Revenge of the '00s, Part V: A New Beginning (11-6)

11. Suicide Club (2001)

Battle Royale has become a real cult classic with American viewers, but Suicide Club attacks many of the same themes and anxieties and is a much creepier, more shocking and effective movie. Like Battle Royale, it's a J-horror outlier: no pale, black-haired onryō, but the same sense of social comment and the same earnest desire to shock audiences. And shock it did: Suicide Club became immediately infamous for its opening scene, depicting a mass teenage suicide in that most psychologically fraught of Japanese settings: the subway. In terms of sheer excess, this is as over-the-top as millennial Japanese "extreme" cinema ever got--but the real surprise is that, from there, Suicide Club just gets better and better. This movie is like what might have happened if Kiyoshi Kurosawa had decided to trade in his abandoned, derelict buildings and direct day-glo J-pop music videos (literally). This is a bright, kinetic, and visionary film--and at the same time, an utterly bleak and nihilistic one. Suicide Club truly has everything: there are real scares, real gross-outs, and a gnawing, pit-of-the-stomach sense of dread to complete the J-horror checklist--but this is no formal exercise. It's one of the most original and powerful Japanese films of the last decade, in any genre.




10. Eden Lake (2008)
Donkey Punch had more than a faint whiff of chavviness to it, but Eden Lake is where the nascent chavsploitation genre reaches full bloom. There's nary a Burberry tartan in sight, but this is as classic a "cruel story of youth" as you'll find in modern movies. It's all very rote at first: weekenders-on-holiday-run-afoul-of, and all that. But what puts this one over the top is an incendiary performance by the 18-year-old Jack O'Connell (above, with knife), as one of the most eerily pure film sociopaths of all time. O'Connell doesn't chew any scenery or throw any bombs, but he evinces such a cool, unfeeling malice that he's every bit as scary as 2008's other great psychopath: Heath Ledger's Joker. By the end of the movie, O'Connell only needs to turn his eyes directly into the camera to create a deeper chill than an army of ghouls. (Along with cast member Thomas Turgoose, O'Connell also starred in the critically acclaimed 2006 pic This is England, creating a subtle metacomment: where the hooligans of Thatcher's England had a streetwise soulfulness, the youth of today have nothing but bloodthirst.)




9. Martyrs (2008)
Man, you know a movie is going to be good when the DVD starts with an apology from the director. And unless it's all a huge put-on, it's hard to believe somebody as sheepish and bashful as Pascal Laugier could've directed such a savage, unapologetic film. Martyrs got a lot of hype very quickly as a new high-water mark in "extreme" cinema, for those always on the lookout for the next big shocking, bloody thing. But it's a movie with much, much more thought packed into its (literally) torturous run-time than the average post-Saw bloodbath; this is a movie that has a lot to say about trauma, victimization, and the justification for violence, with a bone-deep existential message as stark and intimidating as Being and Time. And Laugier is right: this is not a movie you enjoy, but one that you endure. Martyrs has to be the signal film on the horror end of what one Artforum critic has ridiculously (but understandably) termed "the new French extremity"; it is also a much better film than overheated shock treatments like Baise-moi or even Irreversible. And Laugier, in his wisdom, has downplayed the kind of hype which would give his movie a place at the Cahiers du Cinema table: in France, much like in America, horror is still a ghetto.

Postscript: of course there's going to be an American remake! And it sounds predictably dubious. Daniel Stamm, the skilled director of The Last Exorcism, is attached, but he says: "[The original film] is very nihilistic. The American approach [that I'm looking at] would go through all that darkness but then give a glimmer of hope. You don't have to shoot yourself when it's over." Very American, Mr. Stamm; we never did really take to existentialism.

8. The Descent (2005)

From the man who brought you Night of the Living Dead: Werewolves comes Aliens: Underground: Vampires. If my writeups of Neil Marshall's films seem flippant, it is only because they lend themselves to it. Don't mistake my irreverence for contempt, because as a moviegoer The Descent thrilled me like nothing in years. (Note that the first two Alien films are essentially my cinematic bible; they contain within them all great wisdom.) Marshall takes the unmapped caverns of the American backwoods, fills them with creeping, de-evolved Nosferatus, and drops a whole pack of spunky Ripleys into the mix (plus at least one Vasquez). The results, quite simply, are dynamite, and go deeper than the entirely respectable thrills and chills on offer: there is a subtlety and a human complexity at work here that dwarfs many similar films. But Marshall still expertly exploits our instinctual fear of the dark, and the movie's real triumph are its drooling albino CHUDs: taking a key page from the Aliens playbook, those are real people! (Who took an underfreak crash course, naturally.) A truly inspired directorial flourish: Marshall didn't allow his heroines to see the creatures in full makeup until they appeared in-scene. Also, bonus points for perhaps the gnarliest final girl transformation scene of all time (above).

Postscript: I discovered after seeing this movie that it shares the title with a surprisingly good 1999 thriller in the Michael Crichton mold, by a guy named Jeff Long. Book and movie share more than just a title: imagine the movie blown up into an epic, near-future saga about the colonization of an enormous world below, populated by the dread underbiters. It's really good, and if you liked the movie you'd do well to check it out.

7. Rogue (2007)
With Wolf Creek, director Greg McLean tapped into the blind spot behind our smug sense of mastery over the world around us, transforming a beautiful (if dangerously isolated) tourist destination into an alien planet, inhabited by a stalking menace wearing a human face. Rogue actually continues in a surprisingly similar vein, and it's also a better, tighter movie overall. More than that: Rogue is the best Jaws movie since Jaws. It's another movie about a big, man-eating bastard of a beast, but a couple things put it over. One, as in Wolf Creek, is naturalism: they may not have the same dimension as Brody, Quint, and Hooper, but these characters are believable, and they behave suspiciously like real people. The other is the simple fact that the titular croc is the best creature effect since The Host: this is, again, CGI done right, at its most subtle, restrained, and effective. The big lizard doesn't tear through the mise-en-scène, wagging its complex modeling in your face, but instead acts like a real crocodile, drifting slowly and inevitably your way before exploding into brutal, even clumsy motion. You will really forget you're watching a special effect, and mistake it for a real crocodile of extremely generous size. And the film's climactic moment is a concerto of suspense, and in its key moment even offers an inspired variation on the perfectly simple, stabbing heartbeat of the Jaws theme.


Next time on Revenge of the '00s: a time paradox, black cats (gone awry), an unexpected zombie, little monsters, and--you guessed it!--a last act surprise.

Revenge of the '00s

A list of my 31 favorite horror movies from the last ten years (more or less). Order is deliberate but still somewhat loose; I didn't agonize over the rankings too much. And some quality flicks got edged out due to not being "horror" enough for me, e.g. Trollhunter, which I completely loved.



31. High Tension (2003)
It's hard to decide which is a better title, High Tension or Switchblade Romance, from the UK release. Pic pays deliberate homage to classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Last House on the Left (and boasts a plotline lifted wholesale from the Dean Koontz potboiler Intensity), but it also heralds the arrival of a new, transgressive French school firmly rooted in the native guignol tradition, defined by films like Inside and Martyrs. High Tension is actually a terrible, terrible mess, and not just because of all the blood: the nonsensical twist suffers from a fatal lack of internal consistency, and delivers a deathblow to the entire movie. It does exactly what a twist shouldn't do, making repeated viewings an exercise in frustration--but it's such a teeth-grinding thrill ride that it's impossible to write it off.




30. The Mist (2007)
I'll admit that The Mist has problems: too many of the Things from Dimension X are just oversized bugs, and Thomas Jane is characteristically wooden as the hero. But this is still a very worthwhile weird tale. Some of the critters, like the beast pictured above, are truly awesome, and Jane's failure to become a real boy is offset by the rest of the generally excellent cast, particularly Marcia Gay Harden as the bloodthirsty Mrs. Carmody. The creatures are actually secondary; in the classic tradition, the real horror...is man. (Or woman, in this case.) A lot of people seem to hate the ending, which I don't get at all--I think it's perfect, and far superior to the typical Stephen King fizzle-out from the original short story. This can also be viewed as Frank Darabont's dry-run for The Walking Dead, featuring as it does cast members Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale) and Melissa Suzanne McBride (Carol).




29. A Horrible Way to Die (2010)
A Horrible Way to Die divides people like a meat clever to the top of the head. The camerawork alienates: everything is close up and often sliding in and out of focus, in a manner that goes far beyond the faux-documentary/found footage style. It's definitely jarring at first, but you settle into it as the film goes on, and it very deliberately mirrors the movie's central theme: sometimes we can't see what's right in front of us. But what really distinguishes A Horrible Way to Die is its unassuming naturalism; it's hard to say more without giving too much away, but AJ Bowen and Amy Seimetz's performances will stay with you long after the credits roll. This is a real life horror movie that's scary in a very different way than most on this list--and in some respects, it's much more frightening.




28. The Last Exorcism (2010)
The Last Exorcism would've scored much higher if it didn't, like High Tension, crap out in the last act. While the ending doesn't negate everything you've just seen the way that High Tension's does, it is completely at odds with the rest of the movie, which is grounded in realism and ambiguity. This exorcism eschews gruesome makeup or CGI splatter, and it stays spooky because of its intimate, documentary style and a devious sense of uncertainty akin to Rosemary's Baby. If the pic hadn't lost its nerve in the final moments, The Last Exorcism would've been one of the standout horror movies of the decade; instead, it's just a very good one. As far as I know, studio interference didn't cause the climactic balls-up, but the result feels very much like The Exorcist Part III: a savvy, effective chiller marred by a ham-fisted ending mandated by the suits. Still, it is very much worth seeing, and special kudos to Ashley Bell for turning in such a feral performance without any special effects. Sequel's in the works, for better or worse.




27. 28 Weeks Later (2007)
This one is James Cameron to the first movie's Ridley Scott. 28 Days Later was a fresh, surprising piece of zombie revisionism that (unlike Alien) nonetheless suffered from uneven pacing and a weak third act, and 28 Weeks Later is in every respect a better, bleaker, bloodier movie. In contrast to the dreamy music video spirit of the first (all due respect to Mr. Boyle), this is a brain-gnawing, machine-gunning rollercoaster. But the larger scale doesn't stop it from being scarier than its predecessor as well, with the heart-stopping opening serving notice. It's also a great "late" zombie tale in the same vein as Day of the Dead, where the brute struggle for suvival becomes tinged with existential misery. And now that the sequel's mired in developmental limbo, the obligatory cliffhanger ending is actually even more in keeping with that theme: this might be all there is.


And next time on Revenge of the '00s: nailguns, chavsploitation, pancakes, the old "military exercises gone awry", and a head on a stick.