Film Review: INCARNATE (2016)

I’ve never been much of a fan of director Brad Peyton’s films which includes Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012), and San Andreas (2015), so I’m not surprised that I didn’t really care for his film INCARNATE (2016) which has an interesting premise.  Dr. Ember (Aaron Eckhart) has a unique ability which is he can go into dreams and mind possessed people to help exorcise demons.  This is a great idea on how to modernize the exorcist film through science instead of religion and faith.

Ember is brought in by a colleague Camilla (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who believes a young boy Cameron (David Mazouz) is possessed by a demon.  Ember is a haunted man who with each demon he exorcises he gets weaker and weaker, but he takes on Cameron’s case when it’s clear that the demon possessing him is a demon he’s confronted before.  Ember will sacrifice whatever he has to in order to confront the demon one final time no matter the cost.

Peyton does a great job setting up the film’s key set pieces, but they all feel rushed like an action film (something all his other films have key to) and lack the nuance or suspense of a horror film.  One wonders why he decided to tackle a horror film in the first place.  Eckart does an amazing job (as usual) and does the best he can with the material but there is no denying that the tone and pacing of the film is that of an action film which weakens the most horrific elements making this a merely adequate film and nothing all that special.

Film Review: DEVIL’S DUE (2014)

The found footage film finds new life in the film Devil’s Due (2014), a thriller from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.  Zach and Samantha McCall (Zach Gilford and Allison Miller, respectfully) are on their honeymoon when an unexpected night out partying leaves them with little memory of how much fun they actually had in the morning.  It’s not long after that Samantha discovers that she is pregnant but nothing is going as it should.  This is a found footage film so it is Zach who is filming most of what’s going on and it is he who has a curiosity as to what is happening to his wife when mysterious people start showing up and following him everywhere he goes. 

This is very much a modern day retelling of Rosemary’s Baby as told from the perspective of the husband who is the paranoid one as his wife slowly succumbs to the influence of the thing growing inside her.   What the film gets right is the tension that builds between Zach and Samantha as he realizes that she is slowly slipping away from her.  What the film gets wrong is having to rely on the aesthetics of the found footage style to tell the story and how it unravels.

With so many found footage films now (still) being made it’s hard to realize just how many new stories can still be told without seeming to much like a cliché.  This film has its fair share of predictable reveals as is common for this genre.  If anything, this film doesn’t really add anything new to the found footage genre but only adds to the type of film that hadn’t already been tackled by this style.  I will say that very few people outside of fans of the found footage film will be entertained by this film because as is customary with this style very little really happens until the final third of the film.

Film Review: DEVIL’S DUE (2014)

There are a lot of things that newly wedded couples can fear but suddenly becoming pregnant is somewhere at the top of the list.  This is part of the premise for the film Devil’s Due (2014), a film that is a modern day retelling of the classic Ira Levin story Rosemary’s Baby by way of a found footage film.

Zach and Samantha McCall (Zach Gilford and Allison Miller, respectfully) have just gotten married.  Everything is perfect on their honeymoon except that at a party they drink a little too much and things get out of hand.  When they return home they discover that they are pregnant despite taking all precautions against it.  At first the idea of Samantha being pregnant is a godsend until, Zach discovers that she is acting strange and he starts to see strange men in the shadows watching over them.  As the day of birth looms ever so closer, Samantha believes that something “else” is going inside her and that the men in shadows want her baby for their own reasons.

With Satanic cults, demonic babies, and men in shadows there is a lot of ground that this treads that has been seen a hundred times before in other films.  The idea of doing this story as a found footage film is a novel one except that it wears its welcome off really fast.  What starts off as a genuine story tactic for the first third of the film (depicting the marriage and honeymoon) comes off as forced for much of the rest of the film and takes you out of the story.

Unfortunately, this is a problem with most found footage films (and films that copy the style) in which the overall story just doesn’t require the style for the duration of the film.  There’s an interesting idea to be had in this modern day version of Rosemary’s Baby but this was probably not the best way to go about it.

January in Horror

There is a lot to be said about the Box Office and horror.  The horror genre is always looked down upon despite the fact that it is a genre in which Studios spent a tenth of the budget of the more popular “A” films (or films with over bloated budgets and big stars) and they don’t need to make a lot at the Box Office to turn a profit.  The old saying is that if a film makes three times its production budget then it can be considered a hit but most critics and Box Office watchers forget this and continuously misread Box Office numbers to label low earning horror films as Box Office duds.  I only say this as January, to many Box Office watchers appears to be a bad month for horror films, but when you analyze the actual numbers January may not be as healthy and robust as last year (when Mama, A Haunted House, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and Texas Chainsaw 3D dominated) but it wasn’t a complete disaster.  Last month saw the release of Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Devil’s Due, and I, Frankenstein.  We will take them one at a time.

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is a spin-off of the popular Paranormal Activity franchise (the fifth film so far) which has been a huge International money maker (similar to the Saw franchise before it).  The previous four previous films have an average Int’l Box Office of $180 million each with an average domestic take of $87 million each against an average production budget of $3.25 million (with the first film costing an estimated $15,000).  Now what does all of this really mean?  It means that on average each one of the films have made over 10 times their production budget making them some of the most profitable films in any franchise in the history of horror.  What does this mean for The Marked Ones?  The Marketed Ones had a production budget of $5 million and as of the beginning of February has grossed $32.3 million Domestic & $53.9 million Foreign (with a combined Int’l of $86.2 million).   So after 5 weeks of release Int’l it has made almost seven times its production budget domestic and over ten times foreign which is better than 90% of all the other “A” films released last year.  To keep everything in perspective last year’s highest grossing film The Hunger Games: Catching Fire grossed $859.6 million Int’l which is only six times its budget, so, if you are only by actual figures The Market Ones did better than Catching Fire.

Next up is Devil’s Due.  Now a lot of people will argue that Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones had a built in audience which is why it did the business it did,  Devil’s Due has no built in audience and no stars to help market it.  This film had a production budget of $7 million and has only been in release for two weeks so it still has some Box Office legs and is just now hitting the foreign markets.  It has thus far grossed $14.7 million domestic and $9.5 million foreign (with a combined Int’l of $24.2 million).  It has already made back twice its production budget domestically will most definitely reach that amount by the end of the month in foreign gross.  A comparable “A” film would be Man of Steel which grossed $668.04 million Int’l on a production budget of $225 million which means that it only made three times its production budget and is considered a hit.  If you look at it just by the numbers Devil’s Due made 3.5 times its production budget (going by the Int’l gross) which makes it more profitable than Man of Steel and it still has a Box Office life to do more business.

The final film in my analysis is I, Frankenstein which was released a week ago so it is just hitting the market.  Its production budget is a massive $65 million making it a “B” movie.  It has grossed $14.5 million domestic and $16.2 million foreign (for a combine Int’l of $30.7 million).  This is not a very promising outlook by the Box Office watchers point of view.  An “A” film to compare it to is last year’s Pacific Rim which had a production budget of $190 million and had a domestic gross of $101.8 million and foreign gross of $309.2 million (with a combined Int’l of $411 million).  Its first weekend gross was $90.4 million Int’l.  What this means is that Pacific Rim grossed 48% of its production budget on the first weekend whereas I, Frankenstein grossed 47% of its production budget putting them on par with one another. 

What does this all mean?

The horror genre is one that is given less money, no name stars (most of the time), a smaller marketing budget, and a release date that is usually dead for most films.  It should be noted that Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire were all released during peak Box Office months whereas January is consistently year-to-year one of the lower Box Office grossing months of the year.  Box Office watchers and critics forget that the horror genre is one of the most consistently profitable genres year-to-year because of the low production budgets therefore they don’t need to make blockbuster figures to turn a profit.  As you can see by the numbers all three of the January releases have outperformed some of the biggest films of last year.  To call these films duds puts a harmful light on these releases.  They may not be making the blockbuster numbers of “A” films but then again they shouldn’t have to and they shouldn’t need to.  Whether a film is considered profitable or not is related to how much it costs to produce and the combined production cost of all three films discussed here is less than any one of the three blockbusters mentioned.

So for those of you paying attention to the critics and Box Office watchers out there telling you that horror is doing horrible this year, take another look and consider the reality and not the perception that horror films should be doing blockbuster business.  Horror flourishes because its profitable and as long as it turns a profit we’ll continue to see a diverse array of films.

Note: All facts and figures were obtained from Box Office Mojo (www.boxofficemojo.com)

Film Review: PARANORMAL INCIDENT (2011)

Found footage films are a mixed bag.  Sometimes they can be very effective (i.e. Paranormal Activity or REC) while other times they can be less interesting (i.e. Apollo 18 or The Devil Inside).  The found footage style of film has become common place for indie horror films of which Paranormal Incident (2011) can now be included.  The plot of Paranormal Incident is nothing you’ve not seen before (way too often) in which a group of film makers/students venture into the abandoned place known as Odenbrook Sanitarium to prove to each other and the world that the paranormal exist.

The problem with the film first and foremost is that it takes place in an abandoned sanitarium which has become the biggest cliché in the found footage genre of horror films (although cleverly done in the Grave Encounters films).  What also throws the film off is the complete lack of originality or concern with the fact that the film has nothing new to offer.  There was a moment when I thought that the film might actually go somewhere but my hopes were slashed away in the third act with the over complicated conspiracy theory of which was needed for an otherwise bland run of the mill haunted house film.

In my opinion, the found footage film can be used to great effect.  This is plan in The Blair Witch Project (1999), Man Bites Dog (1992), and Cannibal Holocaust (1980) but more often than not it’s a lazy excuse for film maker to make a cheap film with no stars and a mediocre or non-existent script.  Paranormal Incident is one of these films that can be completely ignored and forgotten.