Thanksgiving (2023)
Director: Eli Roth
Screenwriters: Jeff Rendel
Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Rick Hoffman, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Gina Gershon

There were quite a few issues with the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez exploitation double feature ‘Grindhouse’ from 2007, with Rodriguez’s film Planet Terror admittedly being the superior film to Tarantino’s Death Proof, which whilst not awful, is certainly his worst film so far. What was possibly the best part of both films were the opening few minutes, which contained mock trailers for exploitation horror films before the main feature. Out of these came Rodriguez’s Machete in 2010, which somehow has become Danny Trejo’s modern day calling card, and Hobo with a Shotgun starring Rutger Hauer in 2011. Now, twelve years after the last feature-length version, and sixteen years after the fake trailer short film first aired in the double bill, Eli Roth brings us Thanksgiving, a pure exploitation slasher flick of the greatest kind.

Following a massacre at a Black Friday sale at RightMart, the next year’s thanksgiving is rightly looked to with apprehension. Demonstrations to close down the store, comments towards the store owner’s daughter, Jessica (played by Nell Verlaque), and the return to town of her old boyfriend, Bobby (played by Thomas Brooks) are just small parts of it. The more pressing issue is that someone has stolen an axe from a mock-up of John Carver’s ancestral home, and there are a load of masks of his face being handed around for the upcoming parade. Someone is back for revenge, and this time there will be no leftovers. So says the tagline.

The poster designs for Thanksgiving have shown clearly where the film’s interests lie, as four are variations of old slasher posters, from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to Halloween (1978). The original Grindhouse short was very much a love letter to these films of the seventies and eighties. However, it would be remiss to say that Thanksgiving is simply an 80s tribute, because whilst there are moments (even referencing slightly lesser known entries like Prom Night and even Happy Birthday To Me), there’s as much praise given to the neo-slashers of the modern era. The slick stylings of Kevin Williamson-penned slashers like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer are front and centre, and Roth’s swift direction and Rendel’s dialogue make it clear that this is a modern film which isn’t interested in replicating the crackly quality of the 80s, as the film Abrakadabra (2018) did to stylistically replicate the 70s giallo. There’s as much tribute paid to old schlock like My Bloody Valentine and New Year’s Evil (80s slashers, after Halloween, took any national holiday they could to make a film around) as there is to Happy Death Day. Thanksgiving is traditional in sentiment and tropes, but modern in its slick execution.

It is precisely this balance that makes Thanksgiving so fun to watch. Yes, it’s violent to the extreme, with gnarly gore and twisted deaths, and if that’s not your cup of tea then the film won’t be for you, but this amount of red meat is to be expected of Roth, who has never shied away from ripping off body parts for the past twenty years. Yes, the formula is baked into the film’s very existence, and Roth never tries for a single second to step away from it. It is cliched to the hilt, shining its axe blade to a finely honed edge of horror formula. Yes, it never for a second tries to do a single thing which might be considered new or innovative or interesting from a standpoint of pushing things forward.

Yet that is the exact point of the film. This is a love letter to all of the teen slasher’s history, from Blood and Black Lace’s giallo beginnings to the most recent Scream films. The characters are stock but well acted, music by Brandon Roberts in the now-traditional orchestral stylings that Marco Beltrami used to great effect in Scream doing its job, and everything slots together nicely in the final product.

There’s a strong anti-capitalist message which comes and goes in varying strength depending on when the plot calls for it, and the clunkiness of its execution in this department isn’t going to score it any points, but there is, at least, something in there. It doesn’t simply use teen technology as a joke, although it also doesn’t put its full weight behind using it to give the message of the viral nature of crime and the desensitisation to violence as it seems to think it is doing. Perhaps this would be explored in a sequel, as the film certainly leaves enough scope and enough lingering doubts as to warrant it. There are no loose ends, but there’s a feeling that things aren’t all said and done.

For the most part, however, Thanksgiving does exactly what it says it’s going to. It gives a good, bloody slasher flick with confident writing and directing, and whilst it never achieves anything distinctly new, it is as monolithic a tribute to the slasher film as there ever has been, without going postmodern and meta to name-and-shame every film it stole a shot from. It feels very much like a film which heralds the end of an era for the slasher film, as the reboots of Halloween and Scream have seemed to begin to usher in a new wave of the formula. The film holds its axe high to the world and confidently, without shame, declares, ‘I am a slasher film, and I love it.’

Score: 18/24

Films covering the holocaust have often been left out of the Hollywood canon, whether because of the difficulty involved in portraying such an event or the fears of a bad box office reaction from audiences, with representation from major studios being lacklustre at best.

The fear of artistic contemplation around cinema’s own often sordid history with World War 2 has also been ripe, but two very contemporary and unique directors have been able to do justice to these events and right the wrongs of film history: Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino.

Schindler’s List

Steven Spielberg had set out to adapt Thomas Keneally’s “Schindler’s Ark” in 1983, ten years before Schindler’s List’s release. There had been previous attempts to adapt the story of Oskar Schindler, played in the film by Liam Neeson, as far back as 1963, but studios had been afraid to adopt the project.

As one of the frontrunners in the New Hollywood movement, Steven Spielberg had never been afraid to push the studio system into new forms of filmmaking, and coming off the back of the Indiana Jones trilogy and Empire of the Sun, he was able to guarantee box office success for the often-rapacious studios.

The film was finally greenlit in 1992, after swapping hands between Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, and saw the big-time director working with a much smaller budget than he was used to; $22 million in comparison to the $70 million of his previous film Hook. The film follows Oskar Schindler as he grows increasingly concerned for his Jewish workforce during the rise and fall of the Nazi regime.

Liam Neeson’s Oskar Schindler begins Schindler’s List as an industrialist and member of the Nazi party, and it’s only when his Jewish foreman Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) approaches him to help other prisoners that he begins to act, realising that his privileged position has separated him from the utter horror that those around him experience.

Only from European directors had there been films about the Holocaust that dealt with the emotional reality with the kind of surgical approach required for such a subject – specifically Alain Resnais’ powerful documentary Night and Fog – but these never had the wide populist appeal of any American production. Spielberg, influenced heavily by French New Wave directors like Resnais, would set out to bring this story of profound emotion and cruelty to the screens of average movie goers.

Steven Spielberg is of Jewish upbringing and descent, with his family taking a major role in local religious organisations during his youth. Spielberg has stated that the Holocaust was often discussed by his parents, with his father losing sixteen family members due to the atrocity.

Schindler’s List opens with a candle shedding light into a darkened room, as Spielberg prepares to illuminate a part of history often mishandled. Janusz Kaminski’s black and white photography is stylised yet elegant, with long shadows and deep rays of light picking out the violence and characters in a sea of faces. The visual power never overstates or understates the human suffering at the heart of the narrative. This is best utilised later in the film as a group of Nazi soldiers storm through the ghetto that has imprisoned many of Schindler’s Jewish workers. The camera follows them in an almost documentarian style, situating us initially with the perpetrators. This footage is eerily similar to the films of the concentration camps captured by the victorious allies; not just the use of black and white photography but also the handheld camera that emphasises events over cinematic style. What follows is a montage of brutality and fear as the Jewish prisoners attempt to hide but are found and killed one by one.

Presenting these moments with such cool restraint only emphasises the fear and human experience of each of the people we follow. We know them only momentarily, but their emotions and fear are justified by seeing the power of the force that pursues them. When we finally cut to a wide shot of Schindler looking down on the violence below, we are given a moment to breathe and absorb the horror we just witnessed others experience. The visuals are used with great power to emphasise moments of fear, of hope and of sorrow, in much the same way that Spielberg has built his career. He is known for his power over schmaltz and his big emotional beats, but of all the pieces directed by Steven Spielberg this is probably the most emotionally sensitive. In Schindler’s List, this great American director charts his way through every possible feeling he can rinse from a film like this and does it in a way that never feels manipulative, cheap or too overt.

The girl in the red coat, probably Schindler’s List’s most iconic image, is a pin prick of light in the severity of it all. Her initial appearance is in line with Spielberg’s sparing use of colour, applying it to portray hope and salvation amongst the conflict and suffering. When she appears for the final time, brutalised and destroyed, Schindler finally decides what he must do. This piece of cinema is so powerful that it’s worth marvelling at. It is no coincidence that Schindler only begins to act when Stern brings forward some refugees that he has the power to protect; bringing the individual stories of survivors to the forefront is the only way to understand such an event.

In line with the stories of individual victims is the film’s strong emphasis on names. From the opening montage to the closing shot we are continuously reminded of the names of the victims of these events. This feels like a response to a scene in the film that sees Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes), the commanding officer of a Nazi internment camp, proclaim to the guards that the history of the Jews is now eradicated, of course an important tactic in Nazi oppression. As the film progresses, and Göth’s tactics become more severe, the destruction of identity becomes an important through line. The Jewish prisoners are degraded and stripped of personal possessions, making them less than human in the eyes of the Nazis. Spielberg does not want the audience to forget this piece of history and is intent on using his cinematic form to engrain it in art. The names of these people are as important as the event itself; they sit at the film’s core – they are never hidden under overt stylisation and big emotional moments. There’s also an awareness of the context of the film itself; produced by a large American studio, with a cast helmed by non-Jewish actors and an American director. A production like this could have easily erased the names of those victims in an act of profit-motivated ignorance, but by making them a central narrative and thematic point they become unmissable. The film’s final scene sees the remaining survivors paying respect to Schindler at his grave, accompanied by family or those who portrayed them in the film, each life saved is represented and so are their stories.

Simply having the name “Spielberg” attached to this film would have immediately placed it in the cinematic pantheon, but the film surpassed even its director’s filmography. At the 1994 Oscars it received 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The overall critical response was immensely positive, with the likes of Roger Ebert describing it as one of the best films of 1993. It also earned a $300million profit at the box office and is considered one of the greatest films of all time. Schindler’s List has cemented itself in the cinematic ecosystem as a reference point for quality filmmaking and storytelling, thus placing a clear and survivor-driven narrative at cinema’s forefront. There is a comfort in knowing that a piece of popular cinema represents this moment in history to the best of its ability.

Inglourious Basterds

Where Steven Spielberg filled a black spot in cinema’s history with his presentation of the atrocities of the holocaust, Quentin Tarantino intended to rewrite it.

Following the critical and monetary failure of Death Proof, and the whole Grindhouse project, Tarantino decided to take an introspective look at one of the genres that most inspired him: war. Inglourious Basterds is a rework of the team-up war films of his youth, and the ones that Hollywood long preferred to films like Schindler’s List. Tarantino had been playing around with the script for the film for over a decade before production, considering it his masterpiece. The story had taken many different forms, at one point being a mini-series, but he later settled on a more constrained version of the film. Shooting began in 2008.

Inglourious Basterds follows a group of American soldiers sent behind enemy lines to enact violent retribution on the Nazi army. During a screening of a Nazi propaganda film, the tactfully named Basterds plan to murder the whole Nazi high command in one sweep, but they are unaware that the Jewish cinema owner Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) has a similar if slightly more theatrical plan.

The propaganda film in question is Nation’s Pride, which was made specifically for the film by Basterds cast member (and prominent director in his own right) Eli Roth. The film follows Daniel Brühl’s Frederick Zoller as he fights off wave after wave of American soldiers in an act of fascistic heroism. This film itself is an exercise in cinematic retribution, ripping the power of film from the hands of the Nazis. In terms of the violence of Zoller’s actions, it is more subdued and sober, adding a realist brutality to its impact. This is in direct contrast to the cathartic “movie violence” Tarantino implements against the Nazis. The violence is on the side of the good guys – there is to be no morbid satisfaction in seeing Zoller’s’ actions play out.

Nation’s Pride is more influenced by the Soviet propaganda film Battleship Potemkin, from the snap zooms on a blinded soldier to the general style. This is an attempt by Tarantino and Roth to separate this film from the stylistic proclivities of actual Nazi filmmakers like Leni Riefenstahl, refusing to bring their filmmaking into a 21st Century context. Riefenstahl and other filmmakers like G.W Pabst are referenced throughout the film, but never portrayed. The mere influence of Battleship Potemkin sees that moment in cinema history revisited and reclaimed in an act of sheer stylistic control.

Zoller is both a representation of a literal fascistic use of film (reliving his heroic actions for the silver screen) and of film knowledge. He is a continually lonely cinephile who in finding that Shosanna is the same becomes immediately besotted. Zoller sits in the film opposite another character with a similar knowledge but with a much more positive application – Michael Fassbender’s Lieutenant Hicox. Hicox is recruited to help the Basterds in their assassination of the Nazi high command because of his knowledge of film and his career as a critic, and although Hicox’s mistake does lead to a significant change of plan, it is not one made out of spite but out of naivety. These two characters are representations of not just a misuse of film but of film knowledge. Zoller uses an uncritical love of cinema to support its use as fascist propaganda, where Hicox uses his knowledge in opposition to the misuse of the artform. Both are naïve in their own ways to the execution of both the plan and cinema as a whole, but they are nonetheless important to the life of the artform. Hicox’s place as a critic is important to the team, thus important to cinema, and though Tarantino is aware that critics may not always be privy to the ins and outs of filmmaking, in this case represented by Hicox’s incorrect hand signal, they are still important to the outcome. The power of cinema doesn’t just lie in the hands of the filmmakers themselves, but also how cinema lovers interact with and interpret the medium.

As Nation’s Pride is shown to a room full of the most evil people on the planet, Shosanna sets in motion her plan. Locking the doors to the theatre she sets fire to a pile of 35mm film which, as Tarantino helpfully informs us, is incredibly flammable. A glorious fire explodes from the screen and, as it engulfs the room and the Basterds set to work with their own explosive show, Shosanna’s face is projected into the haze of smoke from her burning film. Even after Zoller has enacted lustful revenge on her, she remains forever immortalised on celluloid. It wasn’t the Basterds who brought down the Third Reich, it was a Jewish cinema owner. The very literal use of film to destroy the Nazis does not need pointing out.

Inglourious Basterds is also an example of Quentin Tarantino’s use of historical revisionism. This is a narrative tool he has fully embraced in his later career, with The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood both adopting it to greater and lesser degrees. This is also weaponised against Christoph Waltz’s brilliantly acted Hans Landa, a character so villainous that he’s comical. Unlike many Nazis who found themselves free after the war by escaping the authorities or by joining them, Landa is permanently marked by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), the leader of the Basterds, in an act that enshrines his crimes for the rest of his days. The Swastika carved, with great skill, into Landa’s head, is Tarantino forever branding a part of cinema history for the misuse of its power.

Tarantino’s self-proclaimed masterpiece is a representation of his own cinema history, as well as our own, a culmination of all of his directorial and genre influences as well as the best portrayal of his own unique abilities. The control he has over the tension that he can drain from a simple conversation or character moment, his quippy dialogue, visual grandeur, use of music, and of course his ego. The final line paired with the cut to credits might be the funniest and most pompous thing Tarantino has ever done.

Recommended for you: It Might Be His Masterpiece: Revisiting Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’

Basterds is often considered one of Tarantino’s best, taking the place of Pulp Fiction as his most popular and receiving $320million at the box office. The film received an 11-minute standing ovation at the Cannes film festival, and although some critics saw it as immature and self-indulgent, the audience reception was extremely positive. The director himself considers it his best film, with the opening scene being the greatest thing he has ever written. Tarantino has managed to bring his nerdy, stylistic, and occasionally obnoxious form of filmmaking into the realm of popular cinema, and he remains one of the few directors who could be considered a household name. To bring a film about the misuse of the medium into the public consciousness with such flare and entertainment value is an impressive feat; one that has paid off as the film often sits close to Schindler’s List as one of the greatest war films ever made.

Conclusion

Both of these films, however dissimilar, understand that cinema itself is a historical document, and in its more popular forms can shape people’s views of the world. Schindler’s List is the use of an art form to lay down a factual and emotional event, bringing it into popular cinema and filling a long-neglected gap in the cinematic conscience. Inglourious Basterds does the same with cinema itself, setting out how this power can be abused, then attempting to rewrite fiction to reclaim that power. These films are both landmarks in cinema history – one is a monumental art film in the filmography of an establishment director and the other is a masterpiece from a director who has curated his own legacy. Both films are regarded as some the best of their respective decades, cementing their stories in the minds of each of us for all of time itself. They encapsulate cinema in all its hideousness and brilliance, and they prove that cinematic conventions and a populist approaches can deal with such horrific events with subtlety and introspection. Schindler’s List and Inglourious Basterds are exercises in pure cinematic power.

By Robert Mitchell

Quentin Tarantino’s highly anticipated Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood hit the big screen at Cannes 2019 and was met with a seven minute standing ovation. The early reviews for the legendary director’s 9th film are so overwhelmingly positive that the existential question being asked since 1994 may finally be answered: “will Tarantino ever top Pulp Fiction?”

Whispers that Hollywood may have accomplished this feat have begun swirling around the ears of the film world, making the time until the movie’s July 26th release date even more torturous to endure. However, if you were to tell me I’d need to wait that long to watch Quentin outshine his famous 2nd film, I’d tell you to hop into a time machine and go back to August 21st, 2009; the day Inglourious Basterds hit theatres.

Inglourious Basterds is set against the backdrop of Nazi occupied France during WWII. The film centers around a small group of rag-tag Jewish American soldiers, led by a no-nonsense southern lieutenant named Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Raine’s first appearance has him debrief his command of their objective behind enemy lines: “We’re gonna be doing one thing, and one thing only: killing Nazis.” Pitt’s character, like most, possesses a visceral hate for anyone in a Nazi uniform. In fact, his disdain for Hitler’s foot soldiers borders on the cruel as he instructs his men that they each personally owe him a whopping one hundred Nazi scalps. Even this horrendous order may seem relatively tame by Tarantino standards (especially following his shockingly violent 2007 movie Death Proof and the Kill Bill films), but nevertheless, the stage is set for a good old Tarantino blood bath featuring the epitome of evil on the other end of a Louisville Slugger (yeah, a crazed Eli Roth brutalizes a Nazi captain with a wooden baseball bat). Ironically, despite the in-your-face gratuitous violence that has become a staple of a Tarantino film, the true genius of Inglourious Basterds lies in the subtleties etched on the faces, and in the words, of its characters.

Besides Lt. Aldo Raine and his squad, Basterds features other characters of great importance. The most prevalent of these is the intimidating yet darkly hilarious Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) – Waltz would take home a supporting actor Oscar for his brilliant performance as the villain, and rightly so. There is also Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a young Jewish woman who escaped the massacre of her family at the hands of Landa to inherit a small cinema in Paris. Shoshanna, under the alias of “Emmanuel Mimieux”, resists the charms of a smitten Nazi war-hero named Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who is determined to win her heart. In a small French café, Zoller tells Shoshana of his exploits: while alone in a walled off city, he was able to kill over two hundred enemy soldiers from a bell tower. We also are told that the Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) made a film about the event starring Zoller himself, titled ‘Nation’s Pride’. Where things get interesting is when, at lunch, Zoller convinces Goebbels to host the premiere of ‘Nation’s Pride’ at Shoshanna’s tiny movie theatre. Clearly seeing this as her time for revenge against the animals that killed her family, Shoshanna conspires with her employee (and lover), Marcel (Jacky Ido), to burn down the cinema on “Nazi night”.

Re-enter Aldo Raine and his men.

With the help of a German speaking British soldier (Michael Fassbender) and the double agent German movie star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), the Basterds are given the task of blowing up the movie theatre at the premiere of ‘Nation’s Pride’, completely unaware of Shoshanna’s similar intentions. The stage is set for a blow out of a finale. At the risk of revealing too much, I will only say that the all too familiar “plans gone wrong” narrative weaves its way into yet another Tarantino movie, until we are left with just three characters alone in the woods after the ‘Nation’s Pride’ premiere goes up in flames.

The way scenes unravel in Basterds is what keeps eyes glued to the screen. Rather than raising the stakes with a shock factor, Tarantino uses the power of his characters’ words and facial expressions to slowly create tension that could be cut with a knife. Only at the peak of this pressure does Quentin allow the explosion of violence, like a delicious slice of cheesecake after a perfectly cooked prime rib. There is one particular scene that perfectly illustrates this method, and it involves Fassbender and Kruger’s characters undercover with 2 of the “Basterds”.

Disguised as Nazis, our four heroes find themselves surrounded by real German soldiers in a tavern basement. There are no less than four small moments in this scene through which Tarantino raises the stakes, each one pushing us closer to the edges of our seats. The first is when the Basterds arrive to the tavern. Their assignment is to make contact with their undercover agent, Bridget von Hammersmark. No Nazis were supposed to be present, but it turns out this little bar is full of them on this particular night. Tarantino has placed his characters in an uneasy situation, and he wants you to know it. Now they must work twice as hard not to compromise their identities. The second moment comes when one German soldier (August Diehl) questions Fassbender’s accent. Because we as the audience know that he’s actually British, a Nazi questioning his dialect puts the group further in the danger zone. But Fassbender is able to talk his way out of it, and the scene plays on.

We can relax for a moment until Diehl’s character asks Fassbender where he is stationed, as Diehl has never heard of him before and he “knows every German stationed in France”. In a second wave of relief, Fassbender’s character manages to talk his way out of trouble again. Finally, just when we thought we were out of the woods, he makes a small hand gesture that completely gives away his identity. What’s interesting, though, is that when the gesture is made, the Nazis don’t just stand up and start shooting. Tarantino centers his camera on the face of August Diehl, who locks eyes on the hand of Michael Fassbender. His face darkens, and he stares daggers at those three fingers…but he says nothing. Without using a single word, Tarantino is able to tell us with a simple close-up that something is horribly wrong; we just don’t know what it is. The Nazi pretends as though everything is normal until he reveals that he knows Fassbender is a phony, and that there’s no chance of either one of them leaving the basement alive. In this moment, Tarantino once again uses the power of his close-up: Michael Fassbender realizes he is a dead man, and his eyes speak louder than any words possibly could.

Quentin Tarantino masterfully times his close-up shots. Just like in instances above, he often uses them to convey his characters’ emotions right before the climax of a scene. In just a few seconds, the director allows us to analyze the happiness, anger or anguish of a person when they know a life-changing moment is on their doorstep. Christoph Waltz’s award winning performance is heavily reliant upon this method, as his mostly caricatured Colonel Hans Landa has some of his best moments with only his face in the frame.

By the same token, the density of the scripted words and actions is the heart and soul of Inglourious Basterds, so much so that attempting to find too much meaning in the story would do the film a great disservice. Some audience members won’t have the patience for this method of story-telling, as they will be ignoring the so called “throw away dialogue” while waiting for the scene to “get to the point”. Those people have, in fact, already missed it. The screenplay for Basterds is pristine, and even more detailed and delightful than that of Tarantino’s magnum opus Pulp Fiction. Yet, like Pulp, Tarantino allows it to play out over time. He even changes the face of history with his ending, and if you’re wondering if he cares whether or not you think it’s too bold, I can assure you: he does not.

The alternative history Basterds presents goes hand in hand with Tarantino’s most authorial stamp of subverting cinematic norms and satirising disgusting behaviour so as to remove its power. This is perhaps no more clearly evident than in this movie: there are numerous pop-culture references littered throughout, mostly about the German and French film industries under occupation of the Third Reich; time appropriate observations of directors such as the misunderstood Leni Riefenstahl and famed G.W. Pabst are seen from different points of view; we are also subject to many musical numbers that even sometimes make us uncomfortable, as their tones don’t exactly match up with the actions on screen. As for satire, Tarantino takes aim at the Nazi party. Though he keeps a menacing air about the Nazis as to not let us forget the truth, he also allows us to laugh at them, which feels really, really good. Goebbels is portrayed as somewhat of an idiotic weasel, and Hitler himself (Martin Wuttke) is too much fun to hate.

Conclusively, Inglourious Basterds, though sometimes awkward and rough around the edges, is a monumental achievement. Tarantino creates a giant melting pot of characters, each and every one with their own agenda, and places them in one of the most pivotal times in world history. As Aldo Raine stares down the blade of his shiny knife after carving a swastika into the head of a Nazi, he states that “it just might be his masterpiece”. These words ring clear as the credits role, and if he was speaking for Tarantino, I couldn’t agree more.

Written by Samuel Sybert

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In no particular order…

Grave Encounters (2011)

Directors: Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz

Shot in the style we define as “found footage”, a group of ghost hunters for a TV show known as ‘Grave Encounters’ go into an abandoned insane asylum in the search of the “paranormal”, but their experience is a lot more than all of them bargained for.

This is the type of film that will leave you watching every element on the screen from the edge of your seat, anxiously awaiting the next big scare that shall emerge from the foreground or the background of any given shot.

As Above, So Below (2014)

Director: John Erick Dowdle

An Archaeologist on the search of the philosopher’s stone is led to search the dark Catacombs of Paris with a team of investigators, but what they find down there comes straight from Dante’s inferno itself.

This film is also shot in a ‘found footage’ style and is an exploration into the depths of hell as well as religion as a wider concept. As the film is shot on location in the actual Catacombs of Paris, the horror is of this picture radiates, making for a very creepy movie.

Recommended for you: 5 Horror Movies for People Who Don’t Like Horrors

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Director: Drew Goddard

Five youthful friends go on a trip to a cabin in the woods expecting a drug and drink filled party holiday, but they get a lot more than they bargained for when they end up being in the middle of a twisted survival game of flesh eating zombies, ghouls and demons. Two doctors involve themselves into the game of life and death, but all you see is not all you get with this film.

The Cabin in the Woods is a film that uses all stereotypes of horror/teen flicks to its advantage, with the twists and turns coming time and time again until the very end. One of the first 21st century horror films with a truly new take on the horror genre that flips every known rule on its head.

The Collector (2009/10) 

Director: Marcus Dunstan

A man down on his luck decides to steal from the rich family he is working for, but he picks the wrong night to do it. A masked madman has gotten there first. The night goes from a solo theft to a saving mission and a game of cat and mouse from a psychotic killer.

This is a home invasion story with a twist. The collector is written by the writers of Saw IV, V and VI, and this heavy influence is evident in the film’s gory tale.

So, for Halloween I’ve compiled a list of 10 overrated horror films from the past 15 years. This list is by no means definitive and it is not to say that the films are terrible – some are good – but despite their strengths and weaknesses, all 10 films have been hyped up to be something they simply are not.

10. Mama (Andres Muschietti, Spain-Canada, 2013)

Seeing Guillermo del Toro’s name attached to Mama, and already being a fan of The Devil’s Backbone (El espinazo del Diablo, 2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno, 2006), as well as J A Boyona’s The Orphanage (El Orfanto, 2007), on which del Toro served as executive producer, I was looking forward to seeing this movie.

Two young girls, Victoria and Lilly, are left to fend for themselves in the wild after their father’s attempts to kill them and then himself are thwarted and he is duly killed by an unknown entity. Fast forward a few years and the sisters have become feral, and have been fostered by the entity that killed their father; an entity they call ‘Mama’. The girls are rescued by their uncle and reintroduced into society, but Mama isn’t giving up her claims to Victoria and Lilly that easily.

It’s an interesting story, with many positive reviews. It substitutes gore in favour of building a suspenseful atmosphere with the genre-typical ‘jumpy’ moments, but there comes a point (approximately three quarters of the way through) where the film loses its fear factor in one simple frame: the revelation of Mama.

CGI can do a lot of things, such as create the hauntingly beautiful backdrop the film has, but one thing it cannot do is create anything more horrifying than the mind’s eye. A monstrous character lurking in the shadows, seen only in fleeting glimpses, will always be scarier than one that’s put right in front of us. Our mind will always come up with something scarier than what the monster actually is, so when Mama is revealed in all her ragged glory, the fear and mystery surrounding her character is taken away in a “is that all?” type of moment.

This doesn’t ruin the film, or render it a ‘bad’ film, but it does take away claims (and there were a lot at the time of release) that it is one of the scariest films of the year/decade/etc.

A beautifully dark fairytale? Yes. A terrifying horror film? No.

9. The Wolfman (Joe Johnston, USA, 2010)

There was a lot of attention surrounding the release of Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman in 2010, a remake of George Waggner’s 1941 film of the same name. Changes in directors, rewrites and creative differences put the film’s release back 18 months and therefore added to the anticipation.

Much like a lot of films these days, The Wolfman is laden with CGI and special effects, but these do nothing to save it from a script that falls flat on its face; lacking in suspense and failing to evoke much emotion from the viewer. All the problems and setbacks suffered in the production process show through in the final picture, with Universal Pictures president Ronald Meyer describing it as “one of the worst movies we ever made.”

With its atmospheric, creepy locations and Victorian settings, there was a lot of scope for plot development and exploration in The Wolfman, but none of it came to fruition. Under-developed and overrated, the most terrifying thing about The Wolfman is that I actually wasted money watching it at the cinema.

8. The Village (M Night Shyamalan, USA, 2004)

Where to start with The Village? Perhaps not too much should be expected from a film given a 12 rating by the British Board of Film Classification [PG-13 for those in the US] but, back in 2004, this film was a big deal. Going to the cinema with my friends was a day long adventure and meant travelling nearly two hours on the bus from my village to the nearest town with a cinema, wasting pocket money on junk food and generally feeling grown up, like we’d escaped to the big wide world for a day. So, a film had to look good for us to make the effort, and this particular summer The Village was all anyone was talking about, for reasons I still cannot fathom.

The film’s creepy premise of an isolated village in 19^th century Pennsylvania, cut off from the outside world by dense forest haunted by mysterious red creatures, but in dire need of medicine from the towns outside the forest, is an interesting one with a lot of potential. But, the final product is a complete let down. There are the odd few jumpy moments, but they don’t make up for the bizarre plot twist at the end, which is possibly one of the biggest cinematic anticlimaxes of recent years and only one step up from the ‘it was all a dream’ trope.

Rather than being in the 19^th century, we are in the present day, and the titular village is a social construction of sorts, created by a group of people who wanted to retreat from society and use the red creatures (who aren’t actually real) as a way of keeping the younger villagers inside the village and away from the truth. Strange plot twists can be a good idea, not to mention being a good way of throwing the audience off kilter and subverting our expectations, but for it to work, the plot twist itself has to be a good one, and this one is not!

7. Devil (John Erick Dowdle, USA, 2010)

Shortly after a man commits suicide by jumping from the 35^th floor of a Philadelphia office building, five strangers with dubious pasts are all trapped in a lift in the same building. Security guard Ramirez re-counts stories his mother told him about the devil taking a human form and hunting down sinners while they are still alive, and his suspicions are raised by ghostly figures on the building’s CCTV, but is dismissed by his boss as nothing more than superstition. As the lights begin to flicker and the power goes on and off, each power-cut results in an evil deed and the occupants of the lift begin to die one by one, with the devil being revealed to be amongst them.

It is an interesting and promising premise, and with twists and turns along the way Devil had the potential to be a brilliantly scary horror film, weaving in its fable about good and evil, and heaven and hell, in the modern world. But, it wasn’t. The complicated plot was left only half developed in a bid to get the story told and wrapped up in its 80 minute running time, resulting in a rushed and forced story heavily reliant on genre clichés.

With M Night Shyamalan attached to the project as executive producer and original plans for a trilogy focusing on the supernatural in a modern, urban society, Devil was a hotly anticipated film at the time of release. But, with none of the planned sequels having materialised in the intervening years, and the exciting premise not paying off, Devil sunk faster than a broken lift in a 35 story building.

6. Shrooms (Paddy Breathnach, Ireland-Denmark, 2007)

In contrast to The Village and its ‘none of it was actually real’ style ending, Shrooms goes the opposite way, explaining everything that was thought to be nightmares and bad magic mushroom trips is actually a reality.

Back in 2007 everyone at college was fascinated by this film called Shrooms and how scary it was, but it wasn’t until a while after it was released that I finally got around to seeing it, and I was left rather underwhelmed. Another case of an interesting premise being poorly executed, Shrooms is the story of a group of friends camping in the grounds of an old abandoned children’s home, planning on spending their trip consuming magic mushrooms. However, after accidentally ingesting a deathcap mushroom, Tara experiences hallucinations wherein she and all her friends die. In a twist of fate, it is revealed as the character’s reality and Tara has been killing off her friends one by one, as well as a few others she comes into contact with.

An idea that promised so much, Shrooms is a typical low budget horror film filled with lukewarm performances, but the actors themselves can hardly be blamed given how uninspiring the script is. It may have done the rounds in schools and colleges as a terrifying horror film, but it definitely isn’t one.

5. Cabin Fever (Eli Roth, USA, 2002)

In the past 13 years a small group of horror filmmakers have been described by many critics as the ‘Splat Pack’; directors who have become known for producing low(ish) budget, 18-rated horror films characterised by extreme ultra-violence, sex and gore. With the Splat Pack including directors such as Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, James Wan and Darren Lynn Bousman, their roster of films have achieved a cult following, as well as polarised reviews from critics and cinema goers alike.

Eli Roth’s directional debut Cabin Fever was the second film in the Splat Pack’s repertoire, (Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers was the first), taking the concept of cabin fever and turning it into a story about a flesh-eating virus that strikes a group of college students during their weekend of partying and excess in an isolated forest cabin.

Inspired by horror classics such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead and The Last House on the Left, there is nothing inherently wrong with Cabin Fever – it is a decent film with a fairly well thought out plot – but its fear factor comes from blood, guts and gore rather than atmosphere and genuine, heart-pounding scares.

Rather than reinventing the genre Roth pays tribute to it, borrowing elements from slashers and classics, and, in doing so, the film becomes rather clichéd. In the end, it was just another cabin in the woods film, and we’ve seen it all before.

4. The Ring (Gore Verbinski, USA, 2002)

Hollywood has a special knack for taking magnificent foreign language films, remaking them in English and ruining them completely. Gore Verbinski’s remake of the critically acclaimed Japanese Horror Ring (Ringu, Hideo Nakata, 1998) is no exception.

This big budget remake starring Naomi Watts is full of under developed characters, nonsensical plot twists and an attempt at trading gore for a creepy atmosphere that just doesn’t pay off. At a time when a big part of the genre has developed an obsession for gore, fake blood and sexual abuse, it is refreshing to see a film that relies more on the atmosphere and tension for thrills than someone getting chopped in half by a garage door. However, if the atmosphere isn’t there and the story isn’t right, then there is very little left over to make us jump and scream.

The Ring paved the way for a number of big budget Hollywood remakes of Japanese horrors including The Grudge (2004), Dark Water (2005) and One Missed Call (2008), none of which lived up to the hype nor the standard of their Asian originals.

Isn’t it time we stopped being lazy and started reading subtitles? Or, heaven forbid, learned another language, and stopped ruining fantastic films with lethargic, boring remakes?

3. Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi, USA, 2009)

Widely dubbed the ‘scariest horror film of the year’ as well as the ‘scariest horror film of all time’, Drag Me to Hell was massively hyped up from the word go. But, as the old saying goes: ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’.

Set in present day Los Angeles, Drag Me to Hell follows mild mannered bank employee Christine when, in a bid to prove to her boss she deserves promotion over colleague Stu, she refuses a mortgage extension to elderly Hungarian gypsy named Mrs Ganush. After being humiliated by Christine, Mrs Ganush vows revenge, and boy does she get it. In one last act before her death Mrs Ganush curses Christine, leading to her being stalked by a demon named the Lamia for three days before it literally drags her to hell.

So much promise, so little deliverance.

Few films are able to successfully tow the line between horror and comedy and still be taken seriously, and in his attempts to blend humour into this psychological, supernatural horror, director Sam Raimi manages to fail on both fronts. Add this to the sub-standard acting of stars Alison Lohman and Justin Long, an over ambitious but ultimately lazy plot, and an evil spirit with the same name as the Greek child-eating demon (even though there is nothing to connect the Greek Lamia to this Californian goat demon Lamia), and what results is a waste of time and money.

Overrated and underdeveloped, the most terrifying thing about Drag Me to Hell is the scene where Christine murders her pet kitten, thinking a simple pet murder will appease the demon on her shoulder. Yes, this particular crazy cat lady is still angry about that scene six years later.

2. Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, USA, 2009)

When I first heard about Paranormal Activity I was fairly skeptical. Films that are supposedly based on a true story are usually either absolutely terrifying or boring as sin, and there seems to be no middle ground. Paranormal Activity was definitely boring as sin.

In 1999 The Blair Witch Project championed found-footage style filmmaking and countless found-footage style films have followed in the past 16 years – some good, but others very, very bad – and despite being one of Paramount Pictures’ most profitable franchises, Paranormal Activity just isn’t as good as the initial buzz suggested.

Young couple Katie and Micah set up video cameras in their bedroom to try and capture whatever evil is haunting their house in the small hours. Using silence and suspense instead of special effects and gore, director Oren Peli tries to build up a tense atmosphere, but to no avail. Instead of putting the audience on the edge of their seats wondering what will happen next, Paranormal Activity with its clichéd and worn out plot, and less than average acting, is boring, repetitive and tedious. We have seen it all before – too many times.

Low budget underwhelming horror at its best, or worst (more to the point), Paranormal Activity was very cleverly marketed and garnered much attention before it was released, but no amount of viral marketing campaigns or sequels could make this film live up to the hype.

1. Insidious (James Wan, USA, 2011)

James Wan’s Insidious has to be one of the most, if not the most, talked about horror films of recent years, but for me it is nothing to write home about.

Since its release four years ago Insidious has grossed over $90million, spawned two more films, with a third rumoured to be in the works, and has become one of the most talked about film series of the decade. With numbers like that it’s difficult to argue that the film is overrated, but I’m still going to!

Everyone has their own criteria for what makes a good horror film, or good film of any genre, but the defining element of a horror film is that it has to be scary in some way, be it making you jump at every twist and turn, have you hiding behind the sofa, or just making you feel very uncomfortable with what’s on the screen. If it’s not scary in some way, then it’s not a horror film. Personally, I want to be scared or disturbed. I want my skin to crawl and I want to feel like my head is being messed with. Insidious didn’t make me feel any of that. Instead, I felt bored and let down, and spent at least half of the film mentally planning what order I was going to do my housework in later on.

The film starts out as a promising ghost/haunted house film, gradually building the story of a couple whose young son suddenly falls into a coma and becomes a vessel for malevolent sprits to re-enter the human world. But, as the film goes on, psychics are called in and family secrets revealed, and the film starts to lose its way. Some questions are left unanswered, others are clarified with ridiculous and tame explanations. The acting is average throughout most of the film, and unlike many of its contemporaries there is virtually no gore, which is not always a bad thing, but when you have a film unraveling at the rate Insidious does, a bit of fake blood and severed limbs would spice things up a bit.

Keeping in line with the crazy train going off the rails: when the monstrous character is eventually unveiled as the ‘Lipstick Monster’, it bears a remarkable resemblance to Star Wars’ Darth Maul. It’s more head-scratching than heart-pounding.

Other films on this list such as Mama and Cabin Fever are still good films, despite not quite living up to their terrifying reputations, but Insidious fails on every front, from its undeveloped story to the uninspiring acting and head demon whose first name is ‘Lipstick’ of all things.

Insidious has made its name, made its money and earned plenty of column inches, but after four years and repeated viewings I still struggle to find a single redeeming feature – other than the end credits.