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Perhaps it’s my upbringing with Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I have an unhealthy obsession with bad movies. Those robots and that guy taught me that even in the worst of movies there is entertainment to be had. Since then I’ve built up a small collection of Japanese monster movies and campy American classics. My wife doesn’t understand it, and I could never put it into words. I don’t just like bad movies. It needs to be a special kind of bad. The kind of bad when you know someone put their heart and soul into making the movie, be it the actors, director, screenwriter, whomever, and woefully missed their mark. A tired movie that recycles lame jokes and has actors sleepwalking and mugging their way through a performance, something like The Love Guru,or Meet the Spartans, for example, both of which I refuse to watch, doesn’t get any love. But something like Point Break, featuring the wooden Keanu Reeves and god among men Patrick Swayze attempting to share in some bro-love on the other side of the law? That’s something over which I could wax rhapsodic. I think it’s the earnestness involved. If you’re half-assing it I can’t love it. But if you’re really trying your best I can love it and appreciate what you were trying to do, all the while laughing at your misfortune on the way.

At the AV Club, writer Nathan Rabin spent a year (and decided to extend it) revisiting movies that crashed and burned in a series entitled My Year of Flops. Finally, here’s a person that got where I was coming from. He gives movies that were critical and commercial failures another look through eyes that aren’t tainted by overwhelming critical disapproval and attempts to reevaluate them on their own merits. Often times the movies are still shit (Failures), but there are also gems that may have missed a note or two (Secret Successes). But the best of them all are the Fiascos, the movies that reach, reach, REACH for the stars, but fall flat on their face in one or many facets. This is a tale of one of those movies.

Right when I was really getting into this series of articles, Rabin reviewed The Apple. The description blew me away. In fact, it blew me away so much that I really don’t feel like I can do the movie justice on my own, so here’s a link to his article. If you choose to bear with me, I’ll provide my insights and reactions to the movie, but this guy is a fucking Apple scholar.

The plot is pretty simple. In the future, the future? of 1994 (this was released in 1980 after all), two pure of heart Canadian singers (Alphie and Bibi) enter the Worldvision Song Contest. I’m not really sure what the prize is, maybe “best band in the world.” I don’t know. Unfortunately for Alphie and Bibi they followed contest ringers The BIM Band, led by brother and sister Dandi and Pandi (a white dude and a black chick, so racially their parents must be pretty cool). The BIM Band, who I would go see on a moment’s notice for all the money I have in my wallet at any time ever, is the rockingest fucking band I’ve ever seen in my life. They have a guy who plays the split keytar and everything. Suck on that, Alphie and Bibi. Evil music magnate Mr. Boogalow, played by some guy that looks like a fey(er) Philip Zimbardo, rigs the contest so that the BIM Band wins. Pretty good for him, since he’s the B in BIM, Boogalow International Music. But the evil Mr. Boogalow sees something in these kids, maybe it’s just their innocence, or the fact that even though their song is gayer than eight dudes blowing nine dudes the crowd still loves them, but he tries to woo them into the BIM fold by tempting them with Dandi and Pandi. Alphie says no thanks, but Bibi says “aw word” to the low rent offspring of Roger Daltrey and Davy Jones that is Dandi, leaving Alphie off on his lonesome while she engages in (simulated) sex, drugs and (awful, show-tuney) rock-n-roll. Thus concludes act one.

By this point in watching the movie, you’re going to think a few things. The first one is “holy fuck.” Yeah, that’ll probably hit you around the three-minute mark. Then you’ll think “for fuck’s sake, this is a lot of singing.” Strap yourself in, buddy, because this is a gaudy-ass musical complete with the lamest songs with the worst lyrics you’ve ever heard. Take this gem, for example: “It’s a natural, natural, natural desire/to see an actual, actual, actual vampire!” Is it really? As with all approximations of the future, it’s easy to see them as comically naïve. Is everyone really going to dye their hair to look gray with red splotches and streaks? Are their cars going to be just as stupid looking as 1970’s cars, but with big wings and funny adornments? Okay, yes. In the future that really happens sometimes. Are people really going to listen to music like this? Hear you this! I have seen the future that is 1994 and the answer is no. In many ways it’s much worse, but not until Limp Bizkit becomes popular in 1996 or so.

Act 2 sees our star-crossed lovers in two different stations in life. Bibi is the latest hitmaker in Mr. Boogalow’s BIM stable. How a folkie waif turned from Linda Rondstadt light to Tina Turner’s character from Beyond Thunderdome’s extroverted white cousin can probably be blamed on the drugs and Dandi’s dong, but sure enough there she is, singing about America’s addiction to speed, presaging the rise of NASCAR from backwater hillbilly timewaster to front-page hillbilly timewaster. Or was that in reference to drugs? Shit, I still don’t know. But this movie made me wish I had drugs, or at least made me feel like I had taken drugs.

Alphie, on the other hand, is struggling in his little room trying to make good music in the face of crass commercialism and pining for Bibi. He lives in the house of the woman that plays Professor Sprout from Harry Potter, the chick that kind of looks like one of the monsters from The Muppet Show. He even grabs her tits, too. Yikes. He gets rejected by the powers that be at BIM, and seeks out Bibi. He searches for her at a party at Mr. Boogalow’s, gets drugged by Pandi, and everything turns into a hot tranny mess. Literally, there are trannies everywhere, everyone looks like a mess, and I bet it’s hot with all of those people crammed in there. Pandi seduces him, leading to a really awkward and stomach churningly weird musical scene with numerous simulated sex acts with dudes packing major pipe in banana hammocks. I may have blacked out at this point. Obviously freaked out by this freak out, Alphie runs away and joins a hippie commune.

Are you still with me? Are you feeling confused? Nauseous? Do you think my writing is disjointed? Now you know how I felt watching this movie. It was the longest ninety minutes of my life.

The movie concludes it’s third act with Bibi rejoining Alphie at the hippie commune. They magically have a baby that looks about two and a half with a full head of hair in what appears to be no time at all. Boogalow brings the goon squad to reclaim Bibi, but the hippie chief turns into God, comes into town in his holographic gold Rolls Royce, and saves the day by leading his hippies, and our beloved Alphie and Bibi along with their miracle baby, to walk off into holographic heaven. I guess it’s hard to find where you park a holographic car.

Seriously, I couldn’t make any of this up if I tried. All of this shit happened in a single, ninety minute movie. I made hardly any jokes or exaggerations at all. Without a hint of hyperbole, The Apple is the most over the top movie I’ve ever seen. It is too much everything. Too much singing, too much dancing, too much glitter, too much bad acting, too much future, too much trannies… And it’s not like it was some independent filmmakers lark, either. This movie is an actual MGM studio release! Studio execs greenlit this shit! They must’ve spent a FORTUNE in all of the dancing extras. Do you think dancing nuns dance for free? DO YOU??!??

Now, strip away all the glittery, Vegas revue show tranniness of the whole thing, and what’s left? A timeless story of the pure being tempted by evil, and seeing that it will ultimately leave you empty and unfulfilled, an allegory on the evils of conformity and the homogenization of culture, a cautionary tale against excess. Yes, The Apple is all of these things. But by showing us these things wrapped in a glittering, shimmering wrapper you may not leave the movie with those lessons learned. You’re probably going to be like me, and think “where can I get one of those fucking keytars?” And you may recognize the irony of a movie that seems to champion the simple life being the most excessive piece of cinematic trash that you’ve ever seen. But what it does have in spades is the aforementioned earnestness. Someone really felt the themes they were trying to convey in The Apple. The director, who ironically also directed the classic Stallone arm-wrestling movie Over the Top, was truly uncompromising in his vision. What can I say about the originators of this story? The phone number for the Betty Ford Center is 1-800-434-7365. Call them up and get some help to kick the habit. I cannot begin to fathom the amount of drugs these people ingested thinking up this movie. Be it a function of budget or fried brains, The Apple is chock full of some of the weirdest imagery I’ve seen in a movie. And God bless them for it.

All this being said, The Apple could be the ultimate bad movie. I can’t imagine there will ever be a movie this fucked up and grandiose released by a major studio ever again. The folks at The Apple really shot their wad with this one, and blew it for everyone else in the process. This is why you won’t see Crispin Glover’s movies about retards having sex in a Regal Cinema, so we have these folks to thank for that, too. Do I recommend this movie? I guess not for everyone. But if you read this and thought “now I have got to see what the fuck that is all about,” I think you’re exactly right. You do have to see what the fuck that’s about. Because no amount of prior reading is going to get you ready to watch this shit.

But a couple of tabs of acid, an eight ball, and a bottle of champagne just might.

I think I had an eventful stuff watching weekend, but nothing warranting a whole review. Looks like you’re getting a post dump. I’ll light a match on my way out.

The Happening

Yeah, I had enough to drink on Friday to agree to watch The Happening, M. Night Shamalamadingdong’s latest movie. Boy, I was so ready to muster up two-four pages of outright ass-rippery on this one, but it was so bad I didn’t even feel like it. Seriously. Let’s just run down the laundry list: dumb acting, dumb lines, way dumb premise. SPOILER ALERT: The fucking plants are killing everyone because we’re assholes. Yes, that’s right. The plants are killing us by releasing some poison in the atmosphere. There is absolutely no tension. Shit happens, people kind of react to it (as much as a plank of wood would react to something that wasn’t fire), the next thing happens, repeat. There’s no point where your protagonist, who isn’t really all that sympathetic because he’s a dipshit, seems like he’s in real danger, and if he were you’d probably be glad. Don’t go see this movie. Don’t even waste your money on renting the dvd. I’m not kidding. You guys know I love bad movies, but this isn’t just bad. It’s awful. But it does feature the funniest “What the fuck?” line from a movie I’ve seen in forever, the crusty old lady that yells “Why you eyein’ my lemon drink?”

The Onion Movie

This is a dvd-only release from the people at The Onion, pretty much one of the greatest things ever. My expectations were low, so I was pleasantly surprised to see what is basically a Kentucky Fried Movie for the 21st century. Add it to your queue and see Steven Seagal as COCKPUNCHER

Tiger Motherfucking Woods

Allow me to get a little sporty on you and say Tiger-Tiger-Tiger Woods, ya’ll. He kept me glued to the screen for two straight days mixing human vulnerability and superhuman skills. I’ve always been a Tiger fan, but this weekend just added to the legend. Check this out to see what I’m talking about. The quality isn’t great, but you’ll get the point. Hail to the king, baby.

The Savages

I guess this was a good movie and all. I imagine if I were twenty years older it would probably be better. The acting was good. I don’t know, it’s got Philip Seymour Hoffman in it, if that’s something you might be interested in. Oh, and Chris Partlow from The Wire. And an old guy smearing poop on a wall. That’s about all I have to say about that.

So that’s about it, I suppose. The new Rambo came in on the Netflix today, so I’ll definitely write that up since it’s what inspired me to start reviewing movies again. Fucking awesome.

Franchises are an interesting concept. An original gets created that’s so good (to someone, I suppose. I mean, Applebee’s is a franchise and that place sucks rocks) that the idea just has to be shared. The originator sells franchise licenses to make carbon copies of the original to repeat the success and charm of the original restaurant in perpetuity. Sounds like a nice idea, right? Anywhere you go you can get a delicious cheeseburger just like the McDonald’s down the street. Or you can get that same Bloomin’ Onion that you and your family just love to split at any Outback with fairly minimal variation from place to place. What normally ends up happening is, through mass production, the product and idea get watered down to the point that you’re left with something bland and far less palatable than the original. But the problem is that, as a breed, human beings like the familiar. On the whole, person X would rather nosh on some riblets at Applebees than try the divey looking barbecue shack that looks like it would never pass health code, even though it entices you with the smell of hickory smoke and pork as you drive by. That’s just how some people are wired.

There are also franchises in movies. As soon as your movie hits $100 million in box office expect a call from the suits telling you it’s sequel time. The big studios love movie franchises. When they find one you can just imagine them pitching little tents in their Armani suits. Why? Because they don’t have to seek out a new, original script, for one. They just put a 2 next to that Spider Man on their release schedule for two summers from now and wait for it to be done. And the public normally follows suit predictably by coming out in droves. You can’t fault the studio execs. They’re just looking out for their bottom lines, artistic quality be damned. If they know they can trot out some dead horse and make scads of money, why not?

That’s not to say that I’m above franchises. Famous Dave’s, Chick-Fil-A, Buffalo Wild Wings… all good franchises. Movie wise, the original Star Wars is a quintessential franchise, and you can’t f with that. But there’s an inherent distrust of franchises: that we’re getting mass-produced junk instead of something made with love.

Then, of course, there’s Indiana Jones, another franchise brought to you by George Lucas. Indiana Jones has always held a special place in my heart. There are action movies all over the place. A glut of them, really. But Raiders of the Lost Ark was an adventure movie. Adventure movies take you places you’ve never seen in search for things you couldn’t imagine. It allows you to remove yourself from what you know, and accept the fact that an archaeologist can be an asskicker, too. Indy didn’t need guns blazing and things exploding, though a few of each here and there didn’t hurt. He used his head to solve ancient riddles to keep from getting his head cut off, and always managed to escape, no matter how implausibly.

That being said, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull really pushes the bounds of the implausible. Don’t get me wrong. I liked the movie, I really did. I was entertained the whole time. But maybe I just didn’t get how ridiculous some of the things were in the original movies, because there was some stuff that made me laugh out loud at how ridiculous they were. No, I won’t give you examples. I want you to see it for yourself, because one of the things was spoiled for me and I think it deadened how ridiculous it was, and it still was pretty ridiculous to me.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull centers on Indy’s quest for the crystal skull, which is not just a carved crystal skull, it’s an actual skull from an alien. It is said to unlock El Dorado, the mythical city of gold. Urging him along on this quest is the Soviet government, most notably Colonel Dr. Irina Spalko, played to the archetypal hilt by Cate Blanchett. The Colonel Doctor (which I thought was a joke at first, but she’s really a colonel doctor) wants to use the crystal skull to get to El Dorado as well, where it will give her the ultimate mind control device to take over the world. Well of course it will.

Along the way Indy gets put on extended leave of absence from his teaching job and runs into a young greaser tough named Mutt Williams, played by Shia LeBouf. Yeah, I said that right. A greaser tough. You really need to check your disbelief at the door on this one. Turns out Mutt’s mom was kidnapped and held hostage because of her relationship to Professor Oxley, another archaeologist played by John Hurt, who looks like a fucking mummy. Seriously, if he fell down he’d turn to dust. It’s scary. She told Mutt that she needs Indy’s help.

Then we launch into the classic map cut-scene where we see the flight path to their destination, complete with a million stops in between. They end up in the Amazon and start their quest. They find the crystal skull, and are found by the Russians. When they get to camp both Professor Oxley and Mutt’s mom are there. Oh yeah, Mutt’s mom is the kind of homely chick Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark who was a total bitch yet Indy and that other guy were totally infatuated with her (played by Karen Allen). I don’t get it either. He could plow throw all of his anthropology students, but he’s hung up on this bitchy woman. I have to say that I love her performance, though. I mean, not love love, because it’s not very good or anything, but you can tell she’s so happy to be there. I can’t remember the last time I saw her in something, and there’s probably a good reason for that.

I’m not going to spoil the rest for you, but you probably already know what happens. Indy succeeds and everyone’s happy in the end. Yay!

Look, I could find a number of reasons to blast this movie out of the water. There is definitely more than a fair share of summer blockbuster cheese: prairie dog reaction shots (aw…), groin shots, the ending… If I were more cynical I would, but maybe I’m mellowing in my old age. There were a couple of things that made me groan, but I couldn’t help but be entertained. If I were looking for realism and grit I wouldn’t go to an Indiana Jones movie. These were made as homage to the original cheesy adventure movies that Lucas and Spielberg grew up with. It’s bound to have some things that make you think “no fucking way.” If you’re expecting more you’re just fooling yourself. This movie is genuinely entertaining from beginning to end. Harrison Ford still does a great job. He moves well even though he probably has perpetual pelvic bruises from banging that skeleton Calista Flockhart. I think there are a lot of worse ways you can spend your movie dollars than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Like anything made by those assholes that made Meet the Spartans.

And at the very least, you’ll think twice before you throw away your old refrigerators. You’ve been warned…

When the wife told the mother-in-law that we were going to a book reading, the mother-in-law scoffed, “going to hear your favorite author read a book? Isn’t that a yuppie thing to do?” In some circles it may be, but then again most book readings don’t give you a bookmark with anal beads on it as a freebie handout. Welcome to Chuck Palahniuk’s book tour celebrating the release of his latest novel Snuff.

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For the uninitiated, Chuck Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club, brought to you in motion picture form starring dreamboat Brad Pitt. He’s also written eight other novels, each one dripping with wit, tangential factoids, and bodily fluids of various types. Love him or hate him, Palahniuk’s work is provocative and entertaining. And for those that really love him, he goes on tour to get face to face with his fanbase, offering various goodies in appreciation of you getting off your keister and coming to visit.

This was my second book tour stop. The first was for his horror novel/short story compendium Haunted. That stop was characterized by flying plastic body parts (“They make a great dog toy,” he deadpanned) and barbecue scented air fresheners, which added just enough olfactory ambience to make me nauseous while he read the story “Hot Potting.” Chuck was very affable, personally signing whatever you happened to bring for him to sign and chatting with everyone for a bit. He’s an author that really enjoys connecting with his fanbase and making an effort to make his visits special.

When I saw that he was coming around to promote Snuff I jumped on the opportunity to spend a couple more minutes with the author who really got me into reading again. The event was held at the Avalon Theatre in northwest Washington, DC, and arranged by Olsson’s Books & Records, a local bookstore chain of sorts. Admission was thirty dollars, but this included an autographed copy of Snuff, which after tax and the cost of the book made the book tour stop cost about four bucks and change. This trip was uncharacteristic in that it was stated he did not have time to personalize anything before or after the event. From the hurried tone of the evening it seemed as though he had another engagement, probably a plane, to catch. No matter, as I’m not the type to bring stacks of books and tell him how I named my dog after him and what not. It was a nice perk of the last one to get to shake his hand and offer a couple words and get a few in return last time, but no big deal.

Most of us were soaked by the rain by the time we got into the theater, though another couple was nice enough to offer us the protection of their giant umbrella. We had to wait for motherfucking Sex in the City to let out so we could get into the theatre, and a big old rainstorm came through while we were lined up down the block. Yet another reason to hate that garbage. As we filed in we were handed our copies of Snuff and the aforementioned bookmark with the anal beads that came with the warning “This is for your book, not your bum” in fine print by the pull ring for the beads. I wish I would’ve seen that two minutes sooner…

Outside of the lack of personalization and face time with Chuck, the evening went pretty much as the last one did. The emcee and interviewer, a local author who liked to cuss a lot, introduced Chuck and down the side aisle he came in all of his understatedness with I am assuming his publicist in tow. It’s funny that a guy that appears so slight and so normal is responsible for some rather subversive prose. He opened with a sweet story about his friends and their fourteen year-old diabetic cat, which he claims he used as a sound check device, then he got into the meat of the evening.

A trademark of an evening with Chuck Palahniuk is giveaways, and this night’s giveaways were blow-up dolls to go along with the sex theme of Snuff. Once he handed out a few he ran a contest to see who could blow theirs up the fastest. Here’s a picture of the lucky winner a couple seats down. The winners received a copy of some other book that I can’t remember but he said it was his favorite short story collection of the year. At the end of the night they handed out autograph hounds, which apparently was a big deal to people before electricity who would get them and have their friends sign them as mementos, that he had spent the past winter signing for the book tour. An autograph hound is also an object from Snuff, so it’s topical. I happened to snag one of those in the free for all.

After the initial giveaways he did a reading. Instead of an excerpt from Snuff, he read a new story that he wrote especially for his book tour. It was fucking hilarious. “Loser,” based on a real life friend, was about a girl who’s sorority happened to go to a taping of The Price Is Right. On acid. The girl gets called and eventually navigates her way to the showcase showdown where she guesses the pile of steaks that fit in a barbecue that fit on a speedboat that fits on a trailer that goes with an SUV cost “a million trillion dollars.” The story was written in the voice of a vapid sorority girl who was pretty out of touch with things like the cost of a loaf of bread ($8?) and anything else not pertaining to her sphere of experience. I don’t want to give any more of it away, so hopefully at some point the story will be transcribed online or included somewhere else.

The next portion of the evening was the interview. At the Haunted tour stop he more or less spoke for himself prior to the Q&A section. I’m sure it’s a bit tough to come up with a presentation to repeat over and over again, so having an interviewer probably allowed him to relax more. However, from the sound of things, the interviewer hit on a lot of things that he gets asked frequently. The answers were insightful and well thought out, though. He talked a bit about the success of Fight Club and it’s absorption into the popular culture fabric and his input into the movie adaptations of his works.

The truly insightful part was when the fans did a Q&A, as the interviewer admittedly had not read all of his books, which I thought was kind of weird. How are you supposed to ask someone good questions if you don’t know their stuff? Despite their reputation, hardcore Chuck “cult members” either weren’t there in droves or aren’t as hardcore (“Crazy motherfuckers,” the emcee put it) as they’re believed to be. The fans stepped it up, though he kind of was elusive in answers about his writing process. He didn’t divulge how much porno he watched while researching Snuff, though he did say a lot of the inspiration was from a fan he had met at a book tour stop that did some porno of her own.

I think the crux of the evening, and of Palahniuk’s body of work, is when a person asked how he’s able to make characters that do such vile and awful things into sympathetic characters. He replied that, and I’m paraphrasing here, that we as people learn at a young age that we can get people to like us by using certain attributes, be it our looks, sense of humor, intelligence, or what have you. And there comes a point in a person’s life when they realize that this thing has taken them as far as they can go, so they come up with a coping mechanism or scenario that allows them to avoid dealing with the world on a regular level, because people wouldn’t like them if they knew how fucked up they were under the thin layer of humor/smarts/looks that they show the world on a daily basis. His characters are lonely people looking for ways to connect with people without really connecting with them, be it beating the shit out of each other in an underground fight club, making yourself choke so that other people will save you and feel connected with you, or by fucking six hundred guys at the same time. Connections are being made, but they are inauthentic, and the person ends up lonelier than before.

Chuck also told a couple of his “true story” stories: the Pug Dog story and the Sea-Tac story. Both of which are gross, humorous, and true, the former told to him in a letter from a fan and the latter from a friend. Ask me to tell you them some time, but the Sea-Tac story almost made the wife throw up. Totally awesome.

In between the interview and the Q&A, Chuck brought along an added bonus, the trailer for Choke. The film is set to be released in September and looks really funny, though it appears that Hollywood has added a love story dynamic that I don’t really remember from the book, though it has been a few years since I’ve read it.

All in all, if the Chuck show comes to your town I highly recommend you going to see him. He’s an engaging guy that definitely knows how to show an audience a good time. If you’re expecting a gray haired academic in tweed peering at his own dusty book over his reading glasses you’ll be very disappointed, but if you’re looking to hear an author that’s passionate about his work, his fans, and his characters, you’d be hard pressed to find something better than Chuck Palahniuk book tour event. It’s equal parts lecture, story time, and tent revival, and 100% fun.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll go home with your own set of anal beads. As if you didn’t have them already. Sinners.

 Have you ever tried eating popcorn with a numb hand? Of course I made the inevitable jokes prior to watching The Strangers, how you’d have to sit on your left hand until it became numb and feed yourself popcorn so it felt like someone else was doing it, but this movie startled my wife so frequently in the first half hour that I really couldn’t feel my left hand due to her GI Joe kung fu grip. And don’t just write that off as her being a fraidy cat, either. The Strangers is fucking scary.

I have to admit; the movie poster and trailer didn’t do too much to sway me to watch this movie. Oh boy, I thought, another stupid horror movie. That guy has a bag on his head… Oooh, scary. And Liv Tyler. That would’ve been awesome. Ten years ago. Okay, that’s a bit extreme. She’s still pretty hot.

I’ve tried to see what the kids see in these new horror movies, really I have, but there just hasn’t been much there for me. At least in the eighties, when horror movies were really bad there was gratuitous nudity to distract you. Not so with the latest crop of Japanese remakes or eighties slasher rehashers, which substitute the original movies’ grittiness or camp for pretty faces to market and cheap scares. So you’ll understand why I wasn’t too jazzed for another horror movie with another pretty face.

My prejudgment couldn’t have been more wrong. The Strangers scared the shit out of me. Like looking out the windows and double-checking that all the doors are locked before I went to bed scared the shit out of me. It didn’t give me bad dreams, and I was back to my devil-may-care single checking that doors are locked the next night, but it scared me like few horror movies ever have, and probably ever will.

The funny thing is the opening shots of the movie pretty much show you the ending. Some people may be put off by this apparent spoiler in the beginning, but it adds an even greater dread throughout the film. You know what’s coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it but see how it plays out, every agonizing moment of it. The film is deliberately paced and almost excruciating in the cat and mouse game played between our protagonists and their tormentors.

The Strangers starts with couple James and Kristen, played by Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, on their way out to the country on an awkwardly silent drive. James’ plans for a nice romantic night after a friend’s wedding have been dashed by his own failed marriage proposal to Kristen. This provides its own level of tension as James and Kristen have to make the best of their situation while isolated, forcing them to confront the three-hundred pound gorilla in the room. All of the sudden their insular bubble of awkwardness is shattered by a knock on the door. A girl whose face is cloaked in shadow asks for someone who isn’t there, and as quickly as she comes she leaves. Kind of an odd visit for four in the morning, no?

James leaves to get Kristen a pack of cigarettes and we see her alone in the living room when a man in a crude mask made out of a sack appears from out of the shadows, giving the viewers their first jolt. And just as quickly he retreats back into the shadows. Thus starts the game, innocently enough at first: the smoke detector that Kristen knocks to the floor ends up neatly on a chair. Then things get progressively more sinister.

I’ll leave the shocks and scares for the cinema, but first time filmmaker Brian Bertino really hits it out of the park on his debut. Cheap scares are foregone (for the most part) for the slow, deliberate building and sudden releasing of tension. Filmed more or less from the perspective of the young couple, the movie puts the audience in the same boat as them. We’re living through every minute at the same time they are, so the shocks are more genuine. It’s one of those movies where you feel uneasy and shift and squirm in your seat while the characters are being chased or trapped or stalked.

The Strangers is one of the most satisfying movies I’ve seen all year. Even with slightly heightened expectations from a positive review I read, the movie exceeded any preconceived notions I may have had. Bertino set the bar rather high for himself, perhaps carrying the torch in the twenty-first century for the return of the Hitchcockian thriller, leading those of us looking for a horror movie that you don’t have to be fourteen to enjoy through the forest of CGI laden shit. Or maybe this blind pig found a truffle. Either way, The Strangers was thoroughly enjoyable, as enjoyable as something like this can be, and I look forward to more movies like it.