WE ARE STILL HERE & THE NIGHTMARE Reviews

Watched two flicks last night. Well, actually three, but I’m not going to talk about PETE’S DRAGON (which was the kids’ Friday Night Movie Event). I will, however, talk about the two horror films I watched. One’s highly recommended, the other was kinda-sorta okay.

First up, WE ARE STILL HERE, which had an unfortunate screen title line-up to make it look like it was called W.A.S.H. Here’s the rub: I love the fact that it was set in the winter (always love snow in horror films), I love that it centered around a middle-aged couple (instead of the routine high school or college rabble), and I really, really liked the effects. But man doesn’t live on effects alone. WASH turned me off almost immediately with the cinematography. Camerawork is supposed to be invisible, and this was really noticeable, like the lens they were using was too wide for the mise en scène (a fancy French term, google it). Everything was handheld, so had that “we’re professionally sloppy” look, and I’m sorry to say, that look only tells me you’re two days behind on a fifteen-day schedule. The lighting was equally noticeable for being extremely bland — which only tells me you’re now three days behind on a fifteen-day schedule. This is all confusing since the director of photography worked on HANNIBAL, anJesusus, I don’t have to tell you how great that show looked. And it’s disheartening since everything I read about it implied it was a return to a Dan Curtis vibe (king of the 1970s made-for-TV scare movies) and a homage to Lucio Fulci (an Italian horror filmmaker, who had some really washed out lighting, but it was a *cinematic* washed-out look). So, some nice scares, really cool effects, always nice to see Larry Fessenden in front of the camera, but I kind of knew I was in trouble when one of the opening shots was a shot-for-shot rip-off of the ball bouncing down the stairs in THE CHANGELING. Don’t they know you don’t do that?

The real winner of the night was THE NIGHTMARE, and holy shit, this was worth putting on at 10:30pm with the lights off. So, if you don’t know, the film is a (sort-of) documentary on people with sleep paralysis — and have to suffer the shadow men that hover over them like bellhops waiting for the $5 tip. It’s made by the same guy who did the SHINING documentary (ROOM 237) that I kind of didn’t like, but boy, he clinched it with this one. The filmmakers recreate the night terrors these people face and unlike WASH, there is really great camerawork and lighting here (extremely inspired by SUSPIRIA, a movie in itself is a captured nightmare). There were a few lip-biter moments, not entirely helped by it nearing midnight, with me all alone in the living room (my dogs, those jerks, bolted for the bedroom fifteen minutes in). One episode involved a group sleep over with a cat, and the other centered around a power nap and a bad phone call. It’s great, scary stuff, and made me — me! — question going to sleep afterwards. No shit. Do you know how long it’s been since I did that? If that’s not an endorsement to see this, then buddy, stick with PETE’S DRAGON.