The Book Tower

What defines a truly scary film?

I’m not talking about great art in cinematic horror, which I think is different. Kubrick’s The Shining and Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby are both artistic achievements, but I wouldn’t say that either scared me. I’ve watched them both countless times and can pick out many memorable aspects of them; Jack Nicholson’s masterful performance, Kubrick’s slow and deliberate direction, Polanski’s sheer cleverness in making a fantastic story believable. Both directors are also groundbreaking in using the modern setting for horror. But the films don’t really scare me; I love them just for the brilliant pieces of cinema that they are.

Much hype surrounded the release of Paranormal Activity, a film made in 2007. It attracted instant comparison with The Blair Witch Project in its use of the hand held camera technique and there are other more subtle similarities. But it is unfair to say that Paranormal Activity is a Blair Witch copycat. It’s a much better film, more disturbing and one that demands more than one viewing in a way that its predecessor never did. And whilst The Blair Witch Project was a scary film, Paranormal Activity is far scarier.

Katie and Micah are a fairly ordinary suburban couple. It’s the apparent ordinariness that makes this film so effective, particularly in the nondescript house where all of the film is set. Micah is intent on filming life at home. Some of this results in Blair style shaky handheld effects, whilst the rest of his footage comes from the hours of night vision photography taken in the bedroom. The double bed, the large white open door and the stop motion film as they toss and turn throughout the night. Why is he doing this? Katie believes she is being haunted, Micah believes he can solve the problem.

Director Oren Peli impresses in how the tension of this film very gradually cranks up. There’s one scene where a psychic, who appears at the beginning, is called again when things begin to turn bad. He senses the terrible atmosphere in the house and backs away, unable to help. It’s that sense of awful oppressive danger that comes across so well. Partly it’s to do with claustrophobia, the relatively tight setting of the film, but the build up is done so effectively. At first, the night footage reveals nothing more than noises coming from downstairs, although this in itself is disturbing and did cause me an ears-awake sleepless night after viewing this film. Perhaps one of our greatest fears is as simple as the concern about the creaks and unexplained movements we perceive going on around us during the night.

Peli works wonders with only a small set of tools. Most of the results are economically chilling. The noises downstairs. The bedroom door, seen to move on its own when Micah surveys a night’s footage. Katie’s sleepwalking, where she is revealed to stand in the same position for hours at a time. The experiment with talcum powder sprinkled on the landing, exposing far from human footprints. And so on. Like the psychic, the audience begin to sense the awful oppressive air in the house. Unlike him, they probably won’t want to leave it, bearing things out to their horrible end.

I came to Paranormal Activity fresh, not having read any reviews and knowing nothing of the plot. This is the way to approach it and I won’t give anything more away. Suffice to say that I was scared. A rarity. An unusual film indeed.

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Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is an okay film. Alright, it’s quite a good film. As long as you don’t equate originality with quality, and don’t mind making a mental note of all the Harry Potter comparisons you will inevitably find. This film is very much School of Harry Potter, and gets tops marks for the Hogwarts Formula module. The Hogwarts Formula module is a course that teaches the following bullet points for success in creating a Potter clone:

• Your hero lives quite a grim life, either under the guardianship of a grotesque Dahl-inspired uncle or an abusive stepfather. Later we learn that, in a perverse way, he is actually here for his own protection.
• Your hero is an unlikely hero inasmuch as he learns very suddenly, and very quickly, about his true parentage when he is thrust into a new and very magical world.
• Your hero has two best friends, a boy and a girl. There is some initial love interest with the girl, who is quite feisty. In a further instalment the hero and best male friend may quarrel over the girl.
• The magical world is entered via a secret gateway not accessible to normal humans. This could either appear in the form of an extra station platform or, erm, a not particularly secret looking gateway.
• The magical world focuses on training our heros, either in the form of a school, or an open air camp where you can do archery and stuff. A bit like Centerparcs.
• a wise, big-bearded, authoritative figure oversees our hero and his gang. Richard Harris is the model although Michael Gambon will do. Pierce Brosnan will also do.
• The director Chris Columbus will do.

And so on. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson has an advantage over Harry Potter in that it weaves Greek mythology into its universe, this giving the opportunity to use recognisable stories (whereas Rowling writes herself into a corner where she is forced to invent everything from scratch). Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief features a host of Greek Gods played by English actors, including Sean Bean (Zeus) and Steve Coogan (Hades) and a good share of mythological monsters, the best of these being Medusa (played rather well by Uma Thurman). The film gives an excellent take on the Medusa tale with Percy using the back of his iPhone to deflect the deadly gaze of the serpent-headed one. Similarly, the story of the Lotus Eaters receives a modern treatment when the gang go to Las Vegas.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is driven by an obvious plot that is nevertheless still enjoyable. Percy’s mum is kidnapped by Hades, he must travel to the Underworld to rescue her but must first find three pearls that will get him and his friends back safely. There’s an obvious villain, and so on. Where this film doesn’t have an advantage over Harry Potter is in that is rather too cynical in taking up the Hogwarts Formula module. There aren’t enough strong supporting players (no equivalent Hagrid or Snape, for example) and, whatever you think about Harry Potter, it does have buckets of enviable charm which is beyond any formulaic approach.

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Attempting to review Avatar is a somewhat pointless exercise. The film achieves what it sets out to do; namely becoming a piece of cinema that shows off its great expense whilst – mostly – also being an example of supreme entertainment. And, although I don’t particularly go along with the view that 3D is the future of film, it does push movie making further than its ever been pushed before.

My eleven year old daughter gave Avatar nine out of ten, subtracting a point for the overblown and tiresome battle scenes that occupy the last part of the film. For the same reason I will give it eight out of ten, deducting two points for each of the headache tablets I had to take afterwards. It’s at the end of the film that James Cameron lets himself down, reverting to type as the gung-ho director of The Terminator and Aliens. This violent streak is personified by the gun-toting (and cigar chomping, although I may have imagined that), muscly, military baddie Colonel Quaritch. Quaritch (played by Stephen Lang, who doesn’t unflex a muscle throughout the film) is the kind of kick-ass macho man who makes Rambo look rather shy and withdrawn. At one point he leads the attack on the aliens in the film with the words “we will fight terror – with terror”. I laughed, but nobody else did in our 300 strong audience. Which is worrying.

It’s a shame that aspects of Avatar are easy to mock because at times it is a great movie. The attention to detail of the alien planet Pandora is breathtaking. The sounds, the plantlife, the animals and monsters, the sheer size and depth of the gigantic forests. This is helped by the 3D element, although the films shows a painstaking care in imagining a very different world to our own. Into this is thrust Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a disabled marine who “becomes” one of the aliens, the Navi, for short periods by way of linking with a genetically bred Navi or “avatar”. This sets the film up rather cleverly, with Jake switching between the real world of familiar Cameron claustrophobic army space-bases (Sigourney Weaver also features to make you feel at home) and the almost dreamlike world of Pandora.

Waking when the Navi sleep, Jake records an increasingly bleak video diary where reality shrinks and the wonder of the alien world remains vivid to him. Sadly, Cameron doesn’t really explore the dream element as much as he could have done. Early in the film, Lang tells the new recruits that they’re “not in Kansas anymore”, although the reference to The Wizard of Oz is probably only a coincidence. Avatar also reminds of the lesser known The Fountain, which used the form of the tree for more symbolic purposes, but Cameron has a plot to get on with, where the human interest in Pandora is made very clear and the two species and worlds clash in a very ugly way. Although Avatar is generally a sci-fi Western (think Dances With Wolves in space), with the Navi the Indians facing genocide by Lang’s Cowboys, the Cowboys in this case are mining the Indians out of existence, with a valuable mineral that will save the dying Earth sitting right within snatching distance.

Like many a Western where the outsider is accepted by the Indians, Avatar features the typical series of initiation ceremonies. But this being alien territory, Cameron uses his imagination to great effect. Pandora is a nauseatingly vertiginous planet, with Jake racing across narrow and entwining sky-high branches to keep up with his new friends. At one point he has to tame a ferocious dragon-like creature (after first entering a particularly inaccessible region of floating mountains). The film takes an inevitable path, however, with Jake eventually leading the Navi into battle against the humans, led by Lang. Lang becomes the almost indestructible baddie typical of modern cinema, escaping all sorts of close shaves before he meets a particularly fitting and personal ending. And then there’s the obligatory robotic exo-skeleton he uses, reminding again of Aliens and now de rigeur in sci-fi (last seen to great effect in District 9).

I enjoyed it, but as I said above it made my head hurt. At getting on for three hours there’s too much 3D, CGI and branches, endless trees and branches. But Cameron’s anti-American message is interesting. Yes, the Yanks lose! Also interesting will be just how many of the film’s audience get the message.

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