Tag Archives: black comedy

Black-Comedy, Grade, Review, review-movie, Year

Review: An American Werewolf in London

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Theatrical Release Poster

John Landis’s horror-comedy, An American Werewolf in London, follows the tale of two backpackers, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Duance) as they travel through England and are subsequently attacked by a werewolf. The rest of the film that follows tracks the characters and their respective responses to the attack. Though comedic, Landis’s story works better is more often scary and tragic.

A lot of the humor works because it feels so “normal” and nonchalant in the absurd circumstances. Characters reveal serious information in very calm ways, which makes them feel like jokes, but the juxtaposition with the seriousness of the situation creates an unsettling feeling in the scenes that only underpins the horror. The sound choice in the movie also helped amplify this feeling and disjuncture. A lot of the songs were werewolf related and up-beat and positive in contrast to the macabre scenes proceeding the same. Often times I’d be laughing, but then feel dread upon thinking of the actual implication of what’s being said.

Furthermore, the special effects in the movie are phenomenal. Rick Baker’s make up work and practical design work makes the werewolf transformation in this movie the scariest and most spectacular I’ve seen- and the movie has now been out for close to 4 decades. It was refreshing to see real makeup instead of an overabundance of CGI.

The atmosphere of the movie, especially in the third act, feels out of step because the comedic and terrifying elements are hard to balance out. It works for the most part, but some of the more serious aspects of the movie felt less so because of the inconsistent tonal transition. This in turn made the end of the movie feel more abrupt to me, but the more I think about it, the more it makes the ending feel somber.

Rating

TLDR: An American Werewolf in London is funny and tragic. For the most part, the comedic bits serve to highlight and drive home the absurdity and make the tragic nature of the situation more amenable. It comes off unevenly at some points, but the film remains enjoyable and gripping till the end.

Final Rating: 8.7/10. If you enjoy irony, comedic juxtaposition, or enjoy great visual effects design I’d check this flick out. It was surprisingly to the point and emotionally resonant.

Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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Black-Comedy, Grade, Review, review-movie, Year, zombie

Review: Shaun of the Dead

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Theatrical Release Poster

Though Edgar Wright’s, Shaun of the Dead, has zombies and gore, it works much more as a comedy movie than as a horror movie. This movie is more of a comedic satire that wants to poke fun at zombie movies, and invites the audience to laugh along as the chaos ensues. The movie follows Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his motley crew of friends/acquaintances as they attempt to survive a zombie infestation.

The best way I could describe the movie is if you took the cast of a sitcom and then put them in a feature length movie where a zombie attack was just breaking out. Most of the times the juxtaposition of the terrifying reality of zombies with the over-the-top and almost dismissive behavior of the main cast to the same creates a subtle comedy. The excellent sound design, and more importantly song choices for most scenes was amazing and highlighted the absurdity of the whole movie. I chuckled for most of the run time, because the movie makes fun of the tropes and genre cliches of zombie movies. It’s as if the writers, Wright and Pegg, want us to join in on the “joke” with them. All the jokes are carefully woven through nuanced direction and great writing.

The film is overhanded in it’s foreshadowing deliberately. We know the characters are in for a bad time, but because we have an idea of how bad, we can let loose and just enjoy the absurd reactions to the events by the characters. There’s also heaps of subtle bits of foreshadowing and calls I already know I’ll have to re-watch the movie because upon finishing it, a lot of the earlier segments feel even more fleshed out, and I know I’ll pick up more Easter eggs.

The abundance of humor does cause some slight issues in terms of overall tone. Some of the more serious and heartfelt moments felt less impactful than I felt they could have been. At times the inclusion of jokes in these moments causes this weird disconnect which made the impact of those moments less poignant.

Rating

TLDR: Shaun of the Dead is a satire posing as a zombie movie that relishes in fun and absurdity and invites the audience to do the same. The tone is uneven at times, but that’s a small price to pay for a movie that’ll have you chuckling for most of its run-time.

Final Rating: 9.0/10. If you’re a fan of zombie movies or enjoy clever satires give this movie a go. Anyone who wants to laugh, and kind mind a small bit of gore, should also see this when they can. It’s a great time.

Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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A, Black-Comedy, Grade, Review, review-movie, Year

Review: The Cabin in the Woods

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Director(s)Drew Goddard
Principal CastKristen Connolly as Dana
Fran Kranz as Marty
Chris Hemsworth as Curt
Anna Hutchinson as Jules
Jesse Williams as Holden
Richard Jenkins as Gary
Bradley Whitford as Steve
Release Date2012
Running Time 95 minutes

Since I was re-watching my favorite horror movies for my best horror movies of the past decade list (to be released soon) , I decided to watch Cabin In the Woods one more time even though I saw it recently in my Halloween Marathon challenge. I’m genuinely happy I did because wow, did I come away with so much more than I initially saw. All the issues I had with the movie before were ideas that the movie directly criticizes and looking at the movie again with the knowledge of how it all ends proved a humbling experience. Goddard and Whedon have written one of the most ambitious and intelligent horror movies of all-time, let alone the last decade and I’ve never been so excited to have been wrong before.

I’ll keep the review spoiler free like before because this movie is best experienced knowing almost nothing going in. Even now, I think my previous review might have said too much, so I’d suggest only looking at it after watching the movie. It’ll make it even funnier. I have a lot of thoughts about the movie that I’ll write in the spoiler section here and in a piece I’ve been brewing up. Now that that’s out of the way, the movie follows a group of 5 friends: Dana, a shy nerdy girl. Typical final girl status; Marty, the fun stoner of the group who drops nuggets of wisdom; Curt, alpha but intelligent cool guy of the group; Holden, a book smart nice guy; Jules, the fun outgoing girl who’s in a relationship with Curt. Every character feels familiar at once because they’re similar to archetypes we’re all familiar with in horror, but are distinct enough to stand out. The attention to character details really shines through and makes reveals later in the movie more satisfying.

If you’re a fan of horror, you owe it to yourself to watch the movie just to see all the different homages. Now that I’ve watched more horror and expanded my palette (primarily due to this past October) I could recognize more of the mise en scene. There’s a lot of love present from the attention to detail to the way the plot unfolds. The movie deftly navigates multiple tropes, simultaneously using them, making fun of them, and being in something in addition to them. Every single actor/actress gives their all in their respective performance and the movie wouldn’t be the same without their dedication to the script. You can tell they’re having a lot of fun with the subtext at play and it makes every moment memorable. I was surprised at how much of the movie I remembered as I re-watched everything. It has a way of sticking with you because the entire experience is something wholly unique.

This is a meta- movie that requires a lot of self introspection. When I said in my opening paragraph that my re-watch was humbling, I meant that I realized that during my first viewing, I had been so caught up in perceived issues that I never considered the point of what was being said. I missed the forest for the trees. It’s not that I think my analysis of the themes before are wrong. It’s just that that my former analysis only operates one level removed from the movie and the movie goes a lot further than that. The beauty of The Cabin in the Woods is the more you think about what it says about you, the more you get out of it. It’s a movie that rewards familiarity with horror in general, but also the way that the horror market works. If you know your place in that market, you get a lot more from this movie than someone watching just for the sake of scares. The movie isn’t just meta. It’s meta-meta and it’s done for the sake of seriously critiquing the way horror is conceived of and consumed.

Thankfully, if you’re not into all of that “meta nonsense”, there’s a fun story that works purely at the level of function. Watching the tale of the group is still scary. It’s just scary in a horror comedy sense, more so than a typical slasher movie. There’s a lot of blood and gore. There are gruesome kills and serious moments. However, the nature of the movie might make those moments less scary than one would expect. Going into the movie with an open mind and no expectations and knowledge of it gives you the best chance of enjoying a fun and unique experience. I laughed myself to tears more than once and found myself genuinely admiring how diverse the layers of humor were.

Report Card

TLDRThe Cabin in the Woods is a movie that ages with experience and time. The more you think about your place in the horror industry and your own expectations, the more you appreciate the decisions Goddard and Whedon made. On the surface level there’s a lot of humorous scenes and gory fun to be had. If you’re looking for subtext or enjoy meta-content then this movie is for you. It’s unique in that it gives viewers exactly what they put into it. As a result it can work for a variety of audiences. If you enjoy horror at all, you owe it to yourself to check this out.
Rating10/10
GradeA+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion.
Go to Page 3 to view Version #1 of this review.
Go to Page 4 for Version #1’s spoiler discussion.
Go to Page 5 to view this review’s progress report .

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A, Black-Comedy, Grade, psychological, Review, review-movie, slasher, Year

Review: Scream

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1996 Theatrical Poster
Director(s)Wes Craven
Principal CastNeve Campbell as Sidney
David Arquette as Dewey
Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers
Jamie Kennedy as Randy
Release Date1996
Language(s)English
Running Time 111 minutes

” Movies don’t create psychos, movies make psychos more creative! ” No sentiment could better describe, Wes Craven’s 1996 slasher film/satire Scream. The movie chronicles the journey of Sidney Prescott, portrayed by Neve Campbell, and her friends as her small town is struck by a series of gruesome and horrific murders.

The opening scene of the movie really sets the pace of the whole film and I was shocked by the end of the movie, at how brilliantly the themes of the beginning shot are kind of followed through. Casey Becker, played fantastically by Drew Barrymore, starts her night off nonchalantly, and playfully entertains the phone-calls from her soon to be killer. But within the first few moments, the mood turns sinister and a Dutch angle is used to exemplify the tonal shift- something’s wrong.

Skip to 30 seconds to see what I’m talking about.

Introduction to Scream

This is repeated through the movie. There’s always a shift in perspective when something is off.

The visual effects were also amazing. Watching the movie, I never felt like I was watching something aged. The deaths were just as gruesome and I was blown away with how intricate some of the early deaths in the movie were portrayed.

Complimenting the narrative is one of the most imaginative scores I’ve heard in a horror film. There were a lot of songs that either served to foreshadow scenes there were to come or were just impactful because they didn’t feel like something that’d belong in a horror movie. For example, Youth of America, which sounded awesome, just felt really high octane like something you’d hear in an American Pie-esque movie, but after listening to the lyrics it just works.

Finally, the plot is amazing and filled with twists and turns, as you desperately try and figure out who the actual killer is. There were multiple times where I thought someone was the killer, just like certain characters on screen, but then the movie would do something to caution me against that belief. Then when I would least expect it, new information would be revealed that eroded my previous certainty in the situation. This describes the whole movie and that’s what it makes it genuinely scary. You honestly feel unnerved. You’re never certain what’s going to happen

The constant stream of horror references really reinforces the point and makes the movie that much more enjoyable if you consider yourself something of a horror buff. Whenever a movie is referenced, the movie usually tries to parody an element from the same which gives you cool Easter eggs. But more importantly, those allusions create expectations of certain rules characters should follow and constantly subverts them which only adds to the tension.

Unfortunately, the number of references also feels like kind of a problem at times. This may just be because I’m trying to watch the movie years later or because I haven”t seen a lot of the movies, but it almost felt like the movie kept trying to drop more and more names, and I became less interested because it started feeling too convoluted. This wasn’t a serious issue, but was something that I started feeling near the end of the movie.

Tone also felt a bit mishandled at some times- almost as if the transitions were a bit rough. The film does try to be scary, a satire, and a form of black comedy, but the serious feel of some of the scenes make comedic bits feel a bit out of place. It did work well most of the time, so I don’t think it’s too big of an issue.

Report Card

TLDRScream is filled with twists and turns and brilliantly pokes fun of and subverts tropes. You may feel a bit lost, but no matter what you’re in for in for a phenomenal mystery and a great time.
Rating9.3/10
GradeA


Go to Page 2 for my spoiler-full thoughts!

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