Halloween: a time for ghosts and ghouls and other creatures of the night to take over the streets of the nation and terrorize the townsfolk into giving them sweet, delicious treats. While this may not have been the original intent, it is definitely the most beloved form of the holiday, and one which has become perverted by the teeming masses of parental group soccer moms and increasingly brain dead little children. Over time the holiday has become pussified, with trick or treating beginning before the sun even goes down and children dressing up as Johnny Depp in one form or another instead of the more appropriate dude-with-axe-in-cranium. Luckily, some people still understand the holiday and celebrate it in it’s most enjoyable form, and one of those people is writer and director of Trick ‘r Treat, Michael Dougherty.
If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s British TV. “Coupling”, “The Prisoner”, “Doctor Who”, “Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace”, “Nighty Night”, “Spaced”… I’m a total BBC junkie. So when I slid in the DVD for the TV pilot “Rough Magik”, I was ecstatic. A British TV show (well, unsold pilot, but whatever) about Cthulhu set in the world of Delta Green, from the Call of Cthulhu RPG, just sounded awesome to me. Was I as impressed by the product as I was by my vivid expectations? Am I a nerdy transvestite with a heart of lava rock? Does a bear shit in the goddamn woods?!
I’ll admit to having not paid any attention to Paranormal Activity prior to it’s national success, as I’m not one for hand held POV films in the vain of Last Broadcast. Something about the style just feels uninteresting and oftentimes lazy to me, so I tend to avoid them. However, first-time director Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity had me intrigued by it’s sudden success with the general public. One friend of mine who had seen the film already told me that he found it difficult to sleep that night. So, driving to the local cheapo Cinemark theater, I got my $2.75 matinee ticket and made my way into what many consider the scariest film they’ve ever seen…
Jigsaw is dead. Amanda is dead. Jeff is dead. Detective Tapp is dead. Detective Kerry is dead. Detective Matthews is dead. Rigg is dead. Agent Strahm is dead. Who the fuck am I supposed to care about now? Oh, the new and slightly pudgy killer Hoffman and Jigsaw’s ex-wife Jill you say? Fan-fucking-tastic.
Meh.
In his third and final outing as director for the series, Darren Lynn Bousman took on a script by Feast writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to continue the series while leading it in a new direction. What they created was a gory, fast-paced thriller that marked a beginning to the second Saw trilogy, while shedding light (and a shitload of blood) on Jigsaw’s past.
When the cheaply-made Saw II made bookoo bucks at the box office, it was only logical to assume the sequel was on it’s way. Again it was rushed into production, this time already outfitted with Darren Lynn Bousman as director and writer, with the aid of the first’s James Wan and Leigh Whannel. This collaboration marked the end of what some might call the Saw trilogy and to many more, the end of their quality.
After the success of Saw on the festival circuit, Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate decided to sign a writer and director for a sequel as soon as possible. Taking aside filmmaker Darren Lynn Bousman and his oft-denied script The Desperate, James Wan and Leigh Whannel offered to produce his idea with a few changes under the Saw II title. Bousman accepted the offer and, along with Whannel, rewrote his script and signed on as director. The rest is (Saw franchise) history.
The Saw franchise started out as the Little Engine That Could and quickly morphed into that fucking train that makes you late to work. Starting out as an indie flick produced by Twisted Pictures and based on a previous short by director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannel, Saw was a low budget film starring two actors near the death of their careers and a whole lot of cheap sets and creative set pieces. It’s surprise success began one of the most ridiculously fast strings of sequels ever seen, as well as a resurgence for the previously obscure torture sub-genre.
I didn’t think it could happen. It really didn’t seem possible. I… I literally can’t believe it’s actually happened. When I entered that dark room to see it, I thought “there’s no way, no way it could be as bad as…” and I banished the thought from my head. It simply wasn’t conceivable. Yet here I sit in the backstage of a community theater on this cold and rainy night, able to confirm the unimaginable. The remake of The Stepfather is worse than Stepfather III.