FATHER'S DAY -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/24/12

 

I didn't know quite what to expect when I started watching FATHER'S DAY (2011), a condition which persisted throughout the entire movie.  Just when you think you've pretty much figured out what it is you're watching, it turns into something a whole lot weirder and several times nuttier.

Written, directed, and starred in by a group of Winnipeg filmmakers who call themselves Astron-6, it's an unashamedly stupid, gore-drenched grab bag of tongue-in-cheek tough-guy action-horror-comedy antics done in the fake-grindhouse style of PLANET TERROR, but with real grindhouse production values and attitude. 

Most nostalgic of all for me, it's presented as though home-taped sometime during the 80s off a late-night cable station called ASTR-TV, complete with promo bumpers, smarmy announcer, and a mid-movie faux trailer for something really, really cheesy called STAR RAIDERS.

The story begins in semi-sane fashion with corpulent "Father's Day Killer" Chris Fuchman (Mackenzie Murdock) raping and butchering dads, including that of gay street hustler Twink (Conor Sweeney).  This repellent character also killed the father of young Ahab and cut out his right eye in the bargain. 

Now grown up, Ahab (Adam Brooks) is a growly-voiced, eye-patched "Snake Plissken" type out for revenge along with his stripper sister Chelsea (Amy Groening), the addlebrained Twink, and a jittery young priest named Father John (Matthew Kennedy) whose blind, aging mentor also met a horrific Fuchman-related fate. 

What follows makes ARMY OF DARKNESS look like a Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy as this simple revenge flick gets progressively more absurd.  Characters obsess "Monty Python"-style over simple figures of speech, as when Ahab tells Father John that it's time to harvest his maple syrup before it turns bitter and Father John wrongly interprets this as a metaphor for Ahab and his sister Chelsea, after which a confused Ahab spends five minutes trying to figure out why Father John just compared him to a tree.

Twink, meanwhile, begins the film as a deceptively serious character grieving over his dead dad (Billy Sadoo's acting while being murdered by Fuchman is strikingly realistic), making his descent into extreme goofiness even more pronounced.  Elsewhere, Father John's odyssey takes him from a meltdown in the pulpit worthy of Richard Burton on laughing gas (in a scene which may have been inspired by the opening to NIGHT OF THE IGUANA) to a hostage situation in Heaven with the desperate priest holding God (Troma head honcho Lloyd Kaufman) at gunpoint. 

While all this is going on, Fuchman continues his reign of terror complete with a cornucopia of wet 'n' wild gore effects including entrails, exploding heads, and one shocking moment that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "eat me."  None of this, however, is quite as disturbing as the image of a full-on naked Mackenzie Murdock displaying his eye-watering genitalia and humping everyone in sight. 

Just when you think our heroes have defeated the bad guy and made everything right with the world again, FATHER'S DAY pulls out all the stops and goes totally off the deep end with Ahab, Twink, and Father John descending into Hell to rescue Chelsea, who's been kidnapped by Fuchman to be the bearer of his evil seed or whatever. 

While this may sound pretty horrible, it's all basically just an excuse to ramp up the bizarre off-the-wall comedy to even greater heights (or should I say depths) of calculated idiocy.  Along with even more squishy gore effects, of course.  Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention the extreme incest sequence and the buxom, chainsaw-wielding stripper played by my future wife, Zsuzsi. 

As nastily nostalgic as the more expensive, star-studded PLANET TERROR and packed with more grindhouse-verite' style than HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN, the gleefully horrendous FATHER'S DAY will be a riotous romp for some, a nauseating nightmare for others.  You probably know which camp you're in by now. 


Our coverage of the film's premiere

Official website

FATHER'S DAY -- Movie Review by Porfle

MIDNIGHT COWBOY -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 4/20/21

 

Currently rewatching: MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969). The only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture (it was later reduced to an R).

The two great lead performances consist of Dustin Hoffman as skid row denizen "Ratso" Rizzo and Jon Voight as a naive Texas stud named Joe Buck who thinks he can make money hustling rich New York matrons who are "just beggin' for it."

Rarely has this sort of life been portrayed in such a bleak and desolate manner as the two unlikely friends struggle to scrape up a meager buck while living in a condemned building. 

 

Joe's prospects grow dimmer every day, forcing him to engage in the lowest forms of prostitution, while Ratso's physical deterioration mirrors that of their increasingly hopeless living conditions.

John Schlesinger's creative direction and the sometimes free-form editing are amazingly, deliriously experimental.
 
Flashbacks, fantasies, and delusions often combine to turn the narrative into a fever dream that's alternately humorous (Ratso's fantasies of a sunbaked life in Florida) and frightening (Joe's garbled memories of childhood sexual and emotional confusion and warped romantic encounters).

Yet the funny, perversely sentimental, and at times achingly tragic story always remains grounded and strong, leading to a heartrending and overwhelmingly sad ending that is rendered for maximum effect with the skill of a virtuoso by director Schlesinger.

 

The supporting cast includes Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, John McGiver, Sylvia Miles, and Bob Balaban. A dizzying party sequence features some familiar names associated with Andy Warhol and the New York avant garde scene.

I hadn't seen MIDNIGHT COWBOY for quite some time before revisiting it just now, and what I vaguely remembered as a "sad" ending hit me full force this time and I cried pretty much all the way through the closing credits. Some of the most innovative and creatively self-assured films ever made came out of the late 60s, and this is one of the best.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY -- Movie Review by Porfle

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 10/28/13

 

Like so many soldiers throughout the ages, returning World War II veterans were faced with a special dilemma--they were back in the homefront they'd yearned for, yet surrounded by people who had no idea what they'd just been through and what they were going through now. 

The problems these men had fitting back into peacetime society--including becoming members of their own families again--are skillfully and sympathetically explored in director William Wyler's Oscar-winning masterwork THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), now available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Video.

Three ex-servicemen--Army sergeant Al Stephenson (Frederic March,  DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE), Air Force captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews, CURSE OF THE DEMON),  and Navy swabbie Homer Parrish (Harold Russell)--hitch a long ride on a military transport to their hometown and become bosom buddies along the way. 

We begin to feel their tension at seeing family and friends again as they liken it to "storming the beaches", with Homer especially dreading the impending reunion due to the loss of his hands during his ship's sinking.  He fears not only how his folks will react but mostly whether or not his prospective bride, girl-next-door Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell, BEN HUR), will now reject him.

Fred has a different problem--his blond bombshell wife, Marie (a drop-dead gorgeous Virginia Mayo), to whom he had been married a mere twenty days before going overseas, is a party animal whose recent job in a nightclub has made her accustomed to a fast lifestyle which her unemployed husband can't provide. 

The young Andrews is ideally cast as a once-proud soldier who now must return to his old job as a drugstore soda jerk, biting his lip as a former underling orders him around while an uncaring boss, as did many at the time, regards him and other returning vets as a nuisance to society.  With Marie constantly berating him for not being successful or ambitious enough, and openly flaunting her intentions to "step out" on him, we can hardly blame Fred when he falls for Marie's exact opposite, the lovely and understanding Peggy (a vibrant Teresa Wright).

Trouble is,  Peggy is Al's daughter, and he's having his own problems without having to worry about her hooking up with a married man.  Unlike his two pals, former banker Al returns to a luxurious apartment but feels just as out-of-place among his wife and two kids.  Their reunion is tense and uncomfortable--empathetic viewers, in fact, may feel this way for much of the film--with Al first glimpsing his wife Milly (Myrna Loy) across the expanse of a long hallway that symbolizes the gulf still lying between them.  (He'll later describe the feeling of crossing that hallway as "like going overseas again.")

In  the film's opening scenes, it's heartrending to see the near-desperation with which the three main characters cling to each other's sympathetic company rather than face the prospect of returning to the families who now seem almost like strangers to them.  Later,  we fear that they'll never reassimilate back into normal life. 

This is especially true when restless Al urges Milly and Peggy to join him for a night out on the town.  March, seemingly slipping  into his celebrated Mr. Hyde persona at times,  portrays Al as a manic, nearly out-of-control drunk on his first night back--it's almost as though he's decompressing, or trying to put on the brakes like a speeding jet landing on a runway.  

It makes us glad that Milly is such a strong, sensible, supportive wife, with a rock-solid Myrna Loy (THE THIN MAN) lending her the stature of a woman any man would fight to come back home to and be glad to have on his side.  With her help, Al will eventually "mature" into a self-assured, no-nonsense personality whose unshakable principles threaten to get him into hot water back at the bank when he starts granting loans to other veterans with little or no collateral.  His drinking is another concern, as is the growing rift between him and Fred over daughter Peggy.

Even though we know Fred's marriage to Marie hasn't much of a future, his impulsiveness worries us when he steals a kiss from Peggy after an innocent lunch date.  Her growing attraction to him draws her into a terrible quandary which puts her at odds with her parents, and the scene of their most emotional confrontation is powerfully done. 

Meanwhile,  Fred's feelings of worthlessness are dramatically illustrated when he visits a "graveyard" for derelict bomber planes that are to be junked.  Sitting in the nose of a rusty, engineless plane and reliving his experiences as a bombadier, he realizes that he, too, is a wartime relic to be either recycled or tossed on the junk heap.  Director Wyler renders the sequence with exquisite skill, while Andrews gives it his all and musical composer Hugo Friedhofer pulls out all the stops--it's a gripping scene. 

Still, this is nothing compared to the emotional rollercoaster in store for the viewer regarding the unfortunate sailor, Homer.  Portrayed by real-life amputee Harold Russell, himself a former serviceman who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his debut role, Homer endures excruciating emotional torment which we can't help but share as he feels isolated amidst his own family and impotent as a man. 

During a scene in which he silently allows his father to remove his "arms" and dress him in his pajamas--in what was certainly a reflection of his own real-life experiences-- Russell's face and demeanor tell us everything we need to know about the thoughts and emotions roiling inside him.  When he angrily thrusts his hooks through a windowpane in response to the curious looks of his little sister and her friends, it's a shocking and disturbing moment in cinema. 

Russell gives an earnest, painfully uninhibited performance that lends added dimension to what is already a devastatingly effective and multi-faceted story.  Andrews has probably never been better, nor has Teresa Wright, with their final scene together delivering a substantial payoff for the film as a whole.

March and Loy, the two old pros, come through like gangbusters as a couple whose problems only seem to make them stronger as long if they face them together.  And in a role that displayed her dramatic talent at a time when she was known mostly for comedy, Virginia Mayo proves that she's not only a knockout but can deliver a raucous, punchy performance (her "mirror" scene with Wright dazzles, as do her frenetic exchanges with Andrews.)  Also in the cast are stalwarts such as Hoagy Carmichael, Ray Collins, Steve Cochran (as Marie's oily-haired new beau), Don Beddoe, and Gladys George.

The single-disc Blu-ray from Warner Home Video is in 1.77:1 widescreen and English 1.0 sound.  Subtitles are in English, French,  and Spanish.  Bonus features consist of a brief introduction by Virginia Mayo, interview footage with Mayo and Teresa Wright, and the theatrical trailer. 

After THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES has already put us through the wringer with its other stories of desperation and redemption,  it saves its deepest felt and most lasting impact for the final scenes between Harold Russell's "Homer" and girl-next-door Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell is sweetness incarnate in the role) finally resolving the long-running uncertainty that has lingered between them since his return.  It's one of the most heartrendingly emotional sequences I've ever seen, and if you can get through it without blubbering like a baby, then, as Kipling once said, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

THE MASTER -- Blu-Ray/DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 2/13/13

 

It wasn't until I looked up the lyrics to the song "Slow Boat to China" that I really started to get what Paul Thomas Anderson's THE MASTER (2012) is about.  When I understood that, the ending suddenly took on the emotional significance that I'd missed first time around. 

But that happens now and then with a movie as enigmatic as this one.  You think that little of any real depth is happening for over two hours until you can stop and look back at it all.  Anderson isn't methodically connecting the dots to reveal a big plot here.  He's interested mainly in telling us about some intriguing people and what they mean to each other.

Joaquin Phoenix plays troubled WWII veteran and drifter Freddie Quell, a man whose crudely manic obsession with sex is intertwined with a need for closeness and acceptance.  Struggling to find his way after leaving the Navy, he ends up with a burgeoning cult called The Cause, which is led by the eccentric, charismatic genius Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman, JACK GOES BOATING). 

Despite the disapproval of Dodd's domineering wife Peggy (Amy Adams) and other members of the group, Dodd finds the impulsive, unpredictable, and sometimes violent Freddie both a challenge and an inspiration, eventually making him a valued confidant and symbol of the movement's beneficial effect.  "If we cannot help him," he tells a dubious Peggy, "then it is we who have failed."

This is first demonstrated when Dodd, as payment for some wonderful homemade hooch that Freddie is known for, gives him an informal "processing" session meant to help him relive a past event and alter it for the better.  Dodd is later accused of being a simple hypnotist but we're never really sure whether or not he's a complete charlatan, especially since his wife seems so fiercely devoted to The Cause.  But he clearly thinks he can help Freddie for real, or at least turn him into everything he himself wants to be if he only had the freedom ("You will be my guinea pig and protege", he tells him) which seems to invigorate him with a genuine sense of purpose.

Dodd's strange methods both anger and fascinate Freddie until he begins to actively seek his spiritual counselling.  We find out enough about Freddie during these sessions to make him even more of a sympathetic character, while in the two men we see the beginnings of a deep platonic love that will come to dominate both their lives.  Most of the rest of THE MASTER is an exploration of this strange symbiotic relationship that brings out the best and worst in both men while disrupting those around them.

In a brilliant, endlessly inventive performance by Joaquim Phoenix, Freddie Quell is wiry, twitchy, and heartrendingly needy despite an air of self-assurance.  His confusion and uncertainty are underscored by Paul Thomas Anderson's disorienting and often dreamlike images which, augmented by some stream-of-consciousness editing and a dizzying musical score, keep the viewer off-balance much of the time.  Still, Anderson's direction is utterly surehanded and glows with a keen visual sense.

Hoffman's role is less showy but, as Lancaster Dodd, he radiates an off-kilter genius similar to that of Orson Welles while letting a childlike glee show through during certain unguarded moments with Freddie.  Amy Adams, who was so wonderfully appealing in SUNSHINE CLEANING, is no less impressive here as what may be the true power behind The Cause.  The rest of the cast are fine, including Laura Dern as a fervent follower and BAD SEED Patty McCormack as a wealthy dowager who first sponsors and then takes legal action against Dodd.

The Blu-Ray/DVD combo from Image Entertainment is in 1.85:1 letterbox with Dolby 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  Extras consist of 20 minutes of outtakes and additional scenes  (very nicely edited together and scored), an 8-minute short "Unguided Message", teasers and trailers, and (Blu-Ray only) John Huston's 1946 documentary about WWII veterans, "Let There Be Light."  The keepcase contains a postcard of Philip Seymour Hoffman to send to some unsuspecting person on your mailing list.

Paul Thomas Anderson seems to be inviting viewers to watch his enigmatic character study more than once and figure things out for themselves.  It's not a movie that lays everything out neatly for us to fully assimilate first time around.  If you want, you can explore it, mine it for nuggets, and interpret it freely.  THE MASTER ends with a whispered, acapella rendition of "Slow Boat to China", in a lovely platonic love scene that's about as disarming as anything I've seen in quite awhile.

THE MASTER -- Blu-Ray/DVD Review by Porfle

PROTEGE -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/20/09

 

If you saw DONNIE BRASCO (or better yet, read the riveting book by Joe Pistone, who lived it), you'll already have an idea of the conflicting loyalties and constant fear of discovery experienced by undercover cop Nick (Daniel Wu) in the offbeat Hong Kong cop thriller PROTEGE, aka "Moon To" (2007).

For years Nick has been living as the trusted protege to Lin Quin (a makeup-aged Andy Lau), an ailing heroin kingpin who wishes to make a last big score so that his family will be set for life when he dies. Not the usual cartoon villain, Lau portrays Quin as a practical businessman who loves his family and rationalizes that his drugs only ruin the lives of weak-willed lowlifes. But when a botched drug raid indicates a rat within the organization with Nick as a suspect, Quin displays his ruthless and lethal side in a tense interrogation scene.

As Donnie Brasco developed warm feelings for his aging mob mentor Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero over the years, so Nick finds himself caring for the dying Quin and his unsuspecting family. But the pain and suffering caused by Quin's heroin is brought home when Nick meets Fan (Zhang Jing Chu), a single mother living in his apartment building with her adorable three-year-old daughter. Fan is a wretched addict hiding from the abusive husband (Louis Koo) who got her hooked and who uses their own daughter to help him smuggle drugs. As Nick becomes more involved with Fan, trying his best to help her and her daughter, his inner conflicts slowly begin to reach a breaking point.

PROTEGE isn't your typical Hong Kong actioner--there isn't a single chop, kick, or really outlandish stunt--but the human drama is pretty intense. Just as you start to think it's going to be all about police vs. bad guys, the story goes in unexpected directions as Nick's relationships with Quin and Fan keep him in constant emotional turmoil.

The very first scene gives a good indication that we're in for something unusual. With brilliantly sunlit clouds swirling past outside, Fan shoots up in her crumbling apartment, then slowly sinks onto the couch, dead to the world. As harsh light shines through paper-patched windows and ragged curtains drift in the breeze, a bright red doll carriage rolls into the frame. Fan's daughter approaches her mother tentatively, plucks the needle from her arm, toddles over to the wastebasket, and daintily drops it in, as though she's done this countless times before. The scene is both horrible yet somehow dreamily ethereal, and a provocative way to start a movie.

Former Shaw Brothers actor Derek Yee's direction is sharp and imaginative yet remarkably unflamboyant, allowing him to emphasize certain scenes using only subtle stylistic changes. When he slowly rocks his camera from side to side during Nick and Fan's disturbing sex scene (Nick is awakened on the couch by a heroin-addled Fan and then frightened by her ecstatic convulsions during intercourse) it isn't merely to make the visuals more kinetic but to convey her disorientation from reality and his own confused feelings.

Certain moments related to Fan's shocking deterioration seem right out of a horror movie, while time-lapse shots of roiling clouds speeding past her slumlike apartment building (Yee photographs this location and its slovenly interiors beautifully) are unsettlingly surreal. Conversely, the film assumes a colorful travelogue look when Quin takes Nick to Thailand to meet the main man in the heroin chain. Beautiful country settings with hazy blue mountains and dazzling poppy fields serve as a stark contrast to the dark, miserable end result of such an endeavor.

Yee's screenplay is intended to enlighten us about the various aspects and consequences of heroin trafficking, and from this pastoral starting point (which sometimes has the bland instructional tone of an educational film) we're shown how the raw materials are refined in Quin's warehouse "kitchen" and turned into bricks of almost pure heroin for distribution. Early on, a mixup of ingredients that threatens to ruin an entire batch leads to a tense montage with Quin and his employees scrambling to salvage it. Yee and editor Kong Chi-Leung speed things up here and almost have us rooting for the bad guys to succeed, which gives us an idea of what Nick's daily life must be like.

The one really riveting action sequence in the film comes when a group of Customs officers, unaware that Nick is an undercover agent, apprehend him after he leaves the kitchen and brutally beat him until he leads them back to it. Suddenly all hell breaks loose as Quin's "cooks" dash to destroy the evidence while the Customs officers break down the steel door. Their leader is played by Liu Kai Chi, who was a renegade cop in 2005's KILL ZONE (aka "Saat po long") and is even more wonderfully out-of-control here. Graphic violence ensues, and a harrowing escape attempt from a window to a balcony below leads to one of the most realistic high-fall death scenes ever filmed. This sequence definitely got my heart pounding for awhile.

Daniel Wu brings a quiet strength and intensity to his role--we can see how Nick cares not only for Fan and her child but for the devastation Quin's family will endure when his crimes are exposed. Andy Lau is so likable as Quin that we can almost sympathize with him until he expresses his contemptuous disregard for the misery he causes. As Fan, Zhang Jing Chu does a remarkable job conveying a delicate waiflike quality one moment and then transforming into a mindless degenerate the next. (Described as a "cunning linguist" in Bey Logan's commentary, she had to learn Cantonese for the part.) Louis Koo comes off as a bit of a caricature as her no-good husband, yet he's interesting to watch and his eventual fate is nicely-played. Director Yee himself appears as Nick's boss on the police force. As for Liu Kai Chi, well, he's a wild man. I love the guy.

In 2.35:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital sound, the DVD looks and sounds fine. While this Dragon Dynasty release contains only one disc, there are the usual substantive extras, including the highly-informed and enthusiastic commentary we've come to expect from Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan. There's a well-produced "making of" featurette that lasts almost half an hour, followed by low-key, thoughtful interviews with Daniel Wu, Zhang Jing Chu, and producer Peter Chan. These indicate the depth of interest in the subject by all involved and how much research was done, particularly in talking to actual addicts and trying to discern what leads them to pursue heroin use at the cost of their own lives. The theatrical trailer is included, and the film can be watched in either the original Cantonese or the English dub with subtitles for the hard-of-hearing.

PROTEGE is that rare thriller that is so emotionally involving that it doesn't need to keep the viewer's interest stoked with a succession of fights and stunts. Rapid-fire editing and flashy camerawork are used sparingly (and are all the more effective for it in certain scenes), with the emphasis placed instead on rich characterizations, gripping suspense, and some images that are genuinely haunting. "Why do people take drugs?" Nick keeps asking himself throughout the story, and at the end, he finds out the hard way.

 

PROTEGE -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE WOODS -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted in 2006 

 

Heather (Agnes Bruckner) is a troubled girl who doesn't get along with her mom.  One day she decides to express her pent-up feelings by setting fire to the woods next to her house, almost burning it down.  Now her bitchy, self-centered mom (Emma Campbell) and her sympathetic dad (the redoubtable Bruce Campbell) are taking her to an exclusive and very secluded girls' boarding school in the middle of a dense, dark forest.  Here, in this strict and highly regimented atmosphere deep in THE WOODS (2006), it is hoped that Heather will learn to be a proper young lady who doesn't set things on fire.

Things begin to look creepy right away; the school is a large, foreboding building that is hundreds of years old and has vines growing through all the windows and across the walls, all the teachers are spinsterish former students who are weird, and the headmistress, Ms. Traverse (Patricia Clarkson), is a strange woman who always looks like there's something dark and ominous on her mind.  She gives Heather a peculiar aptitude test, ostensibly to determine whether or not she qualifies for a scholarship.  But, as it turns out later, this test is for a far different purpose altogether.



Heather makes friends with a timid girl named Marcy (Lauren Birkell) and enemies with the school bitch, Samantha (Rachel Nichols), while doing her best to alienate her teachers enough to get sent home.  Meanwhile, she begins to have frightening nightmares about wandering through the dark woods and encountering ghostly figures that come after her.  She also notices that a particular bed in the corner, about four bunks down from hers, is always empty.  It belongs to Ann, a girl who supposedly tried to kill herself a few weeks earlier. 

When Ann finally returns, her wrists wrapped in gauze, she appears haunted and deeply disturbed.  Heather awakens that night to see a thick tangle of vines creeping over the floor toward Ann's bed, covered by a blanket of mist. Was this a dream?  In any case, the next morning Ann's bed is empty once again, save for a pile of leaves shaped like a human body.  Woo-OOO-ooo...!

And things are just getting started.  THE WOODS is an engaging and very well-rendered spook tale that has a few elements in common with SUSPIRIA, and although it isn't quite as scary or as beautiful as Dario Argento's masterpiece, it's still directed with great care and skill by Lucky McKee (MAY) and exquisitely photographed and edited.  It also reminds me of some of those atmospheric Canadian horror flicks I used to watch on cable and VHS back in the early 80s.  And the fact that it's a period piece, taking place in 1965 and featuring some cool Leslie Gore songs including the classic "You Don't Own Me", gives it added ambience. 



It doesn't rely on blood and gore for its scares, but doesn't shy away from it, either--there are some pretty splattery scenes here and there, especially when certain characters start to wield a big, red axe that figures prominently throughout.  And when the woods attack and it's time to crank up the old CGI, it actually looks fairly convincing for a change.

The mystery behind the school deepens as Heather discovers more about its history--mainly the story of three strange girls who emerged from the woods one day about a hundred years earlier and were taken in.  They later turned out to be witches, and began to exert their evil influence in bad ways.  The headmistress at the time tried to stop them, and the main witch introduced her to the big, red axe.  Now, Heather realizes that the school is still in the witch business and is recruiting girls who excell in Ms. Traverse's "aptitude test", and who can hear the voices in the woods calling to them as Heather does. 

In fact, as it turns out, "the force" is particularly strong with Heather and Ms. Traverse has something especially bad planned for her.  And as bad turns to worse, Heather is eventually told that it's her turn to sleep in the empty bed in the corner.  Woo-OOO-ooo...!  (Okay, I'll stop doing that now.)

Agnes Bruckner is an appealing young actress and does a fine job as Heather, and the rest of the cast, both young and old, are outstanding as well.  As Ms. Traverse, Patricia Clarkson is just as good at playing restrained, understated creepiness as she was as Margaret White in the excellent TV remake of CARRIE.  And Bruce Campbell...well, he's Bruce Campbell.  He's great as good ol' Dad, eventually racing to his daughter's rescue as she's trapped in the horrific culmination of the witches' evil machinations.  He even gets to wield the big, red axe!  But watch out, Bruce...as Scotty tried to tell you way back in THE EVIL DEAD:  "But the trees, Ash.  They know.  Don't you see, Ash?  They're alive!"

THE WOODS -- Movie Review by Porfle