That poster is the best thing about this movie. That's not a knock on the film. It's just that the poster is really, really great. Writer/director Justin Seaman's The Barn is the newest latest (to me) indie horror movie that exists to fetishize the 1980s in every way, from the aesthetics to the effects to even some members of the cast. It's the kind of film that, like 2015's Lost After Dark and last year's Secret Santa, exists less to pay tribute to '80s horror than to slavishly recreate it, all imitation and not inspiration. And yet despite being part of what I see as a depressing trend in indie horror, The Barn is charming and fun and one of the best examples of its type that I've seen. Taken on its own, I enjoyed the movie. Taken as part of a growing fad, I feel like I'm over it.
Based on a story that the Pennsylvania-based Seaman wrote when he was eight years old, The Barn tells the legend of three demonic spirits -- The Boogeyman, Candycorn Scarecrow and Hallowed Jack -- who awaken from within an old barn on Halloween night 1989 and terrorize a town. When a group of kids stop in town on their way to a concert, they come face to face with the monsters and best friends Sam (Mitchell Musolino) and Josh (Will Stout) must follow the rules of their favorite holiday to win back the night.
There's a lot that The Barn has going for it. The movie is heavy with Halloween atmosphere and a real love for the mythology of the holiday, going so far as to create its own legends to correspond with the night; each of the three monsters represents a different aspect of Halloween and feel like real stories we might have heard as kids. That Halloween vibe is probably my favorite thing about the film and is the reason I may return to it in future Octobers, as it's clear just how much affection the filmmakers have for the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Director Seaman tries to approximate the look of an '80s horror movie without going overboard on post-production scratches or gimmicky "missing reel" bullshit (it was funny in Grindhouseand never again). The occasional cigarette burn is visible from time to time, but it's hard to hold that against the movie when Mike Flanagan did the exact same thing in Ouija: Origin of Evil just a few months back. There's some synth score, but it's never overdone; most of the music in the is metal that's not entirely period accurate. The practical gore effects are fun, particularly during one mid-movie slaughter that piles one gag on top of another. Hell, even a cameo by First Jason himself Ari Lehman manages to be super fun, with the gloved one appearing as the host of a late night video show with an opening credits sequence that's hilariously spot-on.
Linnea Quigley also appears in a single-scene cameo as an uppity religious woman who doesn't like all this glorification of Halloween, and her sequence points to a big part of my issue with The Barn. It's not Quigley. She's fine, and it's always fun to see her getting work. It's the way the scene is edited so that it feels like it takes twice as long as it needs to. This is a recurring concern in the movie, which only runs 90 minutes but when drags much more often than it should. There's a shapelessness to the narrative that makes it confusing as to when certain things are taking place; after a prologue, The Barn cuts to a sequence in which kids are trick or treating, only to reveal that it's actually the night before Halloween. It introduces the "let's go to a concert" conceit, but then there's a stopover in a town and a trip to the barn and then back to the town and all sense of time is pretty much lost. The movie feels flabby on a macro and a micro level, with a story that moves in fits and starts and scenes that are in need of tighter editing.
Allow me this digression. I keep thinking we have reached peak nostalgia, but then something comes along to prove me wrong and suggest that the movement shows no signs of slowing. There are movies I've really liked (such as last year's The Mind's Eyeor even Beyond the Gates) that have a heavy '80s influence because the new generation of indie horror directors were raised on those movies, but they're also movies that feel like new works created by original voices interested in making something good. Other indie horror films I've seen of late (I won't say which ones, as there's no point in calling them out by name) appear content to rest on recreating the '80s aesthetic and use it as an excuse to make a shitty movie because, well, some of those early '80s horror movies were shitty. So now we're creating nostalgia for something we don't even necessarily like, but have fondness for because...we saw it when we were kids? Or didn't see it when we were kids, but it came out at the same time as other movies we liked as kids? As someone who is not immune to the allure of nostalgia, I'm genuinely trying to understand this phenomenon.
The Barn is taking things several steps further, as the nostalgia doesn't end with the film itself. It has become part of all of the marketing and even merchandising around the movie (made possible by a hugely successful Indiegogo campaign), which offers big box VHS copies of the film, the soundtrack album on vinyl and cassette tape (retro!), a board game, vinyl Halloween masks, old school-style The Barn action figures and an 8-bit video game. The glorification of the '80s has become its own little cottage industry as far as The Barn is concerned, and I bring this up not to damn the film or the filmmakers (this is all separate from the movie itself), but to question where the breaking point will be. Is trading in on things that are old a sustainable business model? There are communities of people who fetishize VHS, not because it's the only way to see certain movies (it still is) but because of how it looks and sounds, this despite the fact that it is an inferior format in every single measurable way. I'm guessing there are also people who prefer 8-bit video games to anything on their PS4s. So we're no longer selling a movie that feels retro, but recapturing the entire experience of what it was to be an '80s kid. This is not the way to create art that is new or exciting. This is not the way we move forward.
Again, The Barn is not really the problem here. It may be symptomatic of the problem, but at least it's a pretty good symptom. The movie is more or less successful in achieving its goals; it has a fun Halloween vibe and the monsters are cool new creations. It genuinely means well and feels free of cynicism. At the same time, I don't know if it's a movie I can revisit all that often, having gotten most of what I'm going to get from it on a single viewing. As approximations go, this one's enjoyable. But if I want to recapture the feeling of watching an '80s horror movie, I've got shelves full of the real deal here at home.
You had me at "Introducing Daphne Zuniga." Know what I miss about the heyday of the '80s slasher movie? There were so many of them that eventually filmmakers had to start finding ways to shake up the formula and continually introduce weirder and weirder shit. That's not to say that all of these movies were "good," necessarily, but that they managed to be distinctive within a subgenre known for its sameness. For as good as horror is today -- and we are in a really good place for horror -- there is no one corner of the genre that is so prevalent as the slasher once was that it inspires various permutations. We don't get a Sleepaway Camp or a Blood Rage much anymore. The reasons for this are ultimately positive and encouraging -- the current crop of horror films are so vastly different from one another that we avoid this phenomenon -- but it still makes me miss that Golden Age of Crazy we got in the '80s.
Firmly entrenched in said Golden Age is The Initiation, a 1984 slasher directed by Larry Stewart and featuring the big screen debut of Daphne Zuniga in a starring role (she had already appeared in a supporting role in another college-themed horror movie, The Dorm That Dripped Blood, two years prior). She plays Kelly, a college co-ed plagued by horrible nightmares in which she sees her mother (Vera Miles, slumming) in bed with another man (Clu Gulager, slumming far less) and then another man set on fire. She's also in the process of rushing a sorority, which requires her and some other kids to spend the night in a department store as part of the initiation. I have literally never heard any any initiation like this for any sorority, but I wasn't cool in college (or before college or now). Wouldn't you know that a slasher crashes the party and starts killing a bunch of them?
To get into all the ways that The Initiation ends up being crazy would require spoilers, which I won't provide here. Like the similarly nutty Blood Rage (ok, Blood Rage is nuttier...way nuttier), the movie has to reinvent certain slasher tropes to stand out. It is more successful in some ways than others. The whole "teens locked in a mall overnight" is reminiscent of movies like Night of the Cometand Chopping Mall (even though one of those came after) and the kills themselves aren't necessarily more inventive or interesting than your everyday slash-and-stab, but the weird psychological detours the screenplay takes (by Charles Pratt Jr., who has spent most of his career writing and producing both daytime and primetime soap operas) are what give the movie color. The presence of both Vera Miles and Clu Gulager help give the project an air of authenticity -- they are genre royalty, after all -- but both actors contribute what are essentially extended cameos. The movie belongs to the young cast. They, too, are mostly generic, save maybe for future soap star Hunter Tylo, who...makes an impression...and, of course, my girl D. Zunigs, who doesn't quite pop off the screen the way she would a year later in The Sure Thing but who still manages to stand apart from the rest of the actors by projecting a kind of quiet intelligence. She feels like some sort of "other" compared to the horny co-eds surrounding her, which works out perfectly for the story being told.
Arrow's Blu-ray is another in their growing line of first-rate editions for movies of which I can't believe we're getting first-rate editions; it's been given a new 2K scan and a 1080 HD makeover so that it looks, while not brand new, better than it has ever appeared to be sure. There's a commentary track included from the members of The Hysteria Continues podcast (the second I've heard from them, as they're also on the Night Train to Terror commentary; if these home video companies are going to be tapping podcasts to do commentaries, can someone get them in touch with us?) that was recorded over Skype and is somewhat spotty as a result. Also included is the original trailer, a single deleted scene and some brand new interviews with actors Charles Pratt Jr., Christopher Bradley and Joy Jones. Sadly, there is no Zuniga to be found.
As both a fan and a student of '80s slashers, I'm all in on a movie like The Initiation. While not quite the rediscovered gem of, say, The Burning or the aforementioned Blood Rage, it's an entry in the genre that's better than some of its better-known brethren (I'm looking at you, Prom Night) and worthy of being a bigger part of the slasher conversation. I love the titles that Arrow is choosing to restore and I love the treatment they're giving these movies, recognizing that while not conventional classics, these are the kinds of films that mean a lot to some of us. Plus, if you're as much a Zuniga fan as I am, this movie's got more of her than it can handle.
Blu-ray release date: November 8, 2016 97 minutes/1984/R 1.85:1 (1080p) DTS HD 1.0 Master Audio (English) Subtitles: English (SDH)
Blu-ray bonus features: Commentary "Sorority Saga" - Interview with writer Charles Pratt, Jr. "Pledge Night" - Interview with actor Christopher Bradley "Dream Job" - Interview with actress Joy Jones Extended Scene Original Theatrical Trailer Screenplay and production schedule (BD-ROM)
Andrea was DYING to get in the movies... The joy in watching a Larry Cohen movie is that you're never sure what you're going to get. Yes, you may know the premise -- couple has monstrous baby or killer yogurt becomes the biggest dessert craze in America -- but you're never sure where things will go from there. Every single one of his films (and I'm speaking here of the ones he has directed) has some sort of twist or eccentricity -- often more than one -- to keep audiences off kilter. His work resembles nothing else but other Larry Cohen movies. We have taken him for granted for too long.
His 1984 meta-thriller Special Effects was one of the few remaining Larry Cohen movies I had never seen, an oversight finally remedied by the new Blu-ray from Olive Films. It stars Eric Bogosian as filmmaker Christopher Neville, whose last movie was an expensive bomb and who is on the outs from Hollywood; his career salvation comes in the form of Andrea (Zoë Lund of Ms. 45 fame, billed here as Zoë Tamerlis), a wannabe actress who secretly moonlights in porn to the dismay of her conservative husband Keefe (Brad Rijn). While spending some time on the casting couch with Andrea, Neville strangles her in a fit of rage and catches the whole thing on his hidden camera. Seeing on opportunity for his next film, Neville begins casting and recreating Andrea's life leading up to her death with the participation of her husband, the homicide cop investigating the case and Elaine (Lund again), a lookalike cast as Andrea's onscreen stand-in.
There is so much to unpack in Special Effects, a movie that's years ahead of its time in the way that it examines the relationship between cinema and reality and how they constantly reflect one another; it's like Albert Brooks' Real Life crossed with Body Double with some Vertigo thrown in. The longer the film goes, the deeper into Neville's new project we go, the more those lines begin to blur -- Keefe is reenacting moments that really happened with his wife except he wasn't originally there and is acting opposite a woman who looks exactly like her. There are also satirical elements to the film, probably because Larry Cohen is incapable of not being satirical, like the subplot with the cop who trades in his investigation for a producer credit and starts doing his own rewrites -- everybody wants into the movie business.
The best thing the movie has going for it (besides Cohen's voice) is the performance of Eric Bogosian, still one of the all-time great pricks in cinema history. At the time still known as a playwright and New York actor, this was his first major movie role (after a bit part in Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames one year prior) and it's a part to which he is perfectly suited. Neville is impossibly arrogant and in control -- the right guy to be calling the shots behind the camera -- but also a sociopath and smart enough to not get caught. Bogosian plays the part like a shark, always thinking (sharks think?), always moving, always preying on whatever's next. Less effective is Lund in a dual performance, the first of which appears to have been dubbed by another actor doing a Southern accent and the second of which can't quite decide on an accent (she starts doing a stereotype of a Jewish New Yorker but abandons that pretty quickly). At the same time, I love seeing her in the movie for what she means to the New York film scene and because her performance, like Cohen's direction, is so full of rough edges.
Though available on DVD since 2004, Special Effects has never quite caught on the way that some of Cohen's other films -- The Stuff, It's Alive, even Q the Winged Serpent -- have found a cult audience over the years. Maybe Olive's new Blu-ray will help people find it. Presented in a new 1080p HD transfer in its original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, the movie looks solid while still faithful to its low-budget roots. Cohen shoots New York in his usual quick and dirty style, but there are some images (like Bogosian's "red room," for example) that pop in HD. The disc comes with a commentary from Cohen, joined by Steve Mitchell, director of the upcoming documentary King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen. Cohen, as always, is an engaging raconteur, talking about his intentions with the movie and praising the work of many involved. The original trailer is also included.
Special Effects is one of the happiest surprises of my #ScaryMovieMonth. Though not quite horror -- I guess "thriller" would more accurately describe it, though so many of Cohen's movies defy classification -- it is always engaging and unpredictable. I love its '80s New York independent film vibe, I love its rough edges, and most of all I love Bogosian's performance. If you're any kind of fan of Larry Cohen's work and haven't yet seen this one, it's worthy of a blind buy.
Blu-ray release date: October 18, 2016 106 minutes/1984/Rated R 1.85:1 (1080p) DTS HD 2.0 Master Audio (English)
