MOVIE REVIEWS
HORROR
The Blair Witch Project - ****1/2; (UPDATE) The following review is based
on seeing it in the theater before details of the movie became known. Unfortunately,
that's not representative of the video experience. But, anyway....
Wowie-wow, is this a scary movie! Don't worry...there are no spoilers in this review.
I'd suggest that everyone do what I did, which is to avoid reading any reviews of the
movie. Any advance knowledge of what you're in for will only spoil things for you.
And, to REALLY go in with a fresh look, you might even want to stop reading now,
and be shocked yourself. But, one thing that you should know about, in case such
things matter to you: in the tradition of the most powerful horror
masterpieces, like the original Halloween and Psycho - there is *no* blood and
gore in this movie. Still reading? Okay...you've been warned! Imagine what
would happen if you were hiking in the forest, and you found a camcorder with a
tape in it, and decided to pop it in the VCR. That's what you get here. The
movie itself consists of videotape recovered a year after three college
students disappeared in a remote forest in Maryland. The videotape records
everything they see. And, since it's videotape, the perspective and lighting
isn't Hollywood Perfect, nor is the camera always steady.  At night, there are
sounds in the forest, and you hear the protagonists fumbling for their camera,
trying frantically to switch the light on, scanning the forest to see where the
sound came from. The dialogue isn't scripted. And, perhaps most unnerving of
all, there is no soundtrack to let you know when something bad is going to
happen. What this means is that you really believe that this is a record of
what actually happened. You are introduced to 90 minutes in the lives of these
people. The terror, then, is in feeling that you're about to witness something
horrible happen, but not knowing when. Is it all worth it? Well, I bought
tickets early last Saturday for the 10:15 show. We came back, and the theater
had lost power. We returned Wednesday with vouchers from the Saturday show,
only to find a monstrous line already in place; we would have had to sit in the
front row. So, we got tickets for yesterday's show, and got there an hour
early. It was well worth all the effort: we're going again in a week or two. By
then, the nightmares keeping us awake at night will probably have stopped.

Blair Witch Project II - Book of Shadows: ****; The Burkittsville area has
become a tourist attraction, and one group of curiosity-seekers brings high-tech
video equipment to document whatever they might find. They camp out at the
house of Rustin Parr, who committed ghastly murders a century ago. Big mistake!
Members of the expedition begin having terrifying hallucinations, and it becomes
clear that something malevolent has been awakened. This all sounds like a standard
teen slasher flick, but there is an important twist that some reviewers seem to have
missed. As the group starts to examine what they've captured on video, they see
evidence of themselves doing things they don't remember doing. Has someone
secretly taken the tapes and manipulated them? Could it have been a blackout from
all the drugs and booze? Or is it something more terrifying than that? One of the
freakiest movies I've ever seen, and a worthy successor to the first one.

Dracula (1979): ***1/2; (review to be provided as time permits)

Dracula, Bram Stoker's: **1/2; (review to be provided as time permits)

Event Horizon: ****1/2; Possibly the most frightening science fiction movie
ever made....including "Alien". The comparisons to the early 80s classic are
inevitable, but they don't detract from the horror. This movie concerns a
mission to recover a ship, the "Event Horizon", which was believed destroyed
years ago, and which has made a sudden reappearance near Neptune. When the
recovery crew arrives, they discover that the ship is abandoned. Curiously,
each crew member begins to experience strange visions: one sees his dead wife,
another sees her son horribly mangled. One crew member has the misfortune of
being pulled into a strange portal, which apparently leads to another
dimension. When he finally is brought to consciousness, he speaks with absolute
terror of "the Dark inside him", of the horrific visions he's seen on the other
side. This portal is no accident: in fact, the "Event Horizon" is an
experimental faster-than-light ship which creates its own small black hole in
order to warp space. Unfortunately, rather then reaching the nearest star, the
ship emerged somewhere quite different...and brought something back with it.
Unlike "Alien", however, this "something" isn't a monster, but rather something
less definable. The root of the terror here is not the standard "fear of being
decapitated" that appears in slasher films. Rather, "Event Horizon" is about
the fear of losing control, the fear of reality not being what you expect it to
be, and even the fear of eternal damnation. Don't see this late at night if you
want to get to sleep.

Final Destination - ****1/2 - High school kids who were fated to die in a plane crash are thrown off the plane because of one of the kid's premonitions of their demise. Unfortunately, Death doesn't like being cheated, and the "lucky" survivors find themselves dying one by one as Death seeks to even the score.

Halloween: ***1/2; (UPDATE) For a long time, I held this as the best horror
film ever made. Technically, it still is. But, after a recent viewing, I'm forced
to conclude that it's not as scary as it once was. This is ironic, since Halloween
was in fact the movie that practically reinvented the horror genre.

The Haunting *1/2 - Fear is a perplexing emotion. Fear activates the adrenal
glands, which allow the human body to operate at a higher capacity. So, why
does fear sometimes cause the human body to freeze up?  This is the question
Dr. Murrow (Liam Neeson) is exploring when he lures 4 subjects to the
foreboding Hill House under the pretext of helping them with their sleep
disorders. What happens in the house is indeed horrifying to watch: this is
quite probably the worst movie of 1999. No, one doesn't expect the acting to be
good in a horror film, even one costarring Neeson (who seems to have picked
1999 as his personal Year of the Bad Role: see "Star Wars: the Phantom Menace"
for further evidence of this). But the script of a horror film should contain
at least a smidgen of, well, horror. You know you're in for a bad ride when the
maid says, in a tone that's supposed to be creepy, "After I set the table for
dinner, when it gets dark, my husband and I will go home, and he will lock the
gate. We're never here at night, when it gets dark. The closest people are in
town, but there is no telephone at Hill House, and no one will hear you if you
need help." Ooo....that's scary! But, in fairness, the house itself - the REAL
star of the movie - is spectacular. While the  supposedly eye-popping special
effects are usually just silly, the architecture is indeed a beautifully
imposing gothic style, with a maze of passages leading to creatively designed
rooms. It's too late for me: run away from this movie while you can still save
yourself!

Sleepy Hollow - ****1/2

Summer of Sam - ***1/2

Thinner: ***; Bizarre Stephen King tale of a man who is cursed to keep losing
weight, no matter what he does.

Interview With The Vampire: ****1/2; (review to be provided as time permits)

Seven: see entry under "SUSPENSE"