Apartment 143 (Emergo) (2011)

Directed by: Carles Torrens

Writer: Rodrigo Cortés

This is another found footage horror about a haunting, like Paranormal Activity. Fortunately, this one comes from Spain, and with Spanish horror you're usually in the safe hands. Apartment 143 follows a group of parapsychologists (or at least one parapsychologist and his ghost-hunting team) who try to solve a case of mysterious occurences in an apartment.

 

See, you can spot a difference right there. Instead of a haunted house, we have a much more claustrophobic setting of an apartment. This is by no means a disadvantage - Paranormal Activity and its sequels were never too good in space utilization, while in this movie all rooms serve a purpose. Anyway, our team of ghost hunters responds to a call from a distressed father, whose family (consisting of a five year old son and a teenage daughter) had been experiencing strange phenomena after the death of his wife.

 

Naturally, the investigators install their highly sofisticated equipment (including a bizarrely pixelated thingy whose purpose evades me) all around the apartment and start gathering scary footage, while at the same time the leader tries to pry out from the father the truth about his late wife, which might be the key to everything that's happening.

 

The story is simple, but it serves purpose - it gives enough material for a few plot twists to keep us interested. However, the real treat comes from the way the foreign entity (who- or whatever that might be) communicates with the characters. There's obviously that unavoidable mundane stuff like moving tables, turning pictures on the wall upside-down et cetera, but the real deal is that the thing apparently takes possession of the girl, making her a truly scary bitch in a few scenes. One of the first things the team records is a mysterious image of a woman in the room with the girl, so it's fairly obvious from the start that you won't watch an hour and a half of doors opening and closing by themselves and that you'll witness some more concrete scares.

 

This nice little film shows that the found footage formula is not entirely dead and still can be used to a good effect. It's so unfair that Paranormal Activity, which is inferior in every possible aspect, makes millions, but that's marketing for you.

 

Frankenstein's Army (2013)

Directed by: Richard Raaphorst

Writers: Chris W. Mitchell, Miguel Tejada-Flores, Richard Raaphorst (original idea)

At first I was very skeptical about this movie - at least 95% of found footage films are pure crap. This lasted until the first monster appeared, when I thought "Hey, actually this doesn't look so bad!". After that came a "Wow!" and then another one and another one and this lasted to the very end.

 

The story follows a group of Russian soldiers, who face some really horrifying Nazi monsters in Eastern Germany towards the end of the second world war. The ever decreasing group of (anti)heroes stumbles upon a secret Nazi lab, where they find the explanation for the monsters' existence. Of course, one of the soldiers carries a camera and records everything.

 

As usual, the film gains nothing from being made in found footage style. The atmosphere is not improved one bit, while at the same time it imposes severe limitations on the narrative. Found footage films generally suffer from the "let's film everything even though we're dying left and right" and this one is no exception. The excuses the characters make to keep filming get progressively stupid. At the same time, it appears that monsters never attempt to attack the person holding the camera.

 

I also didn't like the portrayal of the soldiers. The film seems almost decidedly anti-Russian, so there are no sympathetic characters here. Everyone's either a murderer or simply insane or generally doesn't give a damn about anything. The identification with the protagonists is absolutely essential for this type of film, and yet they fail over and over again. Given this fact, some plot twists that follow (related to the identity and secret plans of some of the group members) have minimal to no impact. It's also interesting that none of the group members are played by actual Russians, so you can imagine what their accents sound like.

 

Having said all this, the movie simply wipes out all this weak points with its complete and utter coolness. You simply won't believe what kind of screwed-up creatures you're about to see here. I won't even attempt to describe them, my English is not good enough, though I suspect much better writers than me would have problems with that. The picture on the poster gives you some idea. Then, there's almost no CGI here, everything is done with the good old make-up effects. All those insane monsters, streams of blood flowing around, piled-up dead bodies, dirty old secret labs, mutilations, it's all real (so to speak). With all its drawbacks regarding the story and screenplay, visually this is a stunning work and deserves to be seen on a screen as big as possible. Thumbs up!

V/H/S 2 (2013)

Directed by: See below

Writers:  See below

 

The first V/H/S movie was pretty much a disappointment, at least given the names of some of the people involved. However, due to its anthological nature, it never got really boring, so I can't say watching it was a waste of time. Something similar goes for the sequel, but the quality of the stories varies much more here. Since there are only four stories (compared to 26 in The ABCs of Death), we'll look into each one of them briefly:

TAPE 49
(Written and directed by Simon Barrett)

The one that connects them all. Some people get into some house (which might or might not be the one from the first V/H/S, I don't remember), find some tapes and watch them. At the same time, we are made aware that something sinister is happening in the house, leading to a "shocking" twist at the end. Boring.

PHASE I CLINICAL TRIALS
(Directed by Adam Wingard, written by Simon Barrett)

A filthy rich guy (played by Adam Wingard himself) gets a supercool fancy eye-camera implant, which unfortunately makes him see dead people (Haley Joel Osment, eat your heart out). He spends most of the time running around completely terrified after a huge number of jump scares, which creates some pretty funny moments. Then he's visited by a girl who hears dead people. And then bad stuff happens. This one is told completely in the first person POV, has some nice humor in it, so I guess I'd call it not bad.

A RIDE IN THE PARK
(Directed by Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale, written by Jamie Nash)

A guy goes for a nice bike ride in the park, only to fall victim to some zombies. He then wakes up as a zombie, forms a zombie party with some other guys and together they crash some child's birthday party. This one is also rather funny at times and it's interesting to see the events from a perspective of a zombie (the lead character has a camera on his helmet), however it drags in places and the birthday party chaos is not nearly as effective as it could have been.

SAFE HAVEN
(Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, story by Timo Tjahjanto)

By far the best story in the movie is also one of the most insane things I've seen in a long time. A film crew somewhere in Indonesia is making a documentary about a mysterious end-of-the-world sect, led by some obviously insane bastard. First they interview that insane bastard in a café or something, where he gives them a piece of his philosophy and then they persuade him to let them visit the place where his followers abide. Big mistake! After a somewhat slow intro, this quickly turns into a bloodbath of epic proportions, where randomly crazy stuff happens every few seconds. None of it makes much sense, but I guess the directors weren't exactly concerned about that - they wanted to give us a hilarious thrill ride, and boy did they succeed! This story was co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, the director of the mightily successful Raid, and I'm so glad he gave a shot at directing a horror. Let's hope he does a full feature one after Raid 2.

SLUMBER PARTY ALIEN ABDUCTION
(Directed by Jason Eisener, written by Jason Eisener and John Davies)

Some kids are playing pranks on each other and then they are attacked by aliens and everything goes to Hell. The stupidest and most boring story of them all, it consists solely of irritating kids screaming "Oh my God, did you see that, what is that, we're gonna die, woe are us!!!!!" and pointlessly running around trying to escape some equally boring aliens. I don't know why in the heck did they put this one at the end, to ruin the entire impression. Jason Eisener had previously made a great little short called Treevenge, which had a terrific idea and execution, which makes the complete lack of imagination in this one even more surprising.