DVD Review: BOY WONDER
By Jonathan Stryker

Michael Morrissey's BOY WONDER (2010) is the most riveting film that I have seen since Danny Boyle's TRAINSPOTTING (1996).  With a cast headed by the immensely likeable Caleb Steinmeyer as the film's protagonist Sean Donovan, BOY WONDER is an engrossing tale of a young man who witnesses his abused mother's murder as a boy and is dead-set on finding her killer regardless of the cost.  The film's title might trip up some people into believing that it is somehow affiliated with Batman or Burt Ward, but this clearly is not the case.  It is not a comic book film, though it moves and is visualized like a terrific graphic novel.  BOY WONDER has a style that is self-assured, dialogue that rings true, and ultimately raw and powerful emotion. 

Sean's mother is played in flashback by Tracy Middendorf who is no stranger to taking on the roles of abused women.  She was featured in season two of television's 24 and ended up dead in a car trunk at the hands of her crazed and abusive husband.  Here, she is seen in memory through the eyes of Sean, whose father (Bill Sage) was an alcoholic and is attempting to put the past behind him and get on with his life, imploring his son to do the same.  The trouble lies with Sean who is convinced that his father contracted someone (in particular a killer named Larry Childs, played with icy perfection by James Russo) to kill his mother to collect on her insurance policy.  This notion drives Sean into the streets with an almost superhero-like duty to save the innocents while hunting for his mother's killer. 

Teresa Aames (Zulay Henao) is the new homicide detective who crosses paths with Sean as she is trying to put Childs away for life due to a personal case.  Finding out about his Sean's mother's death, which happened nine years ago, she offers to help him.  In the midst of her curiosity, she finds out that he is researching Tricelaron, a drug that precipitates esophagus paralysis when ingested, causing the victim to suffocate.  He brushes this off as research for a paper for school, even though chemistry isn't one of his subjects.  Muhhhh-huuuu-huuuuh!

Sean becomes a self-appointed Public Avenger, lurking in the shadows to come to the aid of anyone who needs him.  When a drug dealer threatens a woman, Sean shows up in a baseball cap and hood and taunts him.  Commandeering the gun from the pimp, he kills him and a fellow drug dealer is blamed.  When a prostitute's pimp threatens to kill her, Sean beats him with a bat and shoots him dead with no compunction.  While on a subway ride home, he masks his face with black makeup and pummels a belligerent and drugged-out lunatic with brass knuckles. 

He also manages to find time to attend a party at a friend's house and gets the attention of a fellow female student, only to go medieval on the ass of the school bully who shows up to manhandle her by introducing him to a glass table and a swift kick in the face.

Sean is wracked with anger and guilt for not having come to his mother's aid when she was abused and as the film progresses it becomes apparent that there is more to this than meets the eye.  He is beginning to spiral out of control and is losing his grip on reality.  We feel for him and his tormented mind and want him to persevere.  It is a thrill to watch him dole out well-deserved beatings and killings to the filth that walks before him that has slipped through the cracks of the legal system.  When Teresa tells Sean that his perpetrator needs to go through the system of due process if ever caught, Sean responds with an eloquent disregard for the system that she has sworn to uphold that affects her personally and she turns a corner. 

The performances are terrific all around.  Caleb Steinmeyer brings just the proper dose of sympathy to the role of Sean and like most teen-agers, he appears awkward among his peers. That attitude changes when he dons his hood and cap in the darkness of the night.  Zulay Henao is very good as Teresa and the banter with her partner Gary (Daniel Stewart Sherman) is amusing.  Bill Sage is terrific as Sean's father and despite having been a violent drunk he really does appear to be contrite and set on putting the past where it needs to be.  In the film's most poignant scene, he takes Sean to the location where his mother died and apologizes for his drunken, abusive ways, pleading with Sean to forgive him.  The supporting actors are terrific, too, especially the school bully and the homeless man on the subway. 

The denouement is a true shocker, and I honestly did not like seeing the film end.  This is one film that I would love see become a series of films, with Sean getting better at killing the degenerates of society.  Director Morrissey is to be commended for making such an engaging story about a tortured youth who is trying to find his way in the world.  The film has the guts to ask big questions, such as: What is a hero?  What is right and what is wrong?  What is justice? 

BOY WONDER has deservedly won many awards at the film festivals that played at.   So far only available on DVD, BOY WONDER includes a featurette on the making of the film. 

BOY WONDER is a classic independent film on all accounts easily worthy of multiple viewings. 

Click here to order it from Amazon.com.

Look for my upcoming interview with director Michael Morrissey here at House of Horrors.

 

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Film Review: THE INNKEEPERS
By Bryan Kish
 

A quick note of welcome to Bryan Kish.  Been looking for someone to add to the team for a while now and out of no where comes Bryan.  I think you'll like what he has to say.  Many thanks to my good friend Patrick Desmond who pointed Bryan in my direction. Hopefully we'll be seeing lots of Bryan around the site.

Dave

After achieving mild success with his last horror film, 2009's The House of the Devil, talented genre director Ti West takes viewers on yet another eerie and suspenseful-- though not as scary-- journey within the haunted halls of a soon-to-close hotel with a macabre past in The Innkeepers.

The Yankee Pedlar Inn serves as the setting for The Innkeepers. The location is perfect for West, as it allows him to really dictate the mood of the film from behind the camera. The fictional hotel, set in Torrington, Connecticut, has an incredibly organic feel about it. Similar to the house used in The House of the Devil, the inn's out-of-date style (we're talking early 20th century here) and decaying walls add a level of quiet eeriness that even permeates scenes which take place during the day.

Using the "all the rage right now" premise of ghost hunting, West is able to satire current evil spirit movies and pay homage to haunted house movies of the past all in same film. Sarah Paxton and Pat Healy play two bored, disinterested late-twenty-somethings, whom, when not busy with the daily chores of the hotel, moonlight as "ghost hunters". Both are obsessed with the notion of capturing some form of paranormal activity (no pun intended) on tape. When working, if you can even call it that, Paxton and Healy exchange light and witty banter about their lives and ghostly encounters they've personally had in the hotel. The dialogue between the two keep the film humming along and really give the movie its greatest strength.

By spending intimate time with the main characters, getting to know the nuances of their personalities, the viewer has no choice but to take a vested interest in them. But whether you like them or not, well, that is entirely up to you. Paxton's rants border on whiny and her acting is stiff and awkward at times. Healy is easily the stronger acting link of the two. Kelly McGillis should also be given credit for her performance as a washed up actress who has the power to contact the dead.

With his main characters strongly established, West is then free to turn the last day of operating business for The Yankee Pedlar Inn into a suspenseful and gory ghost tale. The Innkeepers borrows elements found in classic 1950's haunted house movies and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining to great success. If one scene, which takes place in a specific room in the hotel, doesn't make you jump out of your seat, perhaps you should consider giving up watching horror movies altogether. 

While not as dark or visceral as The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is a welcome change of pace from the cheap thrills haunted house movies that are currently polluting the horror genre. West, instead of going for the easy scare or leaning on the crutch of "found" home video recordings, proves that even with a low budget it is still possible to scare up a creepy atmosphere the old fashioned way in modern times. I recommend giving The Innkeepers a watch, at the least, your stomach will thank you for Mr. West's steady camera work. 

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Film Review: CONTAGION
By Dave Dreher - FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK
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I know this one has been out a while but I just got a chance to check it out.  I was sent an eScreener so it just kind of sat on my computer for a few weeks, forgotten.  But, I stumbled across it the other night and gave it a viewing and damn, am I glad I did.

I really like this movie.

Don't go into CONTAGION expecting a high octane thrill ride like OUTBREAK.  This is not an action film.  This film is terror in it most stripped down form.  It's certainly not new subject matter, virus run amok films have been around for years.

CONTAGION does make an attempt to give us a realistic enactment of what could and most likely probably happen should a virus show up that no one knows how to control, a premise that is certainly very possible in this day and age.

Featuring an all-star cast and a powerful story line CONTAGION weaves an all to real scenario that begins with a woman returning home to her family from a trip overseas.  She's not feeling well but is happy to be home.  The next morning while buttering her toast she collapses and beings to have a seizure.  Later at the hospital, she dies.

And so it begins.

Over the course of the next one and half hours we bear witness to humanity at it's best and and it's worst.  While the medical community and government rushes to contain the virus life as we know it screams to a halt.  Martial law is enacted and all hell breaks loose.  Only a small segment of the population is immune to the disease and this virus is one fast moving, lethal bug.

The tag line for the film "Nothing spreads like fear!"  pretty much sums up the film.  There is not better cocktail for widespread panic than misinformation, fear and greed and CONTAGION intricately points out the cause and effect of all of them.

This film really held my attention and points out some glaringly obvious problems that we all already know exists.  CONTAGION points out all the flaws and shows what will happen if the unthinkable would happen to occur.  It's not a pretty picture.

I think what I liked most about CONTAGION is the fact that it didn't dumb itself down for the sake of drawing in a wider audience.  The movie is hard to follow at times and a little high and mighty with its message but it's a good message, it's a scary message and it one that we all need to listen up and pay attention too.

At the end of the film we are shown a montage that explains how the whole thing starts up and it is so creepily possible that it makes me want to lock myself in a bubble and never come out.

One thing I know for sure, after watching CONTAGION you'll think twice every time you shake a hand, turn a door knob or hear someone sneeze close to you.

CONTAGION is available now pretty much everywhere, go check it out.  Just wash your hands after handling the box.

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Book Review: NOSFERATU: THE UNTOLD ORIGIN
By Jonathan Stryker

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's 1922 film NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR holds a special place for me as I become aware of it when I was just two years into my love of the horror film genre.  I had read about the film in Darrell W. Moore's "The Best, Worst, and Most Unusual Horror Films," a book that I purchased in 1983 which became my bible for all things horror. 

On Independence Day in 1985, after making a VHS copy of Wes Craven's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (sorry Media Home Entertainment!), I headed to Holly Park Video with the hope of finding another classic horror film to savor on tape.  While perusing the titles I noticed a VHS prerecorded copy of NOSFERATU by Kartes Video Communications through their Film Classics Video label on VHS sitting on the shelf, but it was only available for purchase, not for rental. 

The oversized clamshell box caught my eye because it retailed for $19.95, far lower than the $79.95 price tag of VHS tapes that were sold only to rental stores.  I eagerly bought it up and was struck by the fact that although the film was sixty-three years old, it was still very effective and creepy.

I was not the only person to have been affected by the film.  Louis J. Pesci, the author of the beautiful and lavishly illustrated book NOSFERATU: THE UNTOLD ORIGIN, is another one of those people, and he has created a beautiful book all about Count Orlok. 

A work of fiction from the author's imagination with historical embellishment, NOSFERATU: THE UNTOLD ORIGIN begins in the 15th century in Europe wherein Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, issues a decree that practitioners of witchcraft and all peoples whose beliefs run contrary to Roman Catholicism be burned at the stake.  Count Orlok, believing wholeheartedly in The Word of God, seeks out Elsa the Witch and tries to convince her to renounce her evil ways or risk certain death.  She chooses the latter, knowing full well that she will place a curse on him and haunt him for all eternity.  

What follows is a creepy and very atmospheric tale of the life of Count Orlok, who must now roam the earth looking for human blood to keep himself going.  A moment of palpable tension occurs when the Orlok, weak from a lack of human blood, lies in a dungeon as a large spider takes up residence over one of his opened eyes for eight hours.  Get it off!!!!

Below are two samples from the book which is illustrated with hundreds of similarly beautiful and truly frightening images, all designed and drawn by Mr. Pecsi. 

What makes the story such a stand-out is how it begins with Orlok as a human being, believing whole-heartedly in the Emperor's decree, and subsequently finding himself to be cursed for all eternity by Elsa, the witch whom he tries to persuade to change her mind and give up her witchcraft. 

The text is very well-written and keeps you guessing as to what is around the corner for Count Orlok.  I must admit that the book gave me a great deal of sympathy for this poor man who has become the stuff of horror film legend, and whose look has influenced so many vampires, among them Klaus Kinski and Reggie Nalder in NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979) and SALEM'S LOT (1979) respectively.  There are plenty of truly creepy images in this book, primarily the depictions of Elsa the Witch, looking horrific after she is hanged from a tree.  The images are so creepy that they remind me of Andrew Prewett's cover art for the British horror sound effects records which always unnerved me when I was a child due to their explicit depictions of torture. 

Max Schreck's portrayal of Nosferatu in the 1922 film version is arguably the most unnerving screen version of the vampire and has haunted countless nightmares over the past eighty years.  To write a book about his origins was a truly terrific maneuver.  I highly recommend that you pick up a copy.  

You can order the book here.  There are also some neat posters and accessories that can be purchased here in addition to the book, so be sure to have a look!

Check back soon for my interview with the book's author, Louis J. Pecsi.  Here is his Facebook page.  

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Blu-ray Review: FINAL DESTINATION 5
By Dave Dreher - FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK
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I think it is officially time to put an end to the whole FINAL DESTINATION craze.  This latest film in the franchise really drives home the point that they have nothing left to say with these films.

FINAL DESTINATION 5 is basically the exact same movie as THE FINAL DESTINATION which lets face it, was really basically the same as the three films before it.  They did manage to tread a little new territory a few films back with the highly inventive way in which death kept reworking things to get its way but that ship has seemed to have sailed as well as the kills this time around seemed very forced and un-inventive.

I guess the best way to put it is this time around they are just going through the motions.

As with past entries into the series this one starts off with a major catastrophe, a bridge collapse.  It looks good, very well done.  As as with past chapters one of our principles envisions the whole ordeal just prior to it occurring and saves a group of his friends who should have perished and then find themselves being picked off one by one by death who as we are reminded throughout the film, "doesn't like to be cheated." 

Tony Todd returns this time after being absent for a few chapters, reprising his role as the coroner who always seems to be near to offer up creepy, foreboding advice in the way that only Tony Todd can.  Certainly one of the high points of the film is hearing his booming voice once again associated with the films.

If you're just looking for more of the same old, same old then FINAL DESTINATION 5 delivers.  It's not that it isn't well done, it surely is.  The FX are top notch and look great.  There is just absolutely nothing new this time around, I guess a strong case could be made that none of the sequels have really offered up anything new but for some reason it all comes across as old and stale this time around.

I actually enjoyed THE FINAL DESTINATION, the fourth one,  quite a bit, lets call it a "guilty pleasure" but in FD5 the set ups seemed to take longer, the characters seemed devoid of any depth what-so-ever and are very much just going through the motions.  Don't know how else to put it.

I'm afraid that it's the audience, not death that will not tolerate being cheated and I'm thinking the FINAL DESTINATION franchise might have just collapsed upon itself.

But hey, it's been a pretty good run.  No one can complain.  The films have made a shit load of money and for the most part the fans have eaten up the creative deaths and spectacular FX.  Who knows, they may even actually try and make another one of these suckers.  Wouldn't surprise me none.  All I'm saying is, no need too.  This series has run its course.  Hey, maybe we'll get "FINAL DESTINATION IS SPACE"  That seems to be were horror film franchises go before the die.  Better yet how about "A MUPPET'S FINAL DESTINATION.  Oh shit, I think I'm onto something!

As far as the Blu-ray itself.  It's a beautiful thing.  Looks great, sounds spectacular, got your standard fare of special features.  No problems there, that's for sure.

So, if these films have been your cup of tea, you're in great shape cause this one is exactly and I do mean exactly like the ones before it.

For me, that was a bad thing this time around.

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