2011 – Horror Ghouls

Absentia (2011)

Posted on April 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Tricia is a woman who lives alone in a house in Glendale, California. Her husband has been missing for seven years, and the time has finally come to declare him in “dead in absentia”. This is a tough decision for Tricia, and her younger sister Callie comes to stay with her during this time. Daniel’s death certificate is being worked on, and Callie helps Tricia look for a new apartment. However, when the date for declaring him dead approaches, Tricia starts having nightmares and experiences terrifying hallucinations of him, where he appears to be angry and frustrated. Her psychologist says this all stems from the guilt she feels, but declaring him dead after all these years is still the right thing to do so she can finally move on. Callie, who is a former drug addict, tries to keep her days busy by jogging around the neighborhood, and one day she runs into a creepy tunnel where she sees a man who appears to be shocked that she can see him. He begs her to contact his son, but she assumes this man is just a confused and possibly dangerous hobo and runs off. She later comes back and leaves some food for him, but he’s not there anymore. Later, when Callie has decided to finally sign Daniel’s death certificate and get it over with, she sees a bloody and barefoot person in front of her house. When she sees that it’s Daniel, she is first a little confused as she thinks it might be yet another of her creepy hallucinations of him…but then she realizes it really is him, in flesh and blood. At the hospital, he appears to be disoriented and severely malnourished, and can only explain that he’s been “underneath”…

Absentia from 2011 is written, edited and directed by Mike Flanagan and produced by FallBack Plan Productions. It was partly funded by over 300 donors through a Kickstarter campaign, where the goal was to raise $15.000 and they ended up with $25.000 which was a bit more than one third of their final budget. Mike Flanagan has been serving several titles into the horror genre over the years, including Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Dr. Sleep (2019), the TV mini series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and many more. While Absentia is one of his very earliest work, there is actually a little bit of an easter egg here where in the psychologist’s office we see the Oculus mirror on the wall, which had been previously used in Flanagan’s short Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man With the Plan from 2006, and was later included in his feature film Oculus from 2013.

This movie is definitely a slow burner, where the mystery regarding Daniel’s disappearance and the tunnel nearby keeps you guessing and curious throughout the movie. The mood is dire and depressing, with a steady build of unease. There’s a fair amount of subtlety here, which doesn’t always work in the movie’s favour, but at other times perfectly boosts the underlying feeling of unease. Like, the small detail of seeing posters nearby the creepy tunnel of missing dogs, implying that it’s not only Daniel’s that’s gone missing in that neighborhood. The small nudge to the old children’s tale The Three Billy Goats Gruff, an old Norwegian folktale which was first published in 1844, is also a nice touch where using something from old folklore and twisting it into something else in modern time.

While Absentia is by no means any masterpiece or a must-see, it’s still a nice watch if you want something eerie and slow-paced where it’s all more about mood than substance.

Writer and director: Mike Flanagan
Country & year: USA, 2011
Actors: Katie Parker, Courtney Bell, Dave Levine, Justin Gordon, Morgan Peter Brown, Jamie Flanagan, Doug Jones, Scott Graham, Connie Ventress, Ian Gregory
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1610996/

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011)

Posted on April 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

The first film was My Little Pony, compared to what we were going to witness in The Human Centipede 2 (Eat Shit and Die), as writer and director Tom Six said with a great enthusiasm. And that couldn’t be more true. This is the film that should have all the buzz words the first one was bombarded with.

This one also takes another whole approach in terms of tone, style and plot, of little there is. This time shot in crisp black and white where we get the pleasure of meeting Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a sad existence of a human. He’s a short, middle-aged, mentally challenged and morbidly obese outcast with some even bigger, hideous eyes. Picture a morbid live-action version of Humpty Dumpty mixed with the Tweedle Boys and some bloke who shouldn’t be near any children. Martin lives in a bleak and nihilistic world with his old mother in a cramped and depressing apartment complex in East London. His mother hates his fat guts and just wants to kill him. Luckily, Martin is suitable enough to have a job as he works as a tollbooth clerk in a parking garage where he mostly spends his time watching the DVD of The Human Centipede. Yes, this is the real world, you see, where the first film was just a movie. As Martin also has a centipede as a pet, the only friend he presumably ever had, he’s is obsessed with the film and is fantasizing about himself making his own human centipede – because, after all, the film told us that it was 100 % medically accurate.

Martin starts to collect the victims for his centipede experiment of twelve people to lure them into his own warehouse. One of the victims is also fully pregnant. Yup, this nasty sequel holds no punches. But his biggest wet dream is to get his hands on the actress Ashlynn Yennie, who also starred in the first film. And in order to get her from the US to an obscure warehouse somewhere in London, Martin has a genius plan: he’ll trick her to believe he’s a casting agent for Quentin Tarantino. Yes, she’s up for a surprise.

Tom Six wanted to have more “blood and shit“ in the sequel, which lacked in the first film. And blood and shit you’ll get, in gallons. The film goes all the way, even the extra footsteps, with the brutality to put the poorest taste in the audiences mouth, and maybe pleasing a depressed Roger Ebert this time. But in the midst of the shooting of The Human Centipede 2, some drastic changes had to happen when Tom Six was told to change it to black & white to make it appear less gory. The black & white only adds more to the imagination and enhances the gritty and grimy atmosphere. And it’s still one of those films where you want to take a long shower after watching. So it works in that sense and serves its purpose. There’s a color version, to my knowledge, that was included in a Blu-ray set, which I haven’t seen.

I wouldn’t recommend a movie like this to anyone unless you have a bucket full of a sick & dark sense of humor and hate your neighbors. And having some self-destructing personality flaw, sadomasochistic behavior mixed with some strong misanthropic tendencies is a plus to fully enjoy this movie with some ghoulish schadenfreude glee. The ending goes completely off the rails and hilariously batSHIT, where the tagline 100% medically INaccurate couldn’t fit more. A real shitshow in the purest form where it’s OK to have a sadistic laugh or two. I hope that the real centipede they used in some scenes wasn’t harmed though.

Fun trivia: The director views it as an anti-bullying film and tweeted – It should be mandatory to watch THC2 in school classes…It deals with a character that is bullied and what to do! And a high school teacher in Tennessee did just that by showing the film to her class. After she was suspended, Tom Six gave her an autographed copy of the film.

Tom Six followed up with the third film, The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence). It was, of course, like the others, banned due to highly explicit sexual violence, as well as an abundance of potential obscenity. This was Six’s attempt to make a pure “comedy“ in some bizarre sitcom-style, where I’m inclined to believe that the film was banned because people died of the painfully cringe humor more than anything – and seeing Dieter Laser in a full non-stop psychotic meltdown-mode, while trying to commit suicide in almost every scene by getting his blood pressure as high as possible. The centipede aspects are shoehorned in at the last minute, which makes the trilogy anticlimactic like a quick, dry fart. Watch the first two.

I can also mention that Tom Six’s newest film is called The Onania Club – which is about a group of elite upper class women in Hollywood who get their pussy wet and horny by witnessing others’ life tragedies, all from the extreme pleasures of seeing images of holocaust victims to people dying of cancer. And judging from the trailer, it looks as cheap and amateurish as a YouTube skit. It was originally set to be released back in 2017, but has been further delayed because there isn’t a single distributor on the planet who wants to touch it. And if the film can’t match any standards even for a company like Wild Eye Releasing, then it has to be worse than herpes. The Human Centipede films, however, are mostly out-of-print but can be found on eBay.

Writer and director: Tom Six
Country & year: Netherlands, USA, 2011
Actors: Laurence R. Harvey, Ashlynn Yennie, Maddi Black, Kandace Caine, Dominic Borrelli, Lucas Hansen, Lee Nicholas Harris, Dan Burman, Daniel Jude Gennis, Georgia Goodrick, Emma Lock
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1530509/

The Awakening (2011)

Posted on December 19, 2023 by HorrorGhouls

It’s 1921, and the author Florence Cathcart is working with the police in order to expose spiritualist fraud. During a “séance” she reveals all the medium’s tricks, but instead of being shown gratitude from the grieving mother who hoped to get in contact with her deceased child, she is instead met with a slap in the face. Some people would rather live in delusion, apparently. Upon arriving back home, she is visited by a guy called Robert Mallory, who wants her to investigate the sightings of a ghost boy who has been seen at the boy’s boarding school in Cumbria where he is a teacher. 20 years earlier, the school had been a private home. Upon arriving at the school, Florence meets the housekeeper, a woman named Maud Hill, who is a big fan of her book and says she keeps it right alongside her bible. Which is a bit ironic, considering Florence’s book is founded in skepticism…oh well. When Florence starts investigating, she first thinks the so-called supernatural events are nothing but children’s shenanigans, but soon she finds that the old house holds many secrets, and both recent events and those from the past slowly start unveiling themselves.

The Awakening is a British supernatural drama-horror film from 2011, directed by Nick Murphy and written by Stephen Volk (who also wrote Ghostwatch and The Guardian) and Murphy. It was shot on location in the United Kingdom, in Trinity Church Square London, Berwickshire, East Lothian, Lyme Park in Cheshire and Manderston House in Manderston. While the outside is Manderston House, the inside of the school was filmed in Marchmont House, both situated on the outskirts of Duns in the Scottish Borders.

The film is very much what you would expect, both from its description and first glimpses: a ghost story with a certain elegance, more drama than horror, but upheld with strong performances, a continuous build-up of mystery, and gorgeous cinematography. You could say that the movie is a little bit in the same category as The Others and The Orphanage. The main character is steeped with personal conflicts and grievances, with old secrets waiting to be revealed. It is told early in the film that Florence’s fiancé died during the war, and Robert has his fair share of issues after being traumatized by the war. With the story set in the early 1920’s, it’s a time where people had gotten used to an abundance of death both from the war and the influenza (Spanish Flu) that killed a lot of people during those times. And of course, some shady characters are thrown in as well: a sadistic school teacher, and a creepy groundskeeper who is very obviously up to no good.

Like in many a classic ghost story, the atmosphere is reliant on the surroundings, and here we get plenty of old buildings with all kinds of dark, creepy corners and ominous-looking paintings covering the walls. Much of what is happening is rather subtle, but there are some scenes with an old doll house which is quite effective. The Awakening is a classic, old-fashioned ghost story that won’t keep you awake at night, but it’s overall a nice addition to any collection of supernatural ghost horror movies.

Director: Nick Murphy
Writers: Stephen Volk, Nick Murphy
Country & year: UK, 2014
Actors: Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Shaun Dooley, Joseph Mawle, Diana Kent, Richard Durden, ohn Shrapnel, Cal MacAninch, Lucy Cohu, Anastasia Hille
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1687901/

Livide (2011)

Posted on October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 by HorrorGhouls

The teenage girl Lucie (Chloé Coulloud) lives in a small sleepy seaside town where she has her first day as a care-worker, assisted by Catherine. One of the posts is in an old, overgrown mansion owned by the ghoulish-looking old lady, Jessel (Béatrice Dalle), who rots in her bed while breathing through a ventilator in a coma. We learn that she was once a sadistic ballet instructor, but most importantly, she has a key around her neck that is rumored to open a treasure hidden somewhere in the house. And Lucie is keen to get her hands on the treasure so that she and her boyfriend can look forward to a better future. She also lives at home with her father after her mother committed suicide, and their relationship is tense.

It also happens to be Halloween and what could be more appropriate than spending the night treasure hunting in a big old house? Lucie, along with her boyfriend and another guy, enters the house from a basement window and sneaks into the bedroom to get the key, and… well, it doesn’t go so smooth from here on, as they get trapped inside the house like a survival-horror game after they encounter the “treasure” which isn’t exactly what they expected.

So this is the follow-up to Inside by the french duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. If you expect another rerun with non-stop violence in the purest New French Extremity ways, you might get mildly disappointed. Livide relies more on dim atmosphere surrounded by an old Victorian mansion filled with dust, cobwebs, probably a strong odor of mold, and some obscure history from a dark, twisted fairy tale. And I would recommend wearing shoes with some strong soles as the basement is filled with trash, clutter and whatnot from floor to ceiling, which makes Ed Gein look like a compulsive cleaner.

And with Inside, Livide and The Deep House, it’s fair to say that the duo is at their right element when it comes to haunted house scenarios. While their scripts aren’t always their strongest side, they surely know how to create a creepy, eerie, and sometimes claustrophobic atmosphere. Livide works mostly as a visual treat where the inspirations from Italian horror filmmakers Argento and Bava shines through as it slides further into a deep, vivid gothic nightmare. It’s gloomy, melancholic and poetic with an experimental third act, to say the least, and the ending is always open for interpretation. And yes, there’s gore. And it tastes delicious. Just be a little patient.

Writers and directors: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury
Country & year: France, 2011
Actors: Chloé Coulloud, Félix Moati, Jérémy Kapone, Catherine Jacob, Béatrice Dalle, Chloé Marcq, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Loïc Berthézène, Joël Cudennec
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1727516/

The Tunnel (2011)

Posted on March 11, 2022September 15, 2023 by HorrorGhouls

The New South Wales State government plans to recycle the huge amounts of trapped water in a network of abandoned train tunnels. However, these plans suddenly come to a halt, and publicly no one is ever told why. Rumors are spreading, like how homeless people using the tunnels end up going missing. This brings a young journalist, Natasha, to start an investigation into what she thinks is some kind of government cover-up. She and her crew decide to enter the tunnels and look for answers, but after being refused entry by a security guard, they do of course find an alternative entrance into the place. While exploring the tunnels, they start hearing strange noises through the audio headphones, and when one of the crew members go missing they eventually realize that they might not be alone in these deep, dark tunnels.

The Tunnel is a crowd-funded Australian horror film made in the mockumentary style (faux documentary), directed by Carlo Ledesma and written by Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey. While found footage movies have pretty much become dime-a-dozen these days, it is still a format that can be quite effective. By the time of this movie’s release back in 2011, Australia already had an other gem in their mockumentary-horror repertoire: Lake Mungo from 2008, a movie that’s mostly been obscure and little known but have had some kind of re-discovery as of late. While Lake Mungo is a movie that plays more on loss and grief with some supernatural vibes underneath, The Tunnel hits heavier on the creep-keys with atmospheric scenery and things going wrong in the dark. It does have a fair amount of creep factor and plays a lot on the fear of what might be lurking in the dark, and the creepy setting helps to set the mood. The claustrophobic and dark atmosphere is pretty much what carries the movie, and easily manages to give you a whiff of the heebie jeebies since the darkness implies more than it shows, and leaves a bit to your own imagination.

The movie isn’t fast-paced and spends some time before plunging the characters (and viewers) into the tunnels and the horrors that lurk there, and it also spends some time on “interviews” in order in order to maintain the documentary-style. If you have patience for the somewhat slow build-up and can appreciate that the creep-factor is more focused on what you can imagine instead of actually seeing, then you should be able to enjoy this low-budget Australian mockumentary.

Director: Carlo Ledesma
Writers: Enzo Tedeschi, Julian Harvey
Country & year: Australia, 2011
Actors: Bel Deliá, Andy Rodoreda, Steve Davis, Luke Arnold, Goran D. Kleut, James Caitlin, Ben Maclaine, Peter McAllum, Rebecca Clay, Shannon Harvey, Arianna Gusi, Russell Jeffrey, Jessica Fallico, Ben James
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1735485/