THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO -- Movie Review by Porfle

 (This review originally appeared online at Bumscorner.com in 2006.)

The prolonged imprisonment without trial of suspected Islamic terrorists within the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, Cuba remains a source of heated controversy, and the same can most likely be said of THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO (2006), Michael Winterbottom's award-winning docudrama about three British Muslims, known as "The Tipton Three", who ended up there for over two years before finally being released without charge.

 We are first introduced to the real Asif Iqbal in a close-up shot as he speaks into the camera and begins his story of the day he left England in September, 2001 to return to his native Pakistan in order to take part in a pre-arranged wedding, with his friends Ruhel, Shafiq, and Monir along for the ride. (Ruhel and Shafig will also appear in such interview segments throughout the film.)

Intercut with these shots is a documentary-style reenactment with actors portraying the actual people. We see them travel to Pakistan, where Asif meets his intended bride. By night they sleep in a mosque to avoid hotel charges, and by day they wander the city reacquainting themselves with their homeland.

 Then the four young men, along with Shafig's cousin Zahid, decide to take a long bus ride into Afghanistan just as it is coming under attack by the U.S. military shortly after 9-11. (Their intention, ostensibly, is to "help out", but why four young sightseers from Tipton suddenly want to travel into the heart of a heavily-bombed war zone is beyond me.) Conditions steadily worsen along the way, and one of them becomes gravely ill--he dreams of eating gooey pizza back home with his friends as they flirt with the girls in the next booth--as the bombing and subsequent chaos around them intensify.

After days of lying around a mosque in Kabul doing nothing, they become disenchanted with their mission and arrange for transport back to Pakistan. This ill-fated journey takes them through scenes of death, destruction, and horror that are presented largely as though filmed through the lens of a news camera, complete with night-vision shots of people huddled in a ditch for cover, their eyes eerily aglow. Indeed, much of it is interspersed with actual news footage whenever possible, and it's sometimes hard to tell where the reality ends and the reenactment begins.

 Seemingly unaware that they are being taken away from the Pakistani border and into the war zone, they soon find themselves captured near Konduz by the Northern Alliance while in the company of armed Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters and are eventually flown to the U.S. base at Guantanamo, where they will be held for the next two-and-a-half years as suspected terrorists. (The fourth member of the party, Monir, disappeared while in Afghanistan and was never heard from again.)

It's at this point that THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO began to remind me a bit of Alan Parker's 1978 film MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, based on Billy Hayes' account of his ordeal in a Turkish prison replete with brutal guards and frequent torture. Just as damning and one-sided as that story was against the Turks, here we find the Americans depicted as sadistic, almost soulless tormentors subjecting our heroes to endless bouts of cruelty and relentless interrogation.

Although Billy Hayes portrayed himself as the good guy in his story, which seemed amplified even more so by Parker, he was still admittedly guilty of drug smuggling--here, the "Tipton Three" are portrayed with as much wide-eyed innocence as director Michael Winterbottom and their own first-hand accounts can muster, and it's appalling to see what they are subjected to during their stay in Guantanamo until their final release.  

But how much of what we are seeing is the truth? Even if one accepts the conditions at Guantanamo to be accurately depicted, there's still the problem of just what these guys were doing in Afghanistan at the time, and whether or not they're telling us the whole truth and nothing but. Shooting a fact-based film to look like a documentary doesn't make it any more of one than, say, THE FRENCH CONNECTION (or even THIS IS SPINAL TAP!), regardless of how much the viewer may be lulled into thinking so by a realistic visual style coupled with the filmmakers' point of view.

As a film, it's pretty involving and generally well-done, although the latter half tends to drag at times. But a brief look at some of the information relating to this story on the Internet yields a few nagging questions about the history of "The Tipton Three" and their possible motives. Some of it may be true, some may not be--but you'd never know from watching THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO that there was ever any question as to the veracity of any part of this story, and thus it fails to present it in anything other than a single, biased point of view that can hardly be taken as the final word on the subject.

THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO -- Movie Review by Porfle

LUNOPOLIS -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 9/24/11

 

"Blair Witch"-style mockumentaries...conspiracy theories...UFOs..."The X-Files"...various other paranormal stuff...if any or all of these things spark your interest, then chances are LUNOPOLIS (2009) will really pop your cork. 

It also helps if you get into stuff like The History Channel, too--much of the middle section of the film looks like it might have been produced for it, with its various "expert" talking heads and illustrative graphics--but if you don't, then this film is equally likely to act as an effective cure for insomnia.  Me, I bought into it hook, line, and sinker and thus found it uniquely fascinating from start to finish.

The premise is that a documentary film crew led by Matt (writer-director Matthew Avant) and Sonny (Hal Maynor)  has gotten ahold of a weird photograph, supposedly smuggled out of Area 51, that leads them to an underground facility beneath a Louisiana swamp.  Their cinema verite' exploration of this dark, dungeon-like space is claustrophobic and creepy, leading to the discovery of a strange device that looks a bit like a makeshift jet pack.

After shadowy figures chase them back to the surface, they take the device back to the lab and activate it.  Its wearer disappears for almost five seconds, then everyone in the room is zapped unconscious.  Further investigation brings them into rough contact with the Church of Lunology, whose scary, threatening followers make Tom Cruise look normal.  Deeper into the rabbit hole they go, uncovering a plot involving a secret city on the moon (whose inhabitants are already among us) and a mission to send time travelers into the past to tweak our history, thus creating an overlapping jumble of parallel dimensions. 

What makes LUNOPOLIS so convincing is the realistic acting of its leads, who are excellent at seeming spontaneous and unrehearsed (something even the greatest actors can be incapable of).  Most of the camcorder sequences really do look like actual found footage (albeit very nicely shot and edited), making it even more disconcerting when a black car that the film crew are following suddenly takes off like a rocket. 

Most impressive is Dave Potter as purported moon escapee David James, whose folksy demeanor is a stark contrast to the mindbending personal account he gives to Matt and Sonny. This includes his knowledge of an upcoming "paradox date"--December 21, 2012, unsurprisingly--upon which something referred to throughout the film as "The Event" will take place.  Once you get an idea of what this entails, the suspense begins to build with the impending revelation of what will happen on that date.

Like "Blair Witch", LUNOPOLIS is supposedly assembled from found footage taken by participants who have gone missing, which becomes more and more intriguing as their discoveries lead them deeper into some really juicy, dangerous, hardcore conspiracy stuff.  Halfway through the film comes the History Channel-type material, which, if you've gone along with it all up to that point, will continue to fascinate with its dizzying explorations of time travel, multiple dimension overlap, the Roswell incident, the secret origins of not only Lunopolis but Atlantis as well, and other scintillating ideas which not only sound as convincing as any of those shows you see on TV but also increase our unease about that impending paradox date. 

By the time we return to the camcorder footage and the story proper, Matt and Sonny are on the run from a host of scary people while becoming inextricably involved in the events they're investigating.  The pace never lets up until the exciting finale, which brings the story full circle with an event--"the" event, that is--bristling with surprises and startling revelations. 

The DVD from Walking Shadows and Virgil Films is in 16:9 widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and both subtitles and closed captions.  Extras include a trailer and an entertaining commentary by Avant and associate producer Michael David Weis.

Even freakier in its own low-budget way than THE MATRIX but without the need for flashy SPFX, LUNOPOLIS is a greatest-hits package of conspiracy theory goodness that would have Fox Mulder thinking he'd died and gone to heaven.  According to the commentary, some people are coming out of screenings thinking they've just watched the real thing, and it's not hard to imagine why.  It's a science-fiction film that presents some truly mindboggling concepts in a realistic and believable way, and the result is so satisfying that you might want to believe, too.

LUNOPOLIS -- DVD Review by Porfle

CHUPACABRA TERRITORY -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 4/11/17

 

Ever since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT came out in 1999, unofficial sequels, remakes, spin-offs, and carbon copies have popped up all over the place.  They all have one thing in common--the "found footage" gimmick, in which (a) some people foolishly go off into the woods for some reason while filming/videotaping themselves, (b) they disappear, and (c) their film/video footage is found, which contains evidence that they died in very scary and horrible ways.

The latest in this horror sub-genre, or at least the latest one I've seen, is CHUPACABRA TERRITORY (2016).  It's pretty similar to BLAIR WITCH in that a group of requisitely foolish young people head off into the wilderness in search of a scary folk legend (the chupacabra) without being anywhere near serious or prepared enough. In fact, these idiots are barely capable of camping out, much less encountering and dealing with a deadly crypto-creature while doing so.

As in BLAIR WITCH, the leader of the group is a female, Amber (Sarah Nicklin, NUN OF THAT, THE HAUNTING OF ALICE D), who fancies herself a cryptozoologist but is really just a silly flake.  She's accompanied by her equally flakey boyfriend Joe (Michael Reed, EXHUMED, NUN OF THAT), their skeptical friend Morgan who's along just to drink beer and scoff at their attempts (Alex Hyeck), and Dave, a nondescript character who's there mainly to capture the other three on his headband video camera (Bryant Jansen). 

Right away they know something's up when the usual road into the area is barricaded and a portly ranger orders them away while a mysterious biologist in a gas mask is in the background scouring the scene. 

They also encounter a gas pump jockey with wild stories and an actual dead deer that's been drained of blood and genitally mutilated.  Naturally, this just makes Amber and Joe act even more like giddy schoolkids on a field trip to a theme park.

What follows is the usual progression from party-fun-time mood to "wow, that was weird" to growing apprehension and evidence that something's really out there, and, finally, to a bloody, hopefully terrifying finale fraught with extreme fear and panic as our main characters find their search for the unknown to have been way more successful than they imagined.

With CHUPACABRA TERRITORY, unfortunately, the path to all that is fraught with long dull stretches in which not much of anything happens.  And when the action does start, much of it consists of POV shots of people running through the woods in the dark or other activity that's hard to make out. 

This kind of thing was pretty scary when we thought the Blair Witch was after us (for me anyway), but the chupacabra legend just doesn't seem to generate the same kind of spooky shivers. 

In order to make up for this, a supernatural element is added in which Amber seems to have a psychic connection with the monster and, in one scene, performs a witchy campfire ritual in which she ends up seemingly possessed.  There's also a weird chupacabra vomit or something that gets on people and causes them to either get horribly infected or start acting like automatons. 

None of which makes much sense, but it does help add to what's basically just a group of people trudging through the woods and intermittently getting real scared of various noises or movement out in the darkness. 

The cast do their best to keep the tension level up, with varying degrees of success at convincing us that they're real people in candid video footage instead of actors pretending to be.  This takes a whole different kind of acting that not all actors are adept at (Heather Donahue and company were great at it in BLAIR WITCH) but which is a crucial element for any found footage story.   

The Blu-ray from Maltauro Entertainment has an aspect ratio of 1920 x 1080 with stereo sound and English subtitles.  Extras consist of interviews with the cast, producer, and writer-director Matt McWilliams, a trailer, and a photo gallery. 

As these things go, CHUPACABRA TERRITORY is fairly entertaining if you keep your expectations low. It isn't the best post-BLAIR WITCH "found footage" movie I've seen, but it isn't the worst, either.

CHUPACABRA TERRITORY -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

CAPTURE KILL RELEASE -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/26/17

 

Yikes!  And I thought HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER was disturbing...

Lots of movies document the dissolution of a relationship, but it's usually because of infidelity or fading romance or something.  In CAPTURE KILL RELEASE (2016), it's because one member of the couple is a budding homicidal psychopath, and the other one isn't quite ready to follow along merrily down the path to full-blown serial killerdom.

This is another "found footage" movie, but it works because the documentation of the act and everything before and after it is such a vital element of the ritual for Jenny (Jennifer Fraser), an otherwise normal-looking person who's giddy as a schoolgirl at the thought of the random murders she's so meticulously planning.

Her normal-looking husband, Farhang (Farhang Ghajar), is also caught up in the waves of excitement emanating from his wife, but only as long as it remains a sort of fantasy-pretend thing that isn't really going to happen.  It's even kind of a turn-on at first.  The poor guy just has no idea what he's in for.

Co-directors Nick McAnulty and Brian Allan Stewart achieve a remarkable sense of "Blair Witch"-style realism that makes everything we see all the more effective.  This is amplified immeasurably by some spot-on, heavily improvised performances, especially by Jennifer Fraser who's so good she's simply fascinating to watch. 

Fraser, in fact, is a major factor in the film's success thanks to her ability to convincingly portray the contrast between Jenny the bubbly, enthusiastic child-woman, and Jenny the stone-cold, bloodthirsty butcher who relishes each new atrocity like a gourmet of gore. (She reminds me of a cross between Sarah Silverman and Patrick Bateman.) 

As horrible as things get--and they do get horrible, take my word for it--her girlish sense of fun remains a chilling indication of just how far around the bend her mental state has really gone. 

 

Jenny doesn't even realize how aghast her own husband has become with their increasingly nightmarish situation, which she regards as a fun project meant to bring them together, until he finally lashes out in utter disgust.

Meanwhile, CAPTURE KILL RELEASE just keeps chugging along inexorably towards its inevitable outcome, leaving a trail of horror in its wake, while we watch in rapt suspense, or dread, or whatever this feeling is that I can't quite shake long after the fade-out. 

One thing's for sure--it goes where most other horror movies don't go, and shows what they don't show, so if you're squeamish, prepare to be squeamed. 

The bathtub sequence alone contains more concentrated gore than most viewers will see in their lifetimes, and it's all extremely realistic.  You sorta already have to be a gorehound, in fact, just to make it through some of this stuff without freaking out.

The film also has the aura of one of those true-crime books by authors like Ann Rule, the kind of dark, demented stuff that used to make me feel bad even as I found it perversely compelling to read.  Much of it, in fact, seems inspired by well-known accounts such as the "Barbie and Ken" killers and various "basement of horror" tales.

Needless to say, CAPTURE KILL RELEASE isn't recommended for everyone.  As (1) an exercise in graphic gore, and (2) a deeply disturbing exploration of gleeful, homicidal insanity, it's an unqualified success both on the visceral and artistic levels.  But I feel like I just went a few rounds with this movie and got gut-punched.


 
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CAPTURE KILL RELEASE -- Movie Review by Porfle

ATROCIOUS -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 10/9/11

 

Ever since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT terrified some and left others wondering what the fuss was all about, filmmakers have been cranking up their camcorders and trying their hand at making the next really scary horror mockumentary.  Some, like the recent EVIL THINGS, come close to recapturing that old spooky vibe, while others are about as exciting as watching somebody's home videos.  And then there's ATROCIOUS (2010), which left me feeling just about as creeped out as any movie has in a long time.

Cristian Quintanilla (Cristian Valencia) and his sister July (Clara Moraleda) are amateur documentarians whose specialty is investigating paranormal urban legends.  When the family takes an Easter vacaion in their secluded villa in Spain, they find that the old house comes with its own legend of a young girl named Melinda who disappeared in the surrounding woods long ago and is now said to be haunting them.  Camcorders at the ready, Cristian and July discover an overgrown hedge labyrinth next to the house, surrounded by a deep, dark forest.  Melinda's forest.

ATROCIOUS follows the usual pattern of spending a whole lot of time with everyday happy-type stuff to lull us into a false sense of security before things start to get scary.  We get to know Mom and Dad, little brother Jose, and family friend Carlos before bro and sis make a thorough exploration of the hedge maze during sunny daylight hours, goodnaturedly needling each other as siblings do.  Even then, they easily get lost, and we start to wonder what it'll be like out there in the dark when they're running in blind terror, which we know is pretty much inevitable.

That big old house is spooky enough with its winding stairways and dank basement filled with junk, including a vintage TV/VCR combo that will figure into the story later on.  From their attic bedroom the three siblings keep watch on the rusty gate leading into the labyrinth, and are filled with apprehension when strange sounds can be heard eminating from it.  When their dog disappears, their search turns up a grisly discovery that foretells the dire events in store for the family. 

Although the film is barely 75 minutes long, some viewers will probably find all this preliminary stuff interminable.  Somehow, though, a well-done mockumentary of this sort tends to hold me in fairly rapt attention as I tensely await, and dread, the onset of the bad things.  Besides, a movie like this has to be allowed to build if it's going to deliver more than simple visceral shocks.

Here, it's the disappearance of little Jose while searching for their family dog that drives the rest of the family to rush frantically into that pitch black hedge maze at night.  Using the night vision on their camcorders (thus giving them a logical reason to still be carrying the damn things), Cristian and July find themselves stumbling through a nightmare world filled with ominous shapes and strange sounds, until they finally encounter what they've been looking for all along.  And that's just when ATROCIOUS really starts getting scary.

You have to hand it to writer-director Fernando Barredo Luna for managing to squeeze maximum chills out of such minimal filmmaking.  His cast of very natural actors get a lot of the credit, too, not only for making their characters so believable but for actually doing much of the camerawork themselves.  Adding to the spontaneity of their performances is the fact that the story's final reveal was kept hidden from them until filming.

The DVD from Vivendi and Bloody Disgusting is in widescreen with 5.1 sound.  You can listen to either the original Spanish soundtrack with English subtitles or the English dub.  Extras consist of a 15-minute "making of" featurette and the film's trailer.   

The final sequence, a combination of home video, police video and crime-scene photographs, and other disturbing footage, pays off in a way that is lacking in the more open-ended examples of the genre, and left me with the queasy realization that I'd just been truly frightened.  Of course, you have to use your own imagination to fully appreciate what ATROCIOUS doesn't show--suggestion can still be scarier than the most graphic visuals if you're properly tuned in to what the film is trying to do.  If you want to be scared, try tuning into this nifty little chiller.

ATROCIOUS -- DVD Review by Porfle

ALTAR -- Movie Review by Porfle

Do people still compare all these new "found footage" movies to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT?  Or has the genre become so common that hardly anyone even thinks to do that anymore? 

At any rate, ALTAR (2016) is the latest example I've seen of a filmmaking style which must be attractive to young, low-budget filmmakers because it allows them to dispense with the usual production values in order to intentionally make their film look like a home movie. 

This is either very effective in a raw, visceral, haunting way (as in BLAIR WITCH or another one of my all-time favorites, ATROCIOUS), or merely an affectation that becomes tiresome if not handled well. 

ALTAR falls somewhere in between, leaning toward "tiresome" during the first hour when most of it (save for a terrific opening sequence lasting about eight minutes) turns out to be buildup consisting of us watching an SUV full of old college buddies headed into the mountains for some camping but getting lost along the way.

When their SUV overheats and they have to park briefly by the side of the road, there's one unsettling moment when a scary-looking guy with an axe pulls up and behaves in an intimidating manner.  He introduces himself as "Ripper" and we know we'll see him again. 

But that won't be for awhile, at least until several more minutes of our not-too-bright protagonists blundering around getting lost and having to set up camp in an unknown part of the wilderness.

They're quite a crew, too: mischievous high school teacher Asher (Tim Parrish) and his ditzy teenaged girlfriend and former student Pam (Ancilla deValmont), independent loner girl Chelsea (Brittany Falardeau), SUV driver Ravi (Deep Rai), and the girl he always had a crush on, Maisy (Stefanie Estes). 

Maisy, however, has her mind on her mousey brother Bo (Jesse Parr), a painfully insecure jumble of emotional and behavioral problems whom she hopes will benefit from the social interaction and fun camping experience.

Bo's main method of distancing himself from the world is to keep a camera between it and him, hence the "found footage" angle--he photographs almost literally everything that happens during the outing. 

Which, as stated, amounts to not much until finally the group decide to wander off into the dark woods in the middle of the night to "explore" and stumble across a strange altar decorated with glowing blue stones and human skulls. 

This is just the beginning of a series of bizarre and eventually lethal encounters between them and whatever malevolent people--or beings--are stalking them through the foreboding forest (and which, in some of the film's best moments, are captured at the edges of Bo's viewfinder just barely visible in the dark).

Upon reaching this point, ALTAR finally takes off and becomes a pretty fun movie to watch.  That is, if you stop expecting any of these characters to behave like normal, rational people.  In fact, it's necessary to let go of any such qualms and simply observe this gaggle of hysterical morons running around the woods like chickens with their heads cut off as the cast engage in some really bad ensemble improv acting. 

Once the viewer has adjusted accordingly, the story becomes sort of a fun comedy of errors dotted with bloody murders and a few surprises, getting more frenetic and jarringly improbable as it unfolds and the whole thing rushes headlong toward an all-out "anything goes" finale. 

My hopes for ALTAR being a solid, serious horror film began to deflate the more I watched it, but darn if the thing didn't end up getting pumped so full of hot air before it was over that it blew itself right back up again.  It ends not with a bang but with a satisfying "pop", as though we just had a fun horror party and now it's time for ice cream and cake. 


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ALTAR -- Movie Review by Porfle