Saving My Old Junk: 30 Days Of Night (2007)

Remember the days before Twilight, when sparkly vampires and abdominally gifted werewolves were still just part of a crazy Mormon lady's imagination? It's hard to recall a time before the pop cultural phenomenon was promoting abstinence to hormonal teenage girls and weird adults everywhere. In 2007, vampires were still just vampires, blood thirsty, evil beasts with fangs and skin that barbecued in the sunlight. These are the kind of creatures you see in the pre-Twilight, pre-Pattinson 30 Days of Night, a movie based on the graphic novel of the same name.

My next selection from Undress Me Robot is a review of this movie starring Josh Hartnett and a then unknown Ben Foster. With the upcoming release of Breaking Dawn and the controversy surrounding it taking over entertainment news, perhaps this will help us remember the good ol' days

30 Days of Night



Now that Hollywood has exhausted its supply of comic books, it's time to move into new territory: graphic novels. Enter 30 Days of Night, a fresh take on vampires that snuck into theaters just in time for Halloween. Considering the lack of fall horror fare, audiences may welcome anything in search of a few scares. They'll find it here, even if it is in small doses.

Night begins rich with frightening promise. As the isolated community of Barrow, Alaska prepares for a month of darkness, the sheriff (Josh Hartnett) heading the town's mom and pop law enforcement (seriously, it consists of two brothers and their grandma) investigates some suspicious activity; cell phones disappear only to be discovered in a charred heap, sled dogs are slaughtered, and the power cuts out leaving the remaining 150 town folk at the mercy of a few generators. It all coincides with the mysterious appearance of a wandering stranger who foretells the coming of "Them." When "They" finally appear in the cover of night, the ensuing carnage decimates the population, leaving only a few survivors to fight or wait in hiding for the coming of dawn.

Much like Spider-Man, and less subtly in The Hulk, much of the movie's aesthetics take on qualities similar to the illustrated work. Like so many panels on a page, the camera languishes on some shots that appear picturesque. Some moments verge on tableaux as the characters are positioned against a desolate landscape manipulated to achieve a crisp, fantastic quality. At times, it almost seems as if the eerie beauty of the setting has to work overtime to compensate for the performances of the living.

Unfortunately, Hartnett phones it in as the overwhelmed young lawman, and the chemistry between him and actress Melissa George as his ex-wife falls flat in an unnecessary and sorely neglected romantic sub-plot. While the intended victims underact, the sleek, monstrous villains do the opposite. They snarl and gnash their teeth as they stalk the snowy streets, speaking cryptically to one another in some form of vampirese. At times, their exaggerated movements are like the undead equivalent of "Cats". Only Ben Foster (The Stranger) stands out in his turn as a crazy Renfield serving a new generation of blood suckers.

The best points in the movie belong to the panning bird's eye shots overseeing the first mass kill spree, where blood sprays and bodies fall anonymously far below. At least up there our enjoyment isn't ruined by the poor performances-just gore and plenty of it. With that said, the movie still manages some intense moments, and my eyes never got sick of taking in the brilliant reds and cold blues that accent the movie's predominantly white palette. But by the time the sun rises again, you might find yourself more than a little disappointed.

Grade I originally gave it: C
Grade I give it now: B (Twilight makes you appreciate things)

Saving My Old Junk: I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

Back before I started my own blogs, I wrote for a site called Undress Me Robot. I did good work for them, reviewing some of the stand-out movies of 2007. But as you can see, the thing hasn't been updated since before the last Presidential election, and I fear that my work will soon be lost to whatever death sentence is given to forgotten websites. So I'm saving my old film reviews and putting them here, where they'll be safe and sound and, like on Undress Me Robot, still read by nobody.

To stay topical, I'm releasing I Know Who Killed Me first. Its star, Lindsay Lohan, made her bad girl image even badder by recently receiving 120 days in jail for pilfering a necklace from a high-end jewelry store. In 2007, this movie pretty much signaled the beginning of her end when it comes to acting, leading to unnecessary secondary roles in crap movies like Machete and straight-to-DVD Netflix filler like Labor Pains. She might make a comeback in the just announced Gotti biopic, where she's set to play the noted mobster's daughter. I think her criminal behavior and tacky, overdone look is befitting the role of blonde matriarch, Victoria Gotti. In fact, the resemblance is a little too uncanny. Whether she has the chops to pull it off remains to be seen, but if it's anything like her turn in I Know Who Killed Me, it will be nothing less than an interesting train wreck.

I Know Who Killed Me

 

As her career prospects waned, the aging Joan Crawford found a new niche starring in B-movies throughout the '50s and '60s (Johnny Guitar and Strait-Jacket were the most notable). While these projects saw little success in their day, they are now considered cult classics. But Crawford's move stemmed from necessity, new audiences, and a little bit of insanity. So why would a young starlet at the peak of her career prematurely chose a similar path by starring in the next Showgirls? I asked myself this question of Lindsay Lohan many times during I Know Who Killed Me, a movie that even the most cocaine-influenced decision making couldn't justify.

I Know plays out like a story written by that obnoxious girl in every creative writing class. You know that girl, the one who pens edgy pieces about sordid realities she has never experienced, secretly wishing something terrible had happened to her so that she'd have motivation for her art. Apparently, the director was also aware of this as our main character, the budding young writer, Aubrey, is introduced reading the tale of a pill-popping stripper named Dakota to her high school English class. Little does she know that the girl in her story is actually her long lost twin sister. Or is she? The answers to this very question prove dumbfounding to say the least as the viewer tries to make sense out of this borderline fetish film.

The premise involves a serial killer picking off young girls and severing their limbs with a set of blue glass torture instruments (blue is a dominant color motif throughout, so blatant that Aubrey's boyfriend actually gives her a blue rose). When Aubrey inevitably becomes one of the victims, a slew of FBI agents storm the town, setting up temporary headquarters in a nearby church to mull over grisly autopsy photos and throw around half-baked theories. These scenes expose us to such priceless dialogue as "I hope we're not interrupting bingo night" and "But he didn't count on her will to live!" When Aubrey is discovered alive, albeit missing half her leg and arm, she lapses into an identity crisis, claiming to be the fictional Dakota and not the privileged uptown girl everyone is looking for. We're offered a string of possibilities ranging from hysterical amnesia to stigmatic twins, none of which pans out in this completely implausible thriller.

The quality of the movie further degenerates as we're privy to Aubrey/Dakota's point of view, the audience wincing as her digits are sawed off by a mysterious man in a dank cellar that is so creepy, it makes Buffalo Bill's back woods shack look like a bed and breakfast. The shock value of these images are not particularly new (I Know comes on the heels of Hostel, Touristas and others) but the editing parallels the brutality with lingering strip tease segments, shamelessly equating the violence with sex in an effort to implicate the audience in deriving pleasure from both. Even after the mystery has exhausted itself into ridiculousness, the movie won't be done until we witness every grueling, bone-crushing slice and uncomfortably long pole dance. We even have to stare at her bruised stumps.

 Before the bruised stumps.

While categorizing I Know as a B-movie would be a compliment, I didn't entirely hate the experience. It had an unabashed soft-core Poison Ivy quality, complete with comically overdone sex sequences. What made it truly unbearable were the creative devices the director employed to try and pull the production out of sleaziness, from color symbolism and homages to early horror fare (an operating room scene recalls the hospital sequences from The Exorcist), to heavily stylized shots. Half the time I felt like I was watching the movie underwater due to the overuse of slow motion and sound warping. But the pulsating soundtrack that ran the gamut from the sexy ambience of Trans Am to the robotic pop of The Melvins kept the mess interesting.

As Lohan boozes and skanks it up on screen, I wondered if she was consciously going for an ironic art-imitates-life portrayal (much like how Crawford's real life madness played out in movies like Strait-Jacket), or if she is just totally oblivious. Maybe she's doing it on purpose to set herself up as the next comeback kid. But something tells me she's not that brilliant.

Grade I originally gave it: D+
Grade I give it now: A- (someday, this thing will be screened in MOMA)

---