Horror in the Mound

Some movies can take you by surprise. The film “New Daughter” is one of those surprises.

At a first glance, when you’re checking out the rental store, you might have come across this film. Maybe you also picked it up for a closer look. It’s got Kevin Costner on the cover wielding a shotgun in an almighty blaze. You’re thinking it’s probably a thriller, or some overly long drama.

I did.

Costner was known to make three hour films that seemed to take forever getting through. I stopped checking his movies out after “Water World.” Remember that priceless film?

But "New Daughter" is a victim of very poor marketing. Most, if any, have not heard of it. But the most surprising thing about this film is that it’s a straight up horror flick. The last person you would expect to see in a horror film would be Costner himself.

The film was given a limited release in December of 2009 without any huge audiences going for it. In fact, there is nothing on the poster or the description that gave any hinting that it is indeed a horror film. And a very good one. The story itself was based on original work by John Connelly who was known for writing mystery, horror and science fiction.

It’s almost as if the marketing folks didn’t want to touch the horror genre or hint at it in fear of being stigmatized by it. Instead, “The New Daughter” may have been mistaken for an entirely different product.

It stars a very precocious child actress being the up and coming Ivana Baquero who also starred in the film Pan’s Labyrinth which offered a stunning dark side to fantasy. She plays the “daughter” of Costner’s character in the film.

The story revolves a novelist played by Costner who settles into his new home with his daughter and son, where they begin to learn how to lead different lives after the father’s recent divorce. It is an old house located in the far south where the past seems to linger like shadows. There is a past hanging to these crumbling walls and even the surrounding forests, so isolated, remains instilled with darkness. Not even the sunlight can push away the blackness of this place. Baquero finds an odd looking burial mound very close by which is an elusive figure.

However, the building of tension and the crawling feeling of darkness makes perfect introduction to a growing horror that exists in this film. The Spanish director and screenwriter Luis Berdejo (his first film) knows how to handle mood, atmosphere. Just like the Japanese counterpart of horror films, he knows how to create an impending feeling that leaves you in a corner of shadows. If you don’t believe that the Spanish makes good horror films, check out “The Orphanage.”

There is one very effective scene with Baquero closing her window of her second floor bedroom, shutting away the silence of the night. However, in a long shot, you can see the young girl locking the window with a sharp click. Far to the right of the screen, barely noticeable, you can see movements of someone climbing the roof.

Much of the horror is hidden in shadows and stays in the interesting background of burial mounds and creatures living beneath the ground… it is almost as if the evolution of the human race has split off, inspiring something hellish, horrible. They make gifts to the gods in the form of straw dolls. They are savages that live in dirt. And their presence seems to affect the daughter who slowly regresses. There is also another back story about a previous owner who attempted to burn down the house.

The intention of these “mound walkers,” worshipping the gods, is to mate with the daughter to create another race of gods. So the vicious cycle can start all over again.

Baquero is one of my favorite actresses. Despite her youthful age, she exudes an intelligent façade in all her acting. She understands how to portray a girl who is undergoing changes in her sexuality. Every part of her drips with fierce sexuality that points to her ongoing changes in her personality. Hence, the title “New Daughter.” In fact, the film mentions the title once as part of the dialogue in a very poetic sense.

I liked this film.

Costner is very good in it too. His acting ranges involve his being a father at the appropriate age, and he clearly shows, in a downhill struggle, a man who is willing to do what he can to protect his family. Even against something he may not understand. The film works on a very indirect level with the changing daughter in connection to the demonic presence in the mound.

I would not rank this as highly as the excellent horror movie “Descent” which revolves around underground creatures that drags an unsuspecting group of cave dwellers into the bottomless darkness. But “New Daughter” still works well as it explores the family relationship between father and daughter. There are plenty good scenes between Costner and Baquero to choose from.

However, this film does deliver the goods. There is horror around every corner. The isolation of the house. The strange mound. Miles of forests. And the creatures in the ground are very well realized creations.

If anything, the underground creatures of “New Daughter” may bear a striking resemblance to those in “Descent.” Perhaps distant cousins?

There are several nice horror scenes of Baquero digging in the ground with her hands while she is at her school. Some of the scenes involving the police officer being dragged by the creatures by the side of the road at night creates a genuine atmosphere.

However, it is the final scene which invokes a great sense of horror as it ends with an anti-climax. You are left seeing the young son standing at the fence still holding the picture of his family. You can see the burning mound in the picture’s reflection after his father burned it down. You see an approaching figure in the reflection which looks like his father. But you’re not sure. But then you see, at a distance, the shrieking figure of the creature stalking the boy from behind. It’s a brilliant end which gives a Lovecraft-esque ending.

People usually like to see stories that have resolution, some sort of resolving. Not this one. This film gives an ambiguous ending that works with perfect horror. You’re left with a sense of uneasiness.

It's too bad that the film got poor circulation while the marketing genuises did nothing to promote the film. It could have gotten many horror fans to attend its theater showings.

For horror fans, this is a treat. But those who are not horror fanatics might still find the corresponding relationship between Costner and Baquero which carries the film very well. It’s definitely a sleeper film which will probably find its own following given time.

Dream Stealers

The film reacts to the senses, bashes them with images piling on more images. It is like running through a visionary maze where you can get easily lost in.

If that is the intention of Christopher Nolan's latest film, simply titled Inception, then he's hit it right on the head. He's managed to create a block buster film with a brain. Something that challenges your ideas when you are still compelled by the landscape of images that surrounds.

It is a film about ideas. Inception begins with several men trying to enter someone's dreams in hopes of pulling off a heist. In the dream, the character of Cobb played by Leonardo DeCapio searches for secrets belong to Saito, a very powerful and wealthy man.

However, the tables are turned on Cobb and his own men as the corporate owner knew they were trying to mingle with his own dreams. Instead, he wants to hire Cobb and a team to steal into the dreams of Robert Fischer Jr. who is a corporate rival of Saito... and suggest to him in the dream to disband his empire that was passed to him by his father.

The film reaches an interesting complex layering just as dreams do. There are tons of ideas in the film that surrounds the notion that you can go into someone's dreams and manipulate their feelings, their emotions, everything. Because dreams can be very inspiring.

It's the best film of the year. It is a very simple idea and yet pulls everything off without crashing. While it is very complex in is wealth of ideas, the director Nolan is able to give it some linear narrative. There's a definite story spearheading through the film. You can still follow the story with ease if you pay enough attention to it.

If you walk out of the movie for fifteen minutes, don't expect to understand it if you come back into it. The film needs your undivided attention.

What gives the story the kick is the idea itself. And what a scary thing. Dreams can be very frightening. And to think you are trapped in a dream is on the same level as falling into a coma. You can live entire lives in a dream because time moves so much slowly. It seems that Nolan has done his homework on dreams which gives it life.

There isn't a need for big special effects. It is the interesting camera work that makes the dreams work very well. And you use the FX whenever needed to create a more lucid dream world much like static state of limbo. Where the prison of dreams could trap you forever and make you remain in a corner of darkness.

But Cobb's past life interferes with the group's mission: his dead wife comes back to haunt him in his dreams. And she is like a force of fury, angry, very intrusive. And this becomes an added danger to the rest of the team. His guilt becomes a weighty thing.

Nolan puts on a very delicate film with a sharp script that makes sense. But it is the gallery of images that works so well in this picture leaving you in a confusion of dreams: lifting bridges, exploding buildings, cliffs falling into a disarray, all of this creates burning thoughts that stay inside your head long after you leave the theaters.

There is one particular scene that is far reaching and excellent. It is set inside the hotel corridors where actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt fights his way through several dream assassins. It's a very tension filled part of the film that is in closed spaces, very airtight hallways, which gives it more discomfort. But it's very brilliantly done and Gordon-Levitt spent many weeks getting into tune to accomplish this scene. It is like you're watching fight inside a spinning cage. It's one of the highlights of the film.

The film has many Batman veterans if you look around long enough. You can see Michael Caine in a short appearance, Ken Wanatabe, Cillian Murphy. They have all been in the revamped Batman film series of recent years. Not to mention the director himself Nolan who have heralded the Batman films from within the directorial seat.

There's an interesting theme going on in his films: complexity. It seems that Nolan likes to take very complex ideas and try to give them a story He did the same thing with the film Memento about a man with memory loss who tries to build life once more from shattered remains. His film The Dark Knight is a moral play between chaos and society.

But here, the film gives leverage to dreams has never been explored in this way before. It's an interesting idea here.

More interestingly, however, is the actor Leoonardo DeCapio. I have never been overly fond of the actor myself with his range of acting. But he gives his best performance here as a man who hides his wounds inside his dreams. The more you learn of him, the more he is seen as a hero with flaws. And they are serious flaws. But he has noble intentions with the things he does. He wants to simply go back to his children that were left by his dead wife.

You don't need to look any further if you want a different type of summer movie. The film is a tour of dreams that takes you to the private matters of the human soul. And it is probably the one place where you shouldn't look. Because dreams do have a way of snapping back at you. The rules are off. And everything counts on how real the dreams seem. It's quite a novelty.

The Horror of Shutter Island

Many audiences often mistakenly put a film into a different category that originally intended. A few people already called the film “Shutter Island” a psychological thriller. While it’s not far from the label, I would consider it more of a horror film than anything else.

Right away, it starts out with a foreboding atmosphere that is overwhelming as the films moves along like a freight train gaining speed, momentum. It starts out with a dramatic touch of the gothic with the surrounding waters splashing against the ferry taking the two federal marshals to Shutter Island.

What more, the lavish seas gives a feeling of loneliness as if you’re shut away from the rest of the known world.

You get the picture in the first scenes as someone describes the island in 1954… the only way you can reach it is by boat. And you can see there is no other way off it due to walls of rocks clipping around the edges. It is a deadly sight. Feels like a trap within a trap as you step on the island for the first time, leaving you with an uncomfortable feeling.

It is known that the best selling author of the novel Dennis Lehane said that his book is a homage to gothic settings such as the castle-like fortress of the prison, and he adds that it is inspired by the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Was “Shutter Island” intended as a horror film? Yes, it was.

But this is how horror films should be made. Long time director Martin Scorsese creates a very complex layering of plot that you can peel away the further you dig into the morose findings on Shutter Island. There is plenty of mood that greets the characters as if they stepped into a haunted house filled with shadows and threads of darkness that seems to choke you at every turn.

Not only that, there is also the hellish storm that slaps against the island as an angry mother would to a child. It is the same feeling of the terrible storm which often plagues the old Roger Corman adaptations of the Edgar Allan Poe stories in the 1960s starring Vincent Price… you remember the cold whispers of the storm outside, the cutting winds snapping against the windows and ghostly presence of a cemetery? You see all of these trappings in the Shutter Island movie.

There is image piling on images throughout the film. You can get the first glimpses of World War II which plagues the character U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels played by Leonardo DeCapio where there are many bodies laying stone dead in concentration camps, and everything has a grayish, grainy quality to it. You can see Daniels’ wife being blown away like ashes in his dreams as she is a victim of a fire accident which occurred several years ago. You see glimpses of “Saturn Devouring His Son” painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya offering another view of hell as the paintings were often considered ghoulish by critics. It is considered part of the Black Paintings.

There’s the nice touch with the lighthouse standing in the mists of rocks. (Though it was never explained how the characters reach the place except crossing the water). But it’s a nice image that adds to the already dreadful picture.

But it is the spiraling mystery which ensnares Daniels as he goes deeper into the mind set of the island only to find there are many things still left in darkness. And he learns more about the island--he believes a government conspiracy is being held here against the will of patients as are treated the same way by Nazi groups in the 1940s. As experiements.

You can see an appearance of Max Von Sydow playing a very secretive doctor, an actor best known as the priest in the ultra horror film “The Exorcist.” Even Ben Kingsley, who plays the head shrink in the facility, glitters with glaring menace every time he sneers, like a man hiding his thoughts.

It’s nice to see how the film twists and turns into something unexpected and it is more of a journey for the lead character who learns about something in himself. There is no place for him to run at the end of the film. And he is faced with the greatest monster: himself. The film is directed with a pivoting sharpness that drags you along through a maze of darkness.

It can be argued that the film is strictly a psychological thriller which would probably result in more viewers coming to see the film in theaters. However, the gothic type of settings along with the lead character growing more aware of his losing sanity is very much worthy of H.P. Lovecraft, whose stories always ended with an anti-climax of characters doubting themselves. And often shuddering at the insignificance of the universe around them. Calling “Shutter Island” a horror film shouldn’t be an insult. Calling it a horror film, however, would most likely bring cat calls from other critics. That's too bad.

There’s a very interesting last line Daniels makes at the end of the film: he asks whether it is better to "live as a monster, or die as a good man.” And it’s a very powerful scene. I didn’t even mind DeCapio in this film as he is trying his best to make a good performance under the directorial skill of Scorsese. I rank him along with Brad Pitt as actors who do at least try to confront very challenging roles.

But why would anyone be ashamed of calling it a horror film? It’s a perfectly good one that knows how to build tension since there's a good director adding some respectability to the genre. It’s an underrated film at best. Horror fans shouldn’t pass up a good treat as they will be given an excellent story filled with fantastic images that would make you shiver.

Music of Stars Wars

Star Wars in Concert.

You can understand why it’s so popular. It’s always there. The fanfare. It’s like falling in love again. Luke, Leia, Han, Obi-Wan, Chewy. How can you forget? I haven’t.

Which is probably why Star Wars in Concert is touring through the United States starting in Fort Myers, Fla. and now makes its way through the small corner of Green Bay on June 3. It was supposed to have taken place in one of the bigger cities such as Madison. Somehow it didn’t. It ended up in Green Bay of all places.

And it was shown for one night only in Green Bay at the Resch Center during the illuminative laser light show. Not fireworks. But close enough. And the indepedence of the Rebellion. Yeah, that's close enought too. It’s okay. We’re kids again. Don’t worry about it.

This is one way to say thanks to the fans: thank you for your years of devotion Thank you for being goofy, fun and crazy again. And thank you for all the time and love. This is their way of giving back to the fans. Star Wars in Concert is a salute to the best of us. It’s nice to see the Star Wars geeks dressing up again as their beloved characters.

The concert itself is a ninety person orchestra filled with violins, flutes and percussions using the best… the many scores written by John Williams. And it is used against the flowing landscaping of movie, music and memories. Many familiar pieces of music are used including themes for Princess Leia, Vader and Yoda along with the Imperial March. You’ve heard them before. But it continues to dazzle and amaze because of its variety… there is a greatness to Williams’ work as it has his own vision for the film, very sweeping, very original. Right from the very first drumbeat, you know damn well it’s Star Wars.

I have always thought the Theme of Yoda was one of the most beautiful pieces ever created by Williams, a very subtle, charming piece, whimsical yet sweeping in its charm. And I have always liked the powerful structure of the Duel of the Fates which can be very compelling.

Imagine how bad the films would have been if they went with the original idea of using disco music for the soundtrack. John Travolta in space? Ouch. It’s a good thing they went with the orchestra.

But here it is, the theater of music. It brings the wealth of musical ideas in which brings greatness to the films: it is the music that often breaths life to the films. Williams clearly knows what he is doing when he wrote the music for the six films. No one messes with him. It is his thumbprint of music. You can’t deny it.

And it is Anthony Daniels, best known for the performance of C-3PO, who narrates for the audience the most exceptional pieces of Star Wars history. Daniels is probably the most charismatic man in the universe. He kicks great enthusiasm into the audiences. He recounts the inner child in all of us and takes us through the imagination of Stars Wars by the hand. He gives you the best seat in the house. Thank you Anthony Daniels.

It wouldn’t be the same without him. The films have always been shot through the point of view of the droids who have been in all of films in one way or another. They are the hook of the films. They are so lovable. So the droids are in every way important as the Jedi, princesses, emperors, warriors or Wookies who change the course of the stories. Daniels elevates the films by bringing his own perception to the concert. He has a great voice which sits you right in the middle of the galaxy once again.

There are also the gallery of props which come with the concert. In a way, it is like getting a little piece of Star Wars history right here. These are many prop which populate the films. You can see several suits that were used for Kit Fisto, Plo Koon along with more familiar characters such as Yoda, Chewbacca, Darth Vader and one of the most recognizable film highlights with Han Solo in carbonation. Yep, I was right there with Chewbacca. Growl!

Yes, it’s milking the cash cow for George Lucas and his pals again. It’s just another way of forking over the whole cash crop. Doesn’t Lucas have enough money in his pocket? Isn’t he rich enough to get more money off the poor saps who continue to give in more money to the engineers of Star Wars?

That’s okay. I don’t mind. And it’s a nice way of getting together with old friends, family and bringing your kids along to see it.

At least, the music crew were very creative about it this time. They were very imaginative about bringing Stars Wars again by using a movie screen to relive the many high points of the film saga. How can you not feel the excitement again? How can you not feel going through asteroid field in the Milllenium Falcon, going to Cloud City to witness the confrontation between father and son, seeing the Death Star getting souped up in an explosion again? How can you not wonder at the powerful beauty of Leia or get caught up with the Ewoks or stormtroopers?

Sure, you a few years older, with more creaks in the bones. But you are once again zapped back to the magical world of Star Wars by becoming that kid who was hit by the hurricane of craziness once again. At least you’re with a few people you know when you’re running through the highlights of the orchestra steeped in the bombardment of powerful noise fixed together in a chorus of music. In a way, the orchestra can be much louder than the explosions that goes on in the Star Warms films.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the prequels which do figure into the six movie arc. But they’re in the legacy of film history. Whether you liked them or not. They’re part of the expansive lattice of the Star Wars myths. Thanks to Williams, Daniels, Lucas and the rest of the crew, they’re making it very much part of the culture again. Once again, they’re making it relevant to the scene in Green Bay.

It’s good fun way of going back to the memories of Star Wars history. By using the music to retell the story. There are so many ways of telling the story. Star Wars in Concert is one way.

And you can feel okay by having that that stupid grin on your face when you watch the story that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far away. In the theater of the mind you can call music.