in the midst of 1950s Red Scare McCartheyism, is as thinly veiled an allegory for America’s fear of communism as you can get, though Finney denied this throughout his life (movies such as The Thing From Another World and It Came From Outer Space also follow the trend). Both of those texts are also seminal sci-fi horror reading/viewing. The question, therefore, is how does this version stack up?

Part of the genius of this interpretation is the decision to move the action from the small town of Santa Mira (in the film)/Mill County (in the book) to downtown San Francisco. The added chaos of urban life gives a sense of menace to the spreading contamination. The allegory here is of corporations turning people into shells of their former selves, and of the destruction of the natural world – a kind of capitalist updating of the red weed from H. G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”. Roger Ebert commented that it might also be influenced by the Watergate scandal, with tapped phones and wires. Whilst this is a possibility, those features were always elements in the novel and the first film. What is certain, is that by putting this viral personality takeover in the middle of a city, the danger is far more immediate. With the first film, if it gets out of the small town, there’s still a chance. There’s a larger civilisation out there to help. Here, if you’re dead in the city, with all that manpower and all those connections, with all that modernity, there’s not much chance that anywhere else is going to last. Along with this updating, the pod-people in their growing stage are much more organic, more tissue-like, adding to the ecological themes. It isn’t as strong a body-horror shift, but perhaps comparable to the way in which the 1958 version of The Fly (starring Vincent Price) was updated for modern audiences: a reimagining rather than a remake, as directed by David Cronenberg in 1986 (ironically, also starring Jeff Goldblum).

The air of being hemmed in is all around. The buildings impose, the close proximity that everyone is to each other (and in some sequences having several of the characters together in every shot one after the other), makes the idea that the people next to you aren’t who they say they are even worse. The main cast is terrific, bringing sufficient weight and drama to a terror slowly building up as the horrific realisation of what is going on dawns on them. The little things occurring in the background add to that paranoia, and is something Edgar Wright specifically mentions as an influence on the background details for Shaun of the Dead in his DVD commentary (ironically, Wright’s body-snatching film The World’s End actually has the ending of the original novel, in which the invading force realises humanity will never be converted, which is something no actual novel adaptation has kept). The occasional shots of the garbage compactors crushing the husks of used pods comes back time and time again unmentioned but always there, and when you realise what they are, by then it’s all too late. Everything’s already over.

Speaking of endings, Kevin McCarthy (who played Dr Miles in the first film) has a cameo in this one, playing very much a similar character (but not the same), slamming on Donald Sutherland’s car and screaming ‘You’re next!’, much like his famous ending to the first film. Even if it’s not Dr Miles, it gives the impression that Miles has been wandering for years warning us of the oncoming apocalypse. It’s so iconic an original ending that one wonders how this film could possibly one-up it. And yet it does, in an ending reveal burned into the public consciousness with just sound. Sound that has drained from the world as the film runs on, with characters fleeing through the streets, their feet slamming against the road. Somehow that’s the most disturbing thing of all. The takeover of the pod people, with their uniformity, has reduced the need for talk, for going anywhere unplanned, for noise. Despite their horrifying screech, the emptiness of the sound of the world is what truly scares. The naturalness of the world has faded. Now it is simply a factory of the pods, a greenhouse for empty husks.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has everything you could want. A great cast, direction that mostly stands up (there are unfortunately some parts when Kaufman decides to go for some egregious camera movements which betray the camp B-movie roots and lodge in the cinematic throat), an all-consuming tone, and some of the most iconic scenes of all science-fiction and horror. It has to be seen to be believed, and, even with the odd misstep, remains an all-time classic.

Score: 20/24

It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023)
Director: Tyler MacIntyre
Screenwriter: Michael Kennedy
Starring: Jane Widdop, Joel McHale, Justin Long, Jess McLeod, Katherine Isabelle, Cassandra Naud

One has to wonder if a review for a film titled It’s A Wonderful Knife needs any introduction, but one must be written regardless. If you think it might have some twist to what the title would suggest, please allay those fears: it’s exactly what you think it is. Knife is a slasher take on It’s A Wonderful Life, the 1946 Frank Capra film starring Jimmy Stewart, a man who wishes his life never existed and through visiting an alternate timeline at Christmas, comes to appreciate what he had. Here we have a play on the same thing, with Jimmy Stewart being replaced by Jane Widdop’s Winnie, who stopped the Angel Falls masked killer one year before, and when ending up in a timeline where she never existed, finds the killer still on the loose, now with over 25 kills under his belt. If Winnie doesn’t stop the killer before the end of the night, she’ll never get back to her home world.

When you realise that Michael Kennedy also wrote the screenplay to Christopher Landon’s 2020 slasher film Freaky, a slasher sendup of classic Lindsay Lohan/Jamie Lee Curtis film Freaky Friday, you know what you’re in for. It’s a film that isn’t afraid to lean into the film it’s stealing its storyline from. It’s going to be pretty campy, silly in parts following teen outsiders coming together in the strangest of circumstances, with a decent production budget, and everyone knows what they’re doing. There’s never an attempt to be anything it isn’t and there are a few people who overdo the acting for the sheer joy and fun of it. Case in point, horror veteran Justin Long as the smarmy corporate businessman Henry Waters, doing his best capitalist megalomaniac impression. It’s overdone to a Matthew Lillard Thirteen Ghosts level, but so good for it. As the kids would say, he understood the assignment.

The cinematography from Nicholas Piatnik is great, full of christmas lights managing to set off the darkness well. It’s a film of contrasts, of light and dark, of neon greed shining out in a world that has forgotten hope and faith. In a film like this which is, despite the bloody slayings, warm and cosy, the atmosphere is perfectly captured. Of course, congratulations also go to the art direction by Louisa Birkin, and set dressing by Matt Carson and Jan Sikora for helping Piatnik get the lighting right with the practicals. It’s a wonderfully cohesive film in terms of its visual aesthetic, and when the blood hits the snow and the white costume of the killer, the blood is dark and visceral, which only works in contrast to the vibrant lighting. It’s a gorgeous looking film.

It’s a Wonderful Knife also isn’t afraid to go the whole way with its anti-capitalist statement. Its whole sentiment is that greed and complicit non-action in the thuggish, brutal ways to establish corporate dominance is not only manifest in physical actions, but is a kind of mental virus, capable of taking over the minds of those watching. It preys on grief. It preys on when we are at our lowest. Even those vehemently opposed to megalomaniacal corporations taking advantage of the lower classes still order from Amazon on occasion. In this way, Knife manages to take criticism of capitalist greed further than other films which might otherwise just have a statement of ‘capitalism bad’ as their fundamental premise.

But despite all this praise, there are parts that aren’t fantastic on a technical front. A few moments are very on-the-nose with their dialogue, expositionally overdoing the points we already know. The first kill is badly done, seeming like it’s cut to hide any effects work that they apparently haven’t done. Either that or it’s just badly cut. And even though Justin Long is perfectly embodying the smarmy businessman, one could say it’s overdone even past the point of campiness; overdoing an overdone performance. It’s how you take it.

So it isn’t perfect. Perhaps the messages are heavy handed, as subtle as a candy cane to the throat. But who cares? It’s not the greatest film in the world, but the main cast is great, the visuals are very Hallmark, and it’s got a cute ending. So on a cold night, if you’re fed up with the regular Christmas films, this 90 minute blast might just hit the spot for some holiday horror hooliganism.

Score: 16/24

Thanksgiving (2023)
Director: Eli Roth
Screenwriters: Jeff Rendel
Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Rick Hoffman, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Gina Gershon

There were quite a few issues with the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez exploitation double feature ‘Grindhouse’ from 2007, with Rodriguez’s film Planet Terror admittedly being the superior film to Tarantino’s Death Proof, which whilst not awful, is certainly his worst film so far. What was possibly the best part of both films were the opening few minutes, which contained mock trailers for exploitation horror films before the main feature. Out of these came Rodriguez’s Machete in 2010, which somehow has become Danny Trejo’s modern day calling card, and Hobo with a Shotgun starring Rutger Hauer in 2011. Now, twelve years after the last feature-length version, and sixteen years after the fake trailer short film first aired in the double bill, Eli Roth brings us Thanksgiving, a pure exploitation slasher flick of the greatest kind.

Following a massacre at a Black Friday sale at RightMart, the next year’s thanksgiving is rightly looked to with apprehension. Demonstrations to close down the store, comments towards the store owner’s daughter, Jessica (played by Nell Verlaque), and the return to town of her old boyfriend, Bobby (played by Thomas Brooks) are just small parts of it. The more pressing issue is that someone has stolen an axe from a mock-up of John Carver’s ancestral home, and there are a load of masks of his face being handed around for the upcoming parade. Someone is back for revenge, and this time there will be no leftovers. So says the tagline.

The poster designs for Thanksgiving have shown clearly where the film’s interests lie, as four are variations of old slasher posters, from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to Halloween (1978). The original Grindhouse short was very much a love letter to these films of the seventies and eighties. However, it would be remiss to say that Thanksgiving is simply an 80s tribute, because whilst there are moments (even referencing slightly lesser known entries like Prom Night and even Happy Birthday To Me), there’s as much praise given to the neo-slashers of the modern era. The slick stylings of Kevin Williamson-penned slashers like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer are front and centre, and Roth’s swift direction and Rendel’s dialogue make it clear that this is a modern film which isn’t interested in replicating the crackly quality of the 80s, as the film Abrakadabra (2018) did to stylistically replicate the 70s giallo. There’s as much tribute paid to old schlock like My Bloody Valentine and New Year’s Evil (80s slashers, after Halloween, took any national holiday they could to make a film around) as there is to Happy Death Day. Thanksgiving is traditional in sentiment and tropes, but modern in its slick execution.

It is precisely this balance that makes Thanksgiving so fun to watch. Yes, it’s violent to the extreme, with gnarly gore and twisted deaths, and if that’s not your cup of tea then the film won’t be for you, but this amount of red meat is to be expected of Roth, who has never shied away from ripping off body parts for the past twenty years. Yes, the formula is baked into the film’s very existence, and Roth never tries for a single second to step away from it. It is cliched to the hilt, shining its axe blade to a finely honed edge of horror formula. Yes, it never for a second tries to do a single thing which might be considered new or innovative or interesting from a standpoint of pushing things forward.

Yet that is the exact point of the film. This is a love letter to all of the teen slasher’s history, from Blood and Black Lace’s giallo beginnings to the most recent Scream films. The characters are stock but well acted, music by Brandon Roberts in the now-traditional orchestral stylings that Marco Beltrami used to great effect in Scream doing its job, and everything slots together nicely in the final product.

There’s a strong anti-capitalist message which comes and goes in varying strength depending on when the plot calls for it, and the clunkiness of its execution in this department isn’t going to score it any points, but there is, at least, something in there. It doesn’t simply use teen technology as a joke, although it also doesn’t put its full weight behind using it to give the message of the viral nature of crime and the desensitisation to violence as it seems to think it is doing. Perhaps this would be explored in a sequel, as the film certainly leaves enough scope and enough lingering doubts as to warrant it. There are no loose ends, but there’s a feeling that things aren’t all said and done.

For the most part, however, Thanksgiving does exactly what it says it’s going to. It gives a good, bloody slasher flick with confident writing and directing, and whilst it never achieves anything distinctly new, it is as monolithic a tribute to the slasher film as there ever has been, without going postmodern and meta to name-and-shame every film it stole a shot from. It feels very much like a film which heralds the end of an era for the slasher film, as the reboots of Halloween and Scream have seemed to begin to usher in a new wave of the formula. The film holds its axe high to the world and confidently, without shame, declares, ‘I am a slasher film, and I love it.’

Score: 18/24

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
Director: Emma Tammi
Screenwriters: Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, Emma Tammi
Starring: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson, Matthew Lillard

Five Nights at Freddy’s has had quite the opening weekend. According to Forbes, the family-friendly horror-comedy based on the popular survival horror video game series of the same name has set the record for highest opening day sales of any video game adaptation ever. With a domestic box office of $78million, it is also the biggest horror debut of 2023, outperforming movies from more recognizable franchises like Scream VI, which grossed just over $44million in its opening weekend, and Saw X ($18.3million). For a video game series that spans 13 games and over two dozen books, with countless hours of YouTube videos dedicated to explaining the still expanding lore, it’s not hard to see why audiences have responded so strongly. Passionate fans will no doubt get a kick out of seeing the video game come to life on the big screen, collecting all of those Easter eggs like their lives depend on it, but if you strip all of that away and take the film for what it is, Five Nights of Freddy’s fails in translating to the screen what made the video game so unnerving and popular in the first place.

With its convoluted, confusing plot and uneven tone, the film fails in striking that perfect balance between horror and comedy and camp that made recent releases like M3GAN so successful and refreshing.

In the film, Josh Hutcherson plays a version of the main character from the first game, Mike Schmidt, whom the filmmakers attempt to humanize by giving him a very unnecessary backstory. His younger brother, Garrett, was kidnapped when they were children and Mike has struggled with that loss ever since. He spends most of his time popping sleeping pills that induce lucid dreams of the day his brother was taken, convinced they hold the key to figuring out what happened to him. Things go from bad to worse when Mike gets into an altercation with a customer at his mall security job and is in danger of losing custody of his younger sister Abbey (Piper Rubio) to his estranged Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson).

Out of options, Mike seeks help from a very suspicious career counselor (Matthew Lillard) who offers him a night security job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, an abandoned family fun restaurant that shut down in the 1980s after five children mysteriously disappeared. The job is simple: stay vigilant and keep people out. But Mike soon learns that the giant animatronic animals that inhabit the vacant building come alive at night. In the game, the player must keep watch over the security cameras, careful not to miss when something moves, and they must decide when to use the lights and close the doors, knowing full well that their power supply is limited. It’s scary, and the game uses that fear to get the player to panic and to use too much power. The player only breathes a sigh of relief when the clock strikes 6 a.m. But in the film, Mike just… sleeps through most of the nights. He barely watches the security cameras, barely pays even the slightest bit of attention to his surroundings. It’s this indifference that makes the film such a slog to get through. The stakes could not be lower. Five Nights uses analog equipment as set dressing, a nod to the games, without stopping to figure out how that technology could be used to unsettle its audience.

The film doesn’t even seem that interested in the animatronics themselves, which should be its selling point. They’re rarely used to scare us. And, because we’re not frightened of them, seeing them on screen becomes less and less impactful as the film goes on. Instead, the Five Nights at Freddy’s chooses to focus on Mike and his family drama, which takes up the entire first act of the movie. Mike’s need to uncover the mystery of his little brother’s disappearance and his desire to keep custody of his sister are two narrative threads that don’t fit together and it often feels like Hutcherson is in an entirely different movie. He tries in vain to give Mike some depth, but with such a weak script his efforts don’t make that much of a difference.

Five Nights at Freddy’s might delight fans of the video game series who like when movies reference things for two hours straight, but it will probably be confusing to casual fans or those who’ve never played the games. The movie seems to assume that the entire audience is made up a rabid fans because the filmmakers don’t even bother to delve into the horrifying history of the restaurant itself or the children who disappeared. The movie doesn’t set things up because it assumes you’ve done your homework. But it’s hard to understand why they wouldn’t take advantage of the nostalgic 1980s setting, with the pinball machines and wacky colors. Instead, the movie opens with a security guard being murdered by the animatronics, which serves no purpose other than being a glorified cameo for Youtuber Markiplier, which the creator ultimately couldn’t film due to scheduling conflicts. The sequence is still in the film though, so poor Elizabeth Lial is tasked with trying to explain the creepy history of Freddy’s halfway through the movie via the clunkiest of dialog.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a movie that fails to do much of anything. It isn’t scary. It isn’t funny. And it isn’t campy. Instead of letting go and giving in to the absurdity of the premise, the filmmakers took themselves entirely too seriously and failed to capture what was so special about the games. The nods and references to the video game series that started it all might be enough to please some long-time players, but fan service can only get you so far.

Score: 8/24

In her debut feature film, would-be Cannes Palme d’Or-winner Julia Ducournau marches us through the swampy terrains of adolescence and female desire. Helmed by the talented Garance Marillier, we watch a young girl’s descent into madness and cannibalism after eating raw meat for the first time. 

This film is absolutely not for the faint of heart, but it is a careful and articulate look into the deepest depths of human depravity and desire. 

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are counting down the most impactful and memorable moments from Julia Ducournau’s monumental debut, for this: the 10 Best Raw Moments.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

10. The Beginning of Hazing

Within moments of arriving at her prestigious veterinarian school, it becomes clear that Justine (Garance Marillier) isn’t going to have an easy time fitting in. The older students, known as “the elders”, dedicate the first week of school to brutally hazing the “rookies.”

Ducournau perfectly sets the stage for this out-of-control school – the elders arrive in cloaks and ski masks, dragging the younger students out of their beds in the middle of the night. We see the younger students crawling like animals across an otherwise deserted campus as the mist envelops the quad.

Though this moment isn’t particularly brutal, it communicates the rules of this stilted society. You follow orders, you subject yourself to whatever torture in order to fit in. It’s a moment of dialed-up, tense drama in an otherwise familiar setting.

College hazing doesn’t feel so brutal if not done under Ducournau’s watchful eye. Ducournau expertly uses the unsettling and understated score to let us fully sink in to this bizarre world. 

9. The Rabbit Kidney

Here we see Justine’s first moment of corruption.

She arrives a strict vegetarian at the orders of her mother, though she doesn’t completely know why. As part of the hazing ritual, all of the incoming students are forced to eat a rabbit kidney. Justine looks to her sister, Alexia (Ella Rumpf), for help, but Alexia insists that she eat the raw meat. It turns out Alexia has been disobeying their mother’s orders from the second she arrived on campus. 

The rabbit kidney is a brilliant shift in Justine’s character. Through Garance Marillier’s restrained control of her emotions, we see a flicker of something in Justine. It isn’t monstrous yet, just the spark of an idea coming to light. 

Recommended for you: Titane (2021) Review

The film follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son Danny (Danny Lloyd). Jack has taken a job as the winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel, where he plans to work on his writing. The Shining tracks the family’s collective descent into madness as the hotel’s evils take hold of them. It is a film about family, heritage, responsibility, and the destructive capabilities of man. 

Director Stanley Kubrick’s attention to detail was unrivalled – each and every shot, every item on each shelf, and every single word that made it into the final cut of The Shining was absolutely intentional. As a result, his one and only certifiable horror has endless value in that it can be watched over and over again with each revisitation uncovering new meanings and hidden nuggets of information. The film is so densely packed with meaning and filmmaking intent that its shoot ran for 34 weeks longer than it was supposed to (51 weeks instead of the originally planned 17). The overrun delayed the production of Steven Spielberg’s adventure movie Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which was waiting to film on the same lot at Elstree Studios.

The Shining is a film that is so carefully constructed that it has formed its own lore and, consequently, a wide range of conspiracy theories. A documentary was even made about them, aptly named Room 237 (2012). Some think that Kubrick was trying to tell us that he directed the faked moon landings, others believe that the film is a retelling of the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. The rumours surrounding these readings have been given credence by the issues present during the film’s elongated production, especially those regarding Kubrick’s apparently excessive number of takes and his reported mistreatment of lead actress Shelley Duvall. Just as the lore of what is in the film lives on, so does the lore surrounding the making of it.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are evaluating all that The Shining is. We will be considering the conspiracy theories and assessing the rumours, but most importantly we will be judging the artistry of the film itself, counting down the ten most horrifying, stomach-churning and iconic moments. These are the 10 Best The Shining Moments.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

10. Mr Halloran Gets Killed

“Hello…anybody here?”

At number ten on this list is a moment that arrives towards the end of the film, after the hotel has descended into chaos.

The hotel’s head chef, Dick Halloran, has received some disturbing images of the hotel through his ability to ‘shine’ – a type of telepathic communication. After a few failed attempts to contact the hotel through their radio system, Mr Halloran gets onto a plane and begins to make his way to the Overlook.

It is made very clear earlier in the film that it wouldn’t be easy to travel to or from the hotel once the snow arrives, as the roads do not get cleared and they would need to use the snowcat to traverse them. As we watch Jack become more and more of a threat in the hotel itself, and thus understand that Danny’s plight is becoming increasingly difficult, scenes of Mr Halloran are interspersed. He is our beacon of hope, the only remaining saviour for Danny and his mother, and the pacing of his arrival plays cleverly against Jack’s inevitable “here’s johnny” moment.

As Mr Halloran enters the hotel, the camera follows, keeping a safe distance from the vulnerable man as he wanders further into the dragon’s den. This moment is so laced with tension that every echo of Halloran’s voice send a shiver down the spine as we silently pray for him to rescue Wendy and Danny. All of this hope is swiftly cut down with a beastly yell and the swing of an axe, driven straight into Halloran’s chest. This moment is horrifying – it is the only murder we see on screen in The Shining and it comes so suddenly. After we have picked our jaws up from off the floor, our attention is turned fully to Jack, his hunched frame rising slowly into frame. There is nothing standing between Jack and his family now.

Due to the poor critical reception of The Shining at the time of its release, Kubrick cut around 19 minutes of footage from the 144-minute run-time. In doing so, he removed many of the scenes tracking Mr Halloran on his journey to the Overlook Hotel, effectively taking away the juxtaposition between his long journey and swift death. It is this juxtaposition that makes this moment one of the best in The Shining. For this reason, the longer cut (widely referred to as the ‘US version’) is a more complete and suspenseful experience.

9. Danny’s First Vision – The Blood

“Tony, why don’t you want to go to the hotel?”

This is the first visually distressing moment in the film, and the first warning of things to come. In this moment, Danny is in the bathroom of his house and he is talking to Tony about going to the hotel. That’s when the blood comes…

Danny describes Tony as the little boy who lives in his mouth, but Wendy tells the doctor and Mr Halloran that Tony is Danny’s imaginary friend. Danny is talking to Tony in the mirror, wiggling his finger and changing his voice whenever Tony is replying (an acting choice that was made completely independently by actor Danny Lloyd). In the scene, he is asking Tony why he doesn’t want to go to the hotel. After a few tries asking, Danny’s eyes widen and the now-iconic image of the hotel elevators appears on the screen, gallons of blood slowly gushing forth from the door.

There has been barely anything more than a polite conversation presented thus far in The Shining, so it is particularly striking for the first piece of visual horror to come quite literally crashing in as a wave of blood.

This moment acts as the opening of the floodgates, as the introduction to the onslaught of horror that will occur at the Overlook Hotel. From this point in the film, we are marching towards something terrible, and Danny is the only character who is aware of this. This is a moment that shapes the rest of the film, introducing a sense of intrigue and dread, calling us towards the hotel whilst also informing us that terrible things await. 

The bloodied elevator shot took 3 takes to record, which is a low number compared to some of the other scenes which reportedly took over 100 takes. However, these 3 takes actually took a year to complete, due to the mammoth task of cleaning and resetting the blood. Kubrick was apparently unhappy with the first two shots, complaining that they didn’t look enough like blood. Ahead of release, Kubrick had to bend the truth and explain that the blood was rusty water so that he could bypass the rule that blood was not to be shown in trailers.

Recommended for you: The Shining (1980) Review

Many horror fans are aware of two versions of House of Wax, the macabre Vincent Price film from the early 1950s and the far more questionable one with Paris Hilton from 2005, but some might not be aware that the former was already a remake.

A film from the endlessly versatile Michael Curtiz (who directed the similar horror Doctor X the year before, and most famously Casablanca), Mystery of the Wax Museum was released in 1933 and is most interesting as a record of the short-lived two-strip Technicolor process, now just a curious artefact of film history. Yet its basic plot – a brilliant artist running a failing wax museum who is horribly disfigured and driven mad in a fire set by his business partner – is what is largely replicated in House of Wax (1953). The second remake uses the wax museum setting for its final act but little else, telling a very different type of horror story.

Pre-Code movies (the self-censoring Motion Picture Production Code, A.K.A Hayes Code, that was brought in from 1934) had the potential to be much more gruesome and provocative than those released only a couple of years later, so it may take some by surprise how far a 1933 film is able to go in terms its imagery and themes. In addition to Lionel Atwill’s sculptor Ivan Igor (great horror name) being turned into a scarred killer, the plot also heavily incorporates grave robbery, post-mortem mutilation and substance abuse. 

Mystery of the Wax Museum was re-titled and remade for the first time as House of Wax two decades later, partly in order to capitalise on the latest hot filmmaking trend: 3-D. By the early 1950s, Vincent Price became the most recognisable American horror movie star on the back of this, which serves as a great vehicle for his unique theatrical grandstanding talents. The film, the first colour 3D release from one of the big studios, was directed by Andre DeToth, a longtime (and often uncredited) Hollywood screenwriter and second unit director who ironically could not see 3D himself due to visual impairment.

Both of the first two films hit more-or-less the same story beats with Igor (renamed as Jarrod in the 1953 film) being the under-appreciated Michelangelo of wax sculpture, dedicating everything to his wondrous recreations of iconic and important historical figures, and refusing to create more carnivalesque fare like depicting serial killers and scenes of grisly violence to bring in the punters. The earlier film has the sculptor fixated on his masterwork statue of Marie Antoinette and the latter is dedicated to his Joan of Arc, but both versions of the character find and become obsessed with women who appear to be uncanny real-life representations of their idols; women they want entomb in wax as the centrepieces of their latest art installations which are secretly made up of wax-covered corpses snatched from the morgue.

House of Wax transposed the original contemporary 1930s story to an early 1900s setting to give the filmmakers an opportunity to incorporate misty, gas-lit night-time scenes, and to give the whole affair a more old-fashioned, atmospheric Gothic vibe. It’s a pretty effective horror mystery that nonetheless leans on some outdated tropes, like disfigurement causing madness and someone deviously “putting on” a disability to avert suspicion. Like Mystery of the Wax Museum, the most memorable horror scene towards the end of the film involves our damsel in distress shattering the apparently flesh-and-blood face of her tormentor to reveal the hideously scarred visage hidden beneath.

Changing the setting and some incidental details aside, like giving Jarrod a hulking, silent assistant called Igor after the original mad wax artist, House of Wax is very much a re-tread of the earlier film with better production values and effects. Despite a mixed critical reception and a somewhat old-fashioned horror movie plot, it became a massive hit for Warner Brothers, dominating the box office for weeks and enrapturing audiences with its sensationalism and technological gimmickry.

The second reinterpretation didn’t come for another 52 years and was also very much a product of its time. Like many horror remakes of the early to mid-2000s (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes), the film seems determined to explain away every last ambiguity, solve every mystery and present as much graphic violence as it can get away with. 

The 2005 film is essentially… what if House of Wax was also Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

We see a group of teenagers on a road trip that takes them through an isolated former industrial town. There they discover Bo and his brother Vincent (both played by Brian Van Holt), formally conjoined twins who are the only two living residents and have preserved their family and neighbours in eerie wax snapshots of small town life. The wax artist in this version is disfigured by an accident of birth, is completely silent, and wears a pristine mask as he takes his victims to add to his ongoing grisly art project.

Most of the film is a pretty run-of-the-mill slasher with disposable and interchangeable young people being picked off by a crazed killer in increasingly more elaborately brutal ways. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, Jungle Cruise) decides to realistically depict what boiling hot wax hitting your skin then later being peeled off would look like, and some of the bodily mutilation in the movie seems particularly unnecessarily cruel. His film is the least worth your time out of the three but is notable for having the best final act in a House of Wax film, which sees our final two survivors running from Vincent through his vast wax museum that is entirely constructed from the substance and has been set ablaze, melting away spectacularly around them. It’s an almost entirely practical sequence achieved with, among other things, a lot of peanut butter.

This remake, like the majority of similar attempts to relaunch horror franchises around this time, did not go down well. Paris Hilton’s casting was so negatively received at the time by horror fans that the Warner Bros marketing team decided, rather distastefully, to promote the movie as the place to “See Paris Die”. Roger Ebert, damning with faint praise in his review, said the film “will deliver most of what anyone attending House of Wax could reasonably expect… assuming it would be unreasonable to expect very much”. The 2005 film was not the financial success the previous iteration was, though it did spawn a modest cult following of gore hounds.

There’s clearly enough in this story to make multiple remakes seem worthwhile. The ghoulish premise, creepy atmosphere, and memorable prosthetics and effects work in each House of Wax makes them all a certain draw for horror fans, and which one you prefer will depend largely on your taste in scary movies. If you don’t mind hammy acting, then the first two films are probably better-made and are surprisingly technically sophisticated for mid-budget films made 90 and 70 years ago. The modern version offers fairly memorable gore and pleasingly doesn’t resort to CG-shortcuts very often, but it also has the most basic characterisation and is the most insistent on unnecessary exposition of the three films. Give one, or all of them a go; you’ll never look at an uncanny wax model of a celebrity in quite the same way again.

Considering these other films, it becomes immediately obvious why The Wicker Man enjoys such continued high acclaim: because it’s unique. The Wicker Man is an innovation of the sub-genre of Folk Horror in which fear is derived from our shared past and humanity’s relationship with its surroundings. The Wicker Man is a trailblazer that has been blessed with the highest form of praise, mimicry. It has been subjected to being cheaply knocked off by the 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage, imitated by the likes of The Village, and paid homage to by recent critically acclaimed horror Midsommar.

The story of devout Christian, Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward), investigating the reported disappearance of a young girl (Gerry Cowper) on the wildly liberal and pagan Summerisle off the West Coast of Scotland is not just unique but remains chilling. The Wicker Man‘s lack of jump scares and tense atmosphere indicate that the film was a genuine attempt at creating art and not just a quick cash grab, relying on crude methods to illicit shock and controversy. The production’s intellectual and artistic approach to the story of The Wicker Man means its themes not only remain compelling but prove to be relevant to the modern day.

In this Movie List by The Film Magazine, we are bringing attention to the moments in The Wicker Man that best highlight why Robin Hardy’s masterpiece remains the best of both folk horror and British horror.

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10. The Landlord’s Daughter

As Sargent Howie walks through the door of The Green Man pub, he is clearly disappointed that a routine investigation has transformed into an overnight stay, but he is not yet too perturbed. So far he has found the residents of Summerisle aloof and evasive, particularly over the subject of the whereabouts of Rowan Morrison; but it is what is to be expected from an isolated community and from those involved in possible foul play. It is only after Howie’s introduction to Willow, the daughter of The Green Man’s landlord, that the bizarre nature of Summerisle’s community is revealed as the patrons at the bar all burst into song:

“Much has been said of the strumpets of yore,
Of wenches and bawdy house queens by the score,
But I sing of a baggage that we all adore,
The landlord’s daughter.”

This tribute to both Willow’s beauty and sexual prowess not only reveals the extraordinary sexual liberation of the island but also Howie’s own prudish nature, effectively establishing Howie’s antagonism towards Summerisle’s society. The folk element of the song differentiates The Wicker Man from other horror musicals, creating a tangible relationship with the past and with nature, akin to the storytelling of other world cultures. It is a hint of what is to come, a primordial stirring within our blood.

9. Crying by the Gravestone

Overwhelmed and disgusted by The Green Man’s saucy rendition of “The Landlord’s daughter”, Howie steps outside to take in the fresh air. In the shimmers of the pale moonlight the presence of dozens of couples on the Village Green is revealed, all in the throes of making love. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

It could be expected that this display of mass public indecency will have lost some of its shock value against contemporary progressive values, but the slow motion reveal with distorted audio is almost chilling (and sensual). The power of the scene can be summarised by the single shot of a naked weeping woman embracing a gravestone. The ultimate gothic aesthetic.

Similar to “Wuthering Heights”, in which Heathcliff desecrates the grave of Cathy to kiss her corpse, The Wicker Man combines horror with eroticism, humanity with the Earth. The Wicker Man was ahead of its time back in 1973 and is still pushing the envelope fifty years on.

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When child psychologist Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is shot by one of his former patients Vincent Grey (Donnie Wahlberg), he is haunted by the fact that there was one child he was unable to help. This leads him to Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a 9-year-old boy who reminds him of Vincent. Cole is tormented by a secret that he is visited by ghosts plagued with unresolved problems from their lives. Together, Cole and Malcolm both learn to accept the unexplainable and to find closure. This eerie, sentimental, and often sweet film has become a beloved classic that earned a spot on the 2007 American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American films.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are revisiting the film’s most beautiful, disturbing, clever, and inspiring scenes. These are the 10 Best The Sixth Sense Moments.

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10. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

In one of their earliest encounters, Malcolm (Willis) suggests that he and Cole (Osment) play a mind-reading game: if Malcolm is right, Cole will take a step forward, but if he is wrong, the boy will step back. Initially, Dr Crowe makes a few correct guesses, including that Cole is afraid to share his secrets. However, Malcolm incorrectly guesses that Cole avoids getting into trouble at school. At this, Cole steps back and reveals that he got in trouble for drawing disturbing images, so his mother had to meet with his teacher. He says that now he draws rainbows because ‘they don’t have meetings about rainbows.’ Moving further away, he tells Malcolm that he won’t be able to help him and then closes off communication by leaving the room.

This moment is notable for the way it frames our perception of the psychiatrist-patient relationship. Malcolm sits in a chair whilst the camera is placed at Cole’s eye level, aligning us with the child’s perspective and making both characters appear equal. Close-ups of Cole’s feet as he steps forwards and backwards emphasise his negotiation between opening up and closing off, and POV shots track backwards as he moves away physically and emotionally to create distance between Malcolm, Cole, and the audience. This scene sets up the early tension in their relationship, and we realise here that Dr Crowe will have to work hard to earn his patient’s trust.

9. Cole’s Childhood Photos

When Cole’s mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), is gathering up the laundry one day, she stops in the hallway to examine his childhood photographs on the wall. The camera cuts to close-ups of light flares that appear close to her son’s image in almost every picture. This moment appears before Cole reveals his secret ability and serves as foreshadowing for anyone familiar with the supernatural. Legend has it that if an unexplained light flare or glowing orb appears in a photograph, then the camera has captured evidence of a ghost. In an article for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County magazine, Beth Saunders writes about the phenomenon of spirit photography, though she concedes that these orbs may be nothing more than floating specks of dust caught in the light.

It is also worth noting that Lynn is wearing a hoodie and adjusts the thermostat, indicating that there is a chill in the air. Cole later reveals that sudden cold can indicate the presence of a ghost. Furthermore, as she looks at the family photos, the pop music emanating from her walkman cuts out and the film score fades in as we leave the real world behind and enter the film’s ghost story through her perspective.

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Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) are a couple readying themselves for a big step, meeting the parents. The Armitages are a wealthy white family who live out in rural New York. Rose assures Chris that they won’t see his race, let alone be bothered by it. Chris is immediately unsettled by the atmosphere in the home.

Whilst not filled with jump scares and bloody gore, Get Out (2017) is a certifiable horror. As the tension rises, we are asked to face some blunt racism, Peele raising questions about what is satirical and what is sadly not. It’s scary enough without blood packs and a screeching score.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we are counting down the most impactful and memorable moments from Jordan Peele’s unforgettable debut, for this: the 10 Best Get Out Moments.

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10. Consider This Shit Motherfucking Handled

Daniel Kaluuya’s acting is incredible and visceral as he sinks into the comfort of his friend’s car, safe after his ordeal.

Rod (Lil Rel Howery) is the injection of humour that Get Out needs and benefits from so we are expected to laugh as he proudly announces, “consider this shit motherfucking handled.”

But there’s a bitter aftertaste, because that’s the real horror story, isn’t it? The rousing theme song builds, and we are left with the eerie feeling that this shit might never be handled.

9. You Know I Can’t Give You the Keys Right, Babe?

The climax is near, the heart is pumping. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) need to leave the house. Immediately. We have suspected for a while that Rose might have more to do with the happenings in the house than she is letting on. Chris suspects it too, but can’t let her know that while she holds the car keys.

Allison Williams’ teary eyes hardening to flint as she says “you know I can’t give you the keys right, babe” is the final nail in the coffin of her being a goodie. Williams’ emotionless face becomes one of the most terrifying aspects of the film.

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