31 Horrors: Ghostwatch (#18)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

It's like Paranormal Activity in Prime Time!

Imagine Lake Mungo, with it's investigative Dateline/Australian Story/60 Minutes approach to a family's haunting, but done live to air. In 1992, before "found footage" was a term used to identify films of its kind. When the prospect of national celebrities portraying themselves on a BBC special event wasn't even entertained as fiction, but rather a very real documentary. Such is the idea behind Ghostwatch, a British television program that would become one of the most controversial of its time and scare almost an entire nation into believing that ghosts were real. That is, until those involved were forced to apologise for misleading the public even though the program's credits don't leave much in the way of ambiguity. Such is the rabid hysteria of the public.

Man oh man, did I love Ghostwatch! Relatively obscure outside of Britain I should imagine, but its ten year ban by its own network, the BBC, suggests it should be held in higher regard. Playing the ol' Orson Welles/War of the Worlds trick on unsuspecting British TV viewers on Halloween night resulted in thousands of calls and even a controversial implication in the suicide of a mentally unstable man several days after it aired. Ghostwatch, beyond its scary surface and spine-chilling revelations, digs deeper into the national psyche than, say, Paranormal Activity, by also working as a tell tale sign of society's more gullible nature and the domination that television has (well, had) over them.

Ghostwatch was supposedly a special event piece of television, broadcast on BBC1 and heralded as live reality. Cameras and reporters were placed in the scene of a house on Halloween night that had, before then, become known as a hub of poltergeist disturbances. Hosted by famous chat show personality Michael Parkinson, featuring several well known British identities (including Red Drawf's Craig Charles), and including actors portraying psychic professionals as well as the very haunted family of mother and two daughters, Ghostwatch takes its time to really get going, but those who are paying close attention will get chills out of the entire enterprise.

By the time the film's final 20 minutes or so comes around, I was already well and truly intrigued and had experienced a couple of very decent frights (my suspicions were right when I thought I'd caught a glimpse of the mysterious "Pipes"). What I didn't expect was the level of almost paralysing fear that the climax would throw at me. Rigid with fear and audibly gasping on a high frequency, Ghostwatch worked spectacularly well and more than justifies its reputation as an oughtta be eminent Halloween classic. The final image especially of a dazed Michael Parkinson - remember, he's a huge star both in the UK and Australia - mumbling about the BBC set before creator Stephen Volk's last chilling utterance made getting to sleep a harder task than I'd expected.

Readers would be aware that I am very much a fan of the Paranormal Activity features as well as The Blair Witch Project and the aforementioned Lake Mungo. When this type of film works well there's almost nothing I find scarier. Ghostwatch is another stellar example of it, made even more provocative by the project's history and the way its makers went about it. I watched it nearly 20 years to the day since its British premiere (it's never played since) and it's very much as effective now as it was in 1992. It's also the best thing I've seen during my month-long horror trek. A

31 Horrors: Paranormal Activity 4 (#10)

Paranormal Activity 4

Dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman

Country: USA

Aus Rating: M

Running Time: 88mins

Much like the Friday the 13th franchise, or the Saw series for a more recent example, the Paranormal Activity films have more or less settled into a comfortable groove by its fourth entry in as many years. While sequel rules dictate that the stakes be raised with each subsequent entry, the films – originally a $15,000 “found footage” movie directed by Oren Peli that took the box office by storm – have rarely reached beyond their fairly simple origins: a family find themselves haunted by a demonic spirit with a fondness for loud bangs in the night, levitation, throwing people around like rag-dolls, and pulling the doona covers off sleeping victims. The added extra of a cult-like institution in the series best Paranormal Activity 3 is about as radical as it has gotten so far, and Paranormal Activity 4 adds little that hasn’t been seen before. Alas, many viewers probably won’t have a problem with that.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

The Best (and Worst) Posters of 2011 - Part II

Check out part one, the top 50 posters of the year, by clicking here. Or better yet, look at them after you've looked at the following poster and cleanse your visual palate!

Curating a list of bad posters is, I think, infinitely harder than making one for good posters. When you're good, you're good, and that's no matter your film's genre, budget or any other mitigating circumstances. Bad posters however... well, I feel like I have to take certain things into consideration. It feels particularly meanspirited to rub it in to a movie that barely got an advertising campaign because the distributor had no money to do so, especially when there is mainstream, Hollywood, studio dreck that somehow gets an escalating series of putrid posters. Still, bad posters are bad posters and I think this list balances that out. There are films on the list that found their entire marketing campaigns coming under scrutiny - two films occupy six spots in the top ten! - whilst there are films with posters listed below that also had entries in the best of the year list, which kinda goes to show how off base marketers can be from time to time. The below list is made up of a lot of terrible Photoshop, ugly colours, ludicrous concepts, bizarro world foreign designs, local Australian dogs, ill-conceived visuals and my traditional arch nemesis' stripes. Alas, the giant floating heads in the sky appeared to take a year off in 2011 so that one was one silver lining, yeah?

50. Paranormal Activity 3
49. The Cup
48. The Three Musketeers


47. Source Code
46. Trespass
45. The Green Lantern


44. J. Edgar
43. The Dilemma
42. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1


41. Zookeeper
40. Abduction
39. The Descendants


38. Martha Marcy May Marlene
37. The Tree of Life
36. Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star


35. Jack and Jill
34. Scream 4
33. The Iron Lady


32. Dream House
31. Soul Surfer
30. Arthur


29. The Darkest Hour
28. Big Mamma's Boy
27. Return to Zero


26. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
25. The Rite
24. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never


23. Courageous
22. Straw Dogs
21. Incendies


20. I Don't Know How She Does It
For its putrid green and bizarre text: However does she find the time to "check email", "vacuum the rug" and "repair shoes"? :/

19. The Triangle Wars
For being an amateur poster of an amateur film.

18. Source Code
For being an iPad commercial for a sci-fi film. For the Photoshop.

17. New Year's Eve
For the golden laziness. For the champagne flutes as characters. For the teeth-decaying sweetness.

16. Something Borrowed
For the ZZZzzzz

15. The Rum Diary
For making Johnny Depp look positively repulsive. For the bizarre Hangover rip-off.

14. Salvation Boulevard
For the I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE HELL THIS IS!

13. A Dangerous Method
For the yikes factor. For turning the sublime transparent white version into a hard-edged, awfully Photoshopped mess.

12. The Mighty Macs
For being HILARIOUS! For being even worse than this design, which simultaneously looks like Jennifer Garner, Hilary Swank, Elisabeth Shue, Kyra Sedgwick and Teri Hatcher before it does Carla Gugino.

11. The Sitter
For the blatant sexism. For being unpleasant.

10. Big Mommas: Like Father Like Son
For the endless wedgie joke. Doubled. For being really, really stupid (why does the son have a framed photo of himself in his bag?) For the weird skinny legs.

9. Atlas Shrugged
For looking like clip art. From Word 2007.

8. And They're off
For having to be on drugs to understand it. For Sean Astin leaning up against a horse's arse. For flipping the names of the actors despite this hardly being a case of "I am Sean Astin, I must be billed first" kinda situation.

7. X-Men: First Class
For the bobblehead syndrome and the afterworld effect.

6. Barney's Version
For looking an assortment of cardboard standees haphazardly arranged. For the screepy Scott Speedman looking at me and yet not...

5. Big Mamma's: Like Father Like Son
For that "wtf?" look on Brandon T Jackson's face. For the golden seal of approval that, even though I can't read it, makes me giggle in a bad way.

4. Quarantine 2: Terminal
For looking like a melted wax statue of Laura Dern. For that vile colour scheme.

3. Big Mommas: Like Father Like Son
For being THE HORROR! OH GAWD, THE HORROR!!! The French are fucked up, y'all.

2. X-Men: First Class
For being a 0_0 of a design/concept/creation. What is this? How did this get the greenlight for a major motion picture? How?

1. X-Men: First Class
For being even worse than the one above. For sticking James McAvoy's face in the silhouette of a wheelchair-bound man's crotch. For looking like a joke and looking like even a kid would reject it. For being the worst of 2011.

What say you, dear readers? Did I forget a truly disastrous eyesore of a poster or do you think I got it pretty spot on? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.