Jug Face (C+)

The pit wants what it wants.

I seem to remember hearing about Jug Face a while back. I wasn't really sure if it was going to be my type of movie or not, but at 80 minutes, it was a quick fix and I figured I had nothing to lose by watching it. I wasn't disappointed in the film, but it didn't make much of an impact on me, either. I'm not sure why, actually, because it's well done, given the budget constraints. The cast is great, and includes a few folks I didn't expect to see, and the director (Chad Crawford Kinkle) does a fine job of keeping things moving.

Imagine an insular backwoods community that worships a muddy pit in the forest. The pit offers healing powers to the community members, but for a price. Every so often, the community's jug maker is either possessed or put into a trance and forced to create a clay jug representing someone's face. That person is obliged to be sacrificed to whatever terrible thing (you never really see it) is in the pit. This tradition has been going on for quite some time, and the community has come to accept these grisly transactions.

Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) discovers that she's next in line to be sacrificed to the pit when she finds the next jug. Frightened, she buries the jug in the woods. She also learns that she's to be joined (married) to Bodey (Mathieu Whitman), a boy from one of the other families, a prospect that doesn't exactly thrill her. Virginity is a big deal to these folks, which is especially troubling due to the fact that Ada has been having sex with her brother, Jessaby (Daniel Manche). To complicate matters further, she discovers that she's pregnant with Jessaby's child.

The pit.

When the pit doesn't get the sacrifice it's demanded, it begins to kill other members of the community, starting with Eilen (Jennifer Spriggs), Bodey's sister. The community decides that the pit has been angered somehow, assuming that a demanded sacrifice hasn't been made. The jug maker, Dawai (Sean Bridgers of Deadwood fame), creates the jugs while possessed/entranced. He has no memory of where he might have put the last jug, and is unable to find it. On Ada's advice, Dawai creates a new jug "from memory," which ends up being of Bodey.

Though Bodey is sacrificed to the pit, the supernatural force is still angry and it kills others as the story progresses. Ada, knowing that she should've been sacrificed but unwilling to kill her unborn child, attempts to escape to a nearby town along with Dawai. This is harder than it sounds, and the two are soon back in the woods where they must face the music for what they've done.

All in all, the cast is great. Ada's mother, Loriss (as portrayed by Sean Young) is especially good. Ada's father, Sustin (Larry Fessenden) is also well-played, and his love for his daughter is readily apparent. The special effects are few and far between, but there is some occasional gore resulting from the pit's angry outbursts. As mentioned, the creature (or whatever it is) isn't depicted directly, and there isn't much in the way of actual scares, though there are a few moments of suspense sprinkled liberally throughout.

Ada finds a jug that bears her face. Hilarity ensues.

My score of C+ here isn't a bad thing. I feel that Jug Face is above average, especially given its budget, and I enjoyed watching it. The premise of a muddy pit that demands human sacrifices in the middle of the woods might seem far-fetched and ridiculous, but the movie faces this reality with seriousness and steadfast determination. This makes all the difference, as the plot might have been considered silly if the cast and direction hadn't made it seem so plausible.

The Haunting of Helena (B-)

What a lovely smile she has.

Maybe I've been watching too many bad movies lately. For one thing, they certainly make other movies shine by comparison. Sort of like giving a starving man a piece of dry toast. Insert "Nom nom nom" noises here. Speaking of eating...

The Haunting of Helena (also known by the title Fairytale) was a pleasant surprise. It's a ghost story, for one, and for two, it's got a nice, low-level creep factor to it that results in some pretty solid scares. The acting is competently done (though the young girl who plays Helena, Sabrina Jolie Perez, is occasionally somewhat wooden), the cinematography is nice to look at, and I thought the overall story was pretty good. I only took issue with one special effect, with the rest being pretty well-done.

Sophia (Harriet MacMasters-Green) and her daughter Helena have moved into their own place in Italy. Sophia's husband (Helena's father) has apparently been traveling the world for a couple of years in order to get his head together (or something), and though he occasionally calls via Skype, his relationship with his wife and child are strained due to his absence. Thus, Sophia's desire to move away from what she refers to as his house. The house she and Helena move into, however, proves to be much worse than the one they left behind.

"Sure, the house is haunted. But we live in Italy! Score!"

The two discover a fancy wardrobe in the house, which Helena wants to keep in her room. Eventually, after losing her first baby tooth, Helena claims that the tooth fairy lives in her closet. Following a car accident involving Sophia and Helena, the little girl becomes obsessed with teeth and the tooth fairy. She begins drawing disturbing pictures of the tooth fairy. Of course, some disturbing events take place as the plot unfolds further, such as Sophia's elderly neighbor warning her that she and her daughter should leave while they can.

Sophia takes her to the doctor, who refers her to another physician. The physician examines the drawings, then asks Sophia if anyone has told Helena about what happened in their house back in the days of Mussolini's Italy. The story goes that a gentleman by the name of Battista Greco (Marco Fattibene) caught his wife smiling at another man. To punish her, Battista pulled out all of her teeth and locked her in a wardrobe (yes, that wardrobe) to die.

The mystery begins to unfold bit by bit, and the sanity of both Sophia and Helena comes into question. I won't spoil the details, but by the end of the movie, everything is wrapped up pretty well. There's a neat little twist, too, which I wasn't really expecting, despite the clues that are presented throughout the film.

Those things on the ground? Yeah, they're TEETH.

I really liked The Haunting of Helena despite IMDB's 4/10 user rating of the film (due to a single review). It tells a coherent story, the characters are believable, and the nature of the haunting and its ghost (or tooth fairy, if you prefer) is interesting. It's a little slow at times, but I didn't mind. If you enjoy movies about ghosts and creepy kids that combine supernatural horror with psychological horror, then you should definitely put this one on your watch list. Better yet, go watch it right now, unless teeth (or a lack of teeth, or having teeth pulled) creep you out. As with all my reviews, your mileage may vary.

My only gripe was with Helena's age. I'm a dad, and I know well enough what baby teeth look like. Though the character loses her first tooth in the beginning of the film, it's pretty obvious that she already has her adult teeth. A younger actress probably would have been better for the role, but it's a minor quibble, really.

Evidence of a Haunting (F)

Evidence of a Haunting was one of the movies I found on Amazon Prime. As with most of these kinds of movies, I didn't expect much of anything. Good thing, too, or I might have been disappointed.

The meandering story involves a group of paranormal researchers, members of the Supernatural Phenomenon Research Society (SPRS for short). It's filmed in a found footage sort of style sometimes, but transitions inexplicably to a standard style at will. One such scene takes place in a bar where the characters get to know one another better over vast quantities of booze. There's even a camera shot that bounces between two of the female members' boobs for no apparent reason.

The film follows the crew through a number of different hauntings/manifestations. The first involves a family haunted by a malevolent ghost that ends up possessing a little girl. The priest, Father Bowden, exorcises the little girl and removes the apparent demon (which identifies itself as "Persephone"). The group's psychic, Echo, instead insists it was a particularly nasty ghost, not a demon. They wander the house and declare it to be clean before they move on to their next investigation.

The second investigation involves a father and his two daughters. Their house is haunted by a ghost that, believe it or not, reorganizes stuffed animals and neatly folds and stacks clothes in the closet. When they find the source of the spirit in the girls' bathroom, Echo determines that the ghost really likes it in the house and will fight to stay there.

The proud members of the S.P.R.S.

The group decides to remove the spirit, which they determine is a Choctaw Indian medicine man. He's been turning off televisions and folding clothing, so he's got to go. The Wiccan priestess of the group, Shelley, is dragged around the girls' bedroom by the ghost, after which she locates a wooden Ouija board. It's revealed that the Ouija board was mailed to the house by a mysterious stranger, and the two girls opened the package and played with its contents, thereby allowing the ghost into our world.

Against the ghost's wishes, the group chops the Ouija board into seven pieces and burns them, thereby sending the medicine man back to whatever spirit realm he came from. Though the ghost throws some of the investigators around, it's not a particularly spectacular struggle. With the board destroyed and the ghost banished, the group pats itself on the collective back and proceeds to their next assignment by way of a bar.

The final assignment takes place in tunnels beneath a college in Texas. They speak to the groundskeeper, Mr. Henry, who tells them some tales about kids being lost in the tunnels, and about a teacher who had an affair with one of his students. He got her pregnant, then took her into the tunnels in an attempt to kill her. She survived and was committed to a mental institution before living out the rest of her days in Louisiana. Apparently, though, she's still looking for revenge, but you'll need to use your imagination to decide if she gets it or not.

The team allows the groundskeeper to lock them in overnight (after all, what could possibly go wrong?). Using a device that somehow allows them to speak with spirits, the gang waits until the hour of the dead and strikes up a conversation with the evil ghost of the teacher. The action begins in earnest when Rayne is whisked away by the ghost, and the rest of the group goes after her.

"These are our 'we're really seriously totally scared' faces."

The story then splits between the different groups, and there is a first-person "ghost cam" that chases individuals (like in Evil Dead II, only less interesting) intermixed with the occasional found footage POV. As for the end, well... the gang gets whittled down somewhat, but two of them survive (you guess which two). The final scene is highly cliched, and makes about as much sense as the rest of the film (which isn't saying much).

Overall, Evidence of a Haunting is an amateurish entry into the genre with incredibly low production values. It doesn't quite know what sort of film it wants to be. Is it found footage? Is it a ghost flick? Is it about demons? The film has no idea. It's what I'd expect from an amateur production. Looking at director Joey Evans's credits on IMDB, this is his sixth film (out of eight). I almost wonder how his other entries compare to this one. Then I realize that to contemplate such a thing is to court madness.

You'd be better off avoiding this one, I think. If MST3K was still on the air, this would make one hell of a thrilling addition to its repertoire. Evidence of a Haunting is probably the stinkiest stinker I've ever reviewed here (which isn't saying much, but it gives me something to work towards).

The Crying Dead (D)

"We're a lot scarier on the poster."

Tonight I was checking the movies on Amazon Prime and I came across a few supernatural horror films that sounded like they'd be terrible. You know, right up my alley. I added them to my watch list and started up the first of them: The Crying Dead.

Initially, the film begins with black and white footage of a woman being treated with electroshock therapy. Eventually, the patient uses what appears to be telekinetic powers to bring harm to her shock-happy doctors and nurse. From then, it cascades into what appear to be audition tapes, and this leads to a roughly-filmed sequence where three people are running away from something in what appears to be a hospital.

There is a lot of shouting and screaming, panting, cursing, and indistinct video--much as you'd expect from a found footage-type film. Outside of the stilted acting in the initial black and white electroshock/telekinetic brutality part, the acting isn't terrible. I assume a great deal of it was improvised, rather than scripted, but I could be wrong.

The narrative (if you can call it that) goes back in time to "20 Hours Earlier," where a number of other individuals are introduced in a parking lot. They arrive one by one and are introduced to one another. The group is filming a pilot for a reality show involving ghostly investigations, and the quality of the show will have a lot of bearing on whether it gets picked up or not. Becka Lassiter (Becka Adams) is the show's producer, while Andrew Halstead (Andrew Olsen) and Jeffrey Pierson (Jeff Stearns) are the camera assistant and camera operator, respectively.

Chris Mitchell (Chris Hayes), the actor playing the part of the show's lead investigator, is very serious about ghosts and the supernatural. Angelina Becker (Angelina Lyubomirova), one of his co-investigators, seems open to the supernatural, though she never appears quite as invested as Chris is. The third investigator, Callie Brooks (Callie Cameron), is an admitted skeptic and apparent airhead.

"Don't look at the string! Just pretend it's not there!"

The cast and crew board an RV and ride for several hours. They make a couple of stops along the way, and we get to explore a little more about each of them. There are little snippets of the cast talking, going over what they'll be doing, and the back story of the hospital that they'll be investigating. Three young girls were burned alive when the hospital's boiler exploded in 1924, and a few other stories/legends are touched on. You never really get a feeling for who these people are supposed to be outside of generalities: Callie is a ditz, Jeffrey is a jerk, etc. There's not enough given for me to feel invested in any of them.

Once they arrive, the hospital's caretaker shows them around, and they talk about the place and some of its history. When the caretaker learns that they plan to stay overnight, he refuses to allow it. As far as he knows, they're only warranted a tour. Becka attempts to work something out, but is unsuccessful. Chris, with Angelina's support, suggests breaking into the hospital after dark to film anyway. Of course, they all agree (to varying degrees) and get on with the breaking in (which is mercifully glossed over).

The crew sets up shop in the hospital, placing cameras at certain locations. Initial impressions are that it's all pretty standard fare for this kind of a film. A lot of nothing happens for a good while, and we look at a lot of camera images without seeing anything particularly weird or scary. The characters perform a few gags which, when edited in post-production, should provide "evidence" of a haunting. As they do so, one of the static cams films a gurney moving in a hallway. None of the cast is aware of this, and they continue looking around for things to film. As they do, the static cams capture a child-like shape crawling through a hallway.

When the first victim is attacked by the ghosts, you pretty much see it all. The ghost effects are a little too blatant, a little too unbelievable, which takes away from any residual creepiness. You get a real good look at all the spooks early on, and it ruins any mystery that might've been preserved by being a little more subtle. The filmmakers really tried to make the ghosts look creepy and otherworldly, but it only serves to make the effects seem cheap.

The cast runs a lot in this movie. Miles and miles. Really.

Suffice it to say that when things get rolling, it's nothing terribly original. Victims get tossed around by invisible forces, dragged away, and otherwise abused. One by one they meet their ends, though you never actually see anyone die on camera. It's just sort of assumed they do. Even when the last of the victims is ganked, it's more of a relief than anything. Because it means the movie is pretty much over.

I came into this one expecting nothing, and I guess I wasn't disappointed. A similar story was done before (as in, one month before), and better, by Grave Encounters. It almost makes me wonder if The Crying Dead was a mockbuster of Grave Encounters, or merely an independent project with a similar plotline. I guess the child ghosts make it somewhat unique, but they're not enough to turn a relatively tired concept into a supernatural gem.

Watch this one at your own risk, 'cause there's not a lot to see here. As far as the title goes, the ghosts don't do much crying. I suppose if I'd actually paid money to see the movie in a theater, I'd be the one in tears.

The Skeleton Key (B)

Being nosy is bad, m'kay?

As I often do, I randomly picked a movie I hadn't seen on NetFlix and got to watching it. I hadn't heard of The Skeleton Key when it was released in 2005, but it's got a pretty experienced cast and the film direction was very good. Though not as frightfully scary as I might've liked, it has a number of creepy moments, and though I saw the twist at the end coming, it was a pretty good story.

Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) is a hospice nurse in New Orleans who gets fed up with her job in a clinic and applies for a position as a private nurse at a residence about an hour outside of the city. Her friend, Jill (Joy Bryant), warns her against taking the position given it's out in the swamps. Of course Caroline doesn't listen and interviews for the position.

The house is an old plantation-style home on a large plot of land. When Caroline arrives there, she meets Luke Marshall (Peter Sarsgaard), the family's estate lawyer, who then introduces her to the family. Violet (Gena Rowlands) and Ben Devereaux (John Hurt). Ben recently suffered a stroke, and is more or less incapable of caring for himself. At first, Violet is reluctant to hire Caroline, but Luke manages to change her mind.

Caroline moves in with the Devereauxs. Soon after, Violet gives her a skeleton key that will open every door in the house. While fetching a box of seeds for Violent, Caroline discovers a strange door in the attic that the key doesn't appear to open. When she asks Violet about the room, she's told that the key has never opened that particular door. Later, when Caroline investigates further, she manages to open the door. Inside, she finds all manner of ritualistic paraphernalia that is revealed to be related to Hoodoo.

When pressed, Violet reveals that 90 years ago, the room once belonged to a pair of Hoodoo practitioners, Mama Cecile (Jeryl Prescott) and Papa Justify (Ronald McCall). When the two were discovered performing a Hoodoo ritual with the two children of the family that owned the home at the time. The family and their friends lynched the two, killing them, and Violet believes their ghosts still haunt the old house. She gives this as a reason that there are no mirrors in the place, for the ghostly servants can be seen in them.

Though Ben starts out as a catatonic, he begins to try and break through his shell. Caroline comes to suspect that Ben is pleading for help, despite his inability to communicate verbally. She decides that he is the victim of a Hoodoo spell, and seeks advice on how to reverse it. Caroline performs a Hoodoo ritual on him, hoping that Ben's belief will put an end to what she feels is a psychosomatic condition.

After the ritual, Ben indicates that Violet is to blame for his condition. Unfortunately, Violet arrives and takes control of the situation before Caroline can finish. Caroline goes to Luke to air her suspicions about Violet, but he doesn't believe her. She attempts to change his mind, and reveals that she intends to get Ben out of the house and away from Violet. From this point, the movie begins to draw towards its inevitable conclusion.

One is old, one is young, but both are stubborn as sin.

Having expected the film to be another NetFlix stinker, I was pleasantly surprised by its quality. Though it isn't groundbreaking by any means, it is well-made and the performances are great. I didn't even recognize John Hurt at first, which was sort of funny as he's one of my favorite actors. Kate Hudson does a good job in her role, as does the rest of the cast. Really, I have few complaints about the film at all, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a horror movie that isn't really all that scary.

Therein lies my only complaint, really. Though the movie possessed a number of creepy moments, I was hoping for more of a ghost story. While there are elements of a ghost story in The Skeleton Key, it's not really that kind of tale. Despite this, the Hoodoo angle was well done and added a bit of tension to the proceedings. Caroline's motivations for doing what she does are also understandable, especially considering that anyone else would have probably quit the job once things got too strange.

The ABCs of Death (C-)

I watched The ABCs of Death last night, mostly because I found the concept to be interesting. The film consists of 26 short films, and the director(s) of each short was assigned a letter of the alphabet. Using that letter, the directors were to choose a word and create a segment involving death. I'd passed the film over many times on Netflix, but being bored and wanting a change, I decided to finally give it a go.

As you might expect from such a broad cross-section of directors, the quality of each film varies drastically. Some are good, many are not, but I think it's mostly a matter of opinion as to which is which. They weren't particularly scary, and a good many were campy, crude, and scatological. I wasn't really interested in potty humor, so I didn't get much out of those segments.

The segments I enjoyed the most were D, involving a well-filmed and fairly nontraditional Dogfight (with a human boxer and a Labrador), and E (for Exterminate) which features a strange spider. I also enjoyed V (for Vagitis, which is defined as "The cry of a newborn baby") which was set in a dystopian future where everyone is sterilized unless they can earn the privilege to have children. I liked it for mostly non-horror reasons, and for what the director was able to accomplish with his budget.

There were also some disturbing entries, such as I (for Ingrown, involving a woman slowly dying after being injected with drain cleaner), P (for Pressure, wherein a woman prostitutes herself to support her children), and Y (for Young Buck, involving a deer and a pedophile). Of these, P was probably the best. The rest of the films either fall flat entirely, or are just too damn silly. I did find a few of them to be genuinely funny, particularly A (for Apocalypse), J (for Jidai-Geki, which is Japanese for "Samurai Movie"), N (for Nuptuals), Q (for Quack), and U (for Unearthed). The rest didn't really grab me.

The dog is one of the best actors in the entire anthology.

Ultimately, I was hoping the quality of D and E would continue throughout the rest of the film, but the needle rises and falls so much as things drag on and on. My review grade is mostly an aggregate, so take it with a grain of salt. There are things you may enjoy featured in this film, but they are too few and far between.

Watch this one at your own risk, but you definitely need to make sure you watch D/Dogfight. Dogfight is currently posted on YouTube, so maybe you should go check it out there and save yourself from the rest of the movie unless you're particularly curious.

An American Ghost Story (C+)

Originally known as "Revenant," An American Ghost Story is a movie about a writer, Paul (played by Stephen Twardokus, also the film's writer, producer, and editor) who rents a purportedly haunted house so he can experience the paranormal in a twisted attempt at research for his next book.

After living in the house for a little while with his girlfriend, Stella (played by Leisel Kopp), things start to go bump in the night. Following a particularly frightening experience, Stella decides she can't live there anymore. She moves out, leaving Paul alone with whatever is inhabiting the place. He experiences a number of disturbances, but none of them are quite what Paul's looking for.

When his landlord Skip (played by Jon Gale) drops by to collect the rent, Paul asks him about how he came to own the place, about the purported haunting, and the home's previous tenants. Skip isn't real helpful, but seems to be more of a believer than he lets on.

Seeking validation, Paul attempts to contact the previous tenants, including the last tenant, Sue (played by Wendy Haines). Though she refuses to speak with him, she eventually contacts him and gives her account of what living in the house was like. Paul attempts to capture ghostly messages on a tape recorder (EVP! An old classic!) but has no luck. Just when he's about to give up, everything goes ape and the movie reaches its conclusion.

The acting in An American Ghost Story isn't the best I've ever seen, but it certainly isn't the worst. While all the actors have their moments, there's still a good bit that feels forced or rehearsed. Despite this, the movie's atmosphere is genuinely creepy, and it keeps that feeling going for nearly the entire length of the film. There were a number of instances of paranormal action that were very well done, especially considering the movie's estimated budget of just $10,000.

I'm going to have serious nightmares about this nun.

As is often the case with these sorts of stories, the film's finale was a bit of a disappointment. Due to the competent way the movie's scares are delivered, I was really hoping for more than I ended up getting. Despite this, the very last scene was pretty clever, in my opinion, and I had to chuckle.

I think An American Ghost Story is worth seeing if you enjoy movies about haunted houses and ghosts. You may roll your eyes when things get exciting at the end, but the growing unease that the movie creates as it plods along is worth experiencing. I oftentimes feel that big budget films lose something, especially when a director tries to squeeze every penny's worth out of his proverbial wallet. If adapted to a much pricier budget, I'm not sure An American Ghost Story would show as well or as earnestly as it does.

Giving it the old college try is totally up to you, dear reader, but I don't feel like my time was wasted in watching it.