When Paramount announced that a box set consisting of five horror titles from their library, called “Paramount Scares Vol. 1,” would be released before Halloween, I was very excited as there were several titles in the box set that I really enjoyed; “Smile” and “Crawl.” My fiancée and reviewer, Ashley, agreed to review “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Pet Sematary” as the former is her all-time favorite movie, while “Pet Sematary” is a nostalgic film from her teen years.
That left the “Mystery Title” that Paramount asked us not to reveal before the box set’s release date of October 24th, so I can reveal it here: Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, and Sacha Baron Cohen. I have to admit, I was not overly enthused as I am not a fan of musicals, but with a great director at the helm and an all-star cast, I viewed it with an open mind. Sadly, those elements were not enough to sway me in their favor.
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
Review by James McDonald
The legendary tale of a barber who returns from wrongful imprisonment to 1840s London bent on revenge for the rape and death of his wife and resumes his trade while forming a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett.
I know this tale is a dark one, filled with heartbreak, chaos, and revenge, but it just didn’t work for me. I have never been able to get into musicals; one minute, characters are talking, and the next, they’re jumping to their feet and continuing the conversation in song. It has always taken me out of the film, and it’s one of those genres you either enjoy, or you don’t; there is no middle ground.
The story takes place in 1846. Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp), a barber, arrives in London seeking revenge for his imprisonment by a corrupt magistrate, Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). We learn that Turpin lusted after Barker’s beautiful wife, Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), falsely convicted Barker of a crime he didn’t commit and had him sent away to Australia. When Barker returns, he discovers that Lucy supposedly took her own life and that Turpin has fostered his daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) and lives at his residence. Now Barker, who has adopted the alias “Sweeney Todd,” must figure out how to reclaim his daughter and make Turpin pay for his foul deeds.
“Sweeney Todd” doesn’t shy away from blood and gore as the film abounds in it, but that element alone isn’t enough to save it. While most of Burton’s films have been rated PG or PG-13, he stated at the time of the film’s release that he had every intention of going into “Sweeney Todd” as an R-rated horror musical. And that is precisely what you get. As a horror film lover myself, even I was taken aback at the amount of blood the movie offers up.
The sets and overall production quality are undeniable; it genuinely feels like you’re in 1840s London, and you can almost smell the unsanitary living conditions most people in the city experienced at that time. It is always overcast and raining and dreary as hell. Having been born and raised in Dublin, I experienced my fair share of that growing up, so seeing it onscreen, I was able to relate, and not in a good way.
The movie is depressing and miserable; its sole focus is Todd’s unquenchable thirst for revenge. He will do whatever it takes to rid the world of Turpin, and he doesn’t care who he has to hurt to do so. While Helena Bonham Carter’s Nellie initially gives every indication of being a love interest, even she doesn’t have the power to break his bloodthirsty fixation on the evil judge.
At no point does “Sweeney Todd” offer any light at the end of the tunnel, no hopefulness or optimism; the story is mired in negativity and pessimism, and that is the reason for my distaste of it. I understand Todd’s need for retribution, but even when he finally achieves his goal, nothing changes. He becomes even more dispassionate and eventually meets his own demise. Most of the characters we meet are dead by the movie’s end, and I was left asking, “What was it all for?” I know this is the film Burton and Co. set out to make, but it is one I won’t watch again. Thanks, but no thanks.
SMILE
Review by James McDonald
After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain. Rose must confront her troubling past to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.
Director Parker Finn must have been heavily influenced by David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 indie smash hit, “It Follows,” because “Smile,” his feature film directorial debut, pays homage to that movie in almost every way. He plays with themes about the fragility of the human mind, how strong our minds are, and how they can shape our lives, not always for the better. He also introduces supernatural elements and doesn’t explain the film’s central antagonist, a faceless entity who can transfer between bodies and take over whomever it wishes. For the most part, we are left in the dark, which works better as a backstory can sometimes convolute matters and take away from the creature’s mystery.
Therapist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) works at a large hospital in New Jersey. When a young woman named Laura (Caitlin Stasey) is admitted to her ward, screaming and terrified of something she says is following her, she agrees to meet with her. Trying to understand exactly what’s scaring her, Laura explains that she witnessed a teacher at her university kill himself right in front of her, and ever since, she has seen people smiling at her all the time. Not friendly, happy smiles, but something darker, more sinister, and evil. She then starts screaming again, claiming that the thing is in the room with her, and as quickly as she begins, she immediately stops, accompanied by a chilling and menacing smile. She then proceeds to kill herself, and even after death, the smile remains.
Rose is told by her boss, Dr. Morgan Desai (Kal Penn), that she needs to take time off and cannot interact with other patients because of her traumatic experience, and begrudgingly, she agrees. But slowly, she begins to witness what Laura described to her: disturbing and horrific smiles on strangers’ faces. When she tries to confide in her fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher), explaining that what happened to her patient is now happening to her, he doesn’t believe her, convinced she is losing her mind. She teams up with Joel (Kyle Gallner), a detective working on Laura’s case and who also happens to be her ex. Together, they discover a troubling pattern of suicide that goes back years. Still, with her visions becoming increasingly more frightening, she gradually begins to question her sanity, unable to tell if what she is experiencing is in her mind or for real. Now, she must separate her imagination from reality before she, too, succumbs to taking her own life.
Going into the press screening, I had only seen the trailer and decided not to read anything about the film beforehand. I was glad I did because the movie has some genuinely frightening moments. You are never quite sure if Rose’s experiences are in her head or happening in real life, and when a filmmaker can put an audience in that precarious situation, unable to know what’s real and what’s not, it makes for a scary good time. Here, the “thing” is passed on through trauma, much like the thing in “It Follows,” which was passed on through sex, but the only person who can see it is the person suffering from the most recent traumatic experience, and eventually they will pass it onto the next person and so it goes. “It Follows” told audiences that to stop the thing from coming after you, you had to have sex with another person, thereby passing it on to them. A similar scenario is presented here but with increasingly dire consequences.
“Smile” is an effectively creepy horror film with some crackerjack scares and creative kills, but sadly, it collapses under the weight of a generic and stereotypical denouement that befalls many horror films. Naturally, should the movie make money, Paramount would want to leave the door open for a sequel; I just wish sometimes the powers-that-be could see past the almighty dollar sign and let their filmmakers make the best possible film. This one criticism aside, if you love horror movies, “Smile” will most certainly make you grin from ear to ear, or, dare I say it, smile.
CRAWL
Review by James McDonald
A young woman, while attempting to save her father during a category five hurricane, finds herself trapped in a flooding house and must fight for her life against alligators.
As a film critic, one of the perks is getting to see movies before they are released to the public. Typically, when a film doesn’t secure a press screening before its release date, it’s never a good sign; either the movie is not very good, or the studio lost faith in it and decided to dump it on the movie-going public. When “Crawl” was deprived of a press screening, I figured the movie must not be very good, but on the contrary, it was highly enjoyable. Alexandre Aja’s directing credits, including “High Tension,” the 2006 remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” “Mirrors,” and the cheesy but fun “Piranha 3D,” prove that Mr. Aja has the technical prowess to deliver tense and at times, frightening films but that he also doesn’t take himself too seriously. The plot for “Crawl” is most certainly by the numbers, but its two leads, Kaya Scodelario, and Barry Pepper, prove they have the acting chops necessary for us to believe in their predicament, no matter how outlandish it occasionally becomes.
Haley (Scodelario) is attending the University of Florida when she receives a phone call from her sister informing her that a Category 5 hurricane is heading toward Florida. When she tries to call her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), to make him aware of the situation, he doesn’t answer his phone. After a few more attempts, she becomes worried and decides to drive down to him, against the instructions of the state police, who have advised everyone to evacuate. When she reaches his house, he is nowhere to be found, although his dog is safely inside. Searching for him in and around the house, she cannot locate him and decides to drive to the house they all used to live in before her mother and father divorced. She discovers his pickup truck parked outside, but he is nowhere to be found. Making her way into the crawl space underneath the house, she finds her father unconscious and badly wounded. As she tries to drag his body out, she is cut off by a giant alligator and manages to haul his body back to its original resting place, which is safe from the alligator as it is too big to fit underneath the pipes above them.
Haley tries several different times to find a way out but quickly learns that there are two alligators in the crawl space. As the hurricane intensifies, bringing with it more rain, slowly, the crawl space begins to flood. As Dave finally wakes up, he is angry with Haley that she came looking for him instead of leaving, but she insists that he would have done the same for her. With time running out, Haley reaches a hatch in the ceiling in the far corner of the crawl space that will take her to the living room above, but try as she may, she cannot budge the door, leading her to believe that something upstairs is blocking the hatch. She investigates a nearby storm drain and ascertains that the alligators have been using this conduit to move in and out of the house, and she unearths a large nest filled with alligator eggs. As the nearby levees break, causing more flooding, Haley realizes the only way to escape and rescue her father is through the storm drain, so she must venture down the pipeline and hope that no more alligators are using it.
“Crawl” offers nothing new to this particular monster-movie genre in terms of overall narrative; we’ve seen it all before in films like “Primeval,” “Rogue,” “Lake Placid,” and “Crocodile,” but what it does have going for it is deft direction and convincing performances by Ms. Scodelario and Mr. Pepper. Haley isn’t the stereotypical horror protagonist who does stupid things that only transpire in horror movies, like going into a dark, creepy basement when she should be running out the front door; here, she ventures into the dark, creepy crawl space underneath her old house out of genuine concern for her father, not because she heard a creak and felt some implausible desire to go and investigate. There are a few moments of horror, but they happen so fast they barely have time to register with you until they are over, and those instances stay with you longer because they happened so quickly and didn’t linger on the gore. “Crawl” is a tense-filled horror-thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat and forces you to occasionally check underneath, you know, just in case!
ROSEMARY’S BABY & PET SEMATARY
Review by Ashley Marie Wells
Paramount is releasing a 4k box set of horror films just in time for the Halloween season. The set includes two of my personal favorite horror flicks, Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” and Mary Lambert’s “Pet Sematary.” For better or worse, both films have stood the test of time. They have left an impression on audiences’ psyche, as countless references to the movies can attest. The devil and the undead are two of the most beloved and feared subjects that never go out of fashion. The darlings of horror. They occupy the darkest corners of our minds that we hope to never face in the flesh. Horror flicks exist, so we don’t have to, or if we do, we’ll be prepared. Hopefully more prepared than the dopes in most films, including the leading characters of both “Pet Sematary” and Rosemary’s Baby,” who both succumb to the wiles and wills of their geriatric neighbors.
“Pet Sematary” gives us a young family who moves to the countryside. Dale Midkiff is Louis Creed, the affable young doctor with the tightly wound wife Rachel (Denise Crosby), and their two children are Ellen (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes). Ellen, while mildly annoying, is full of spirit and asks some very important questions about God. And Gage is adorable. Just your average 1980s family, rampant with equal doses of dysfunction and denial. But that’s okay because Fred Gwynne is here as Judd, an overly obliging peculiar neighbor, coming to dole out questionable advice and see what happens knowingly. But the Creeds cannot put all the blame on their kooky elderly neighbor. They have the bloodied ghost of Pascow (Brad Greenquist) haunting them and glimpsing all the horror to come if they do not heed his warning.
“Pet Sematary” is the ultimate “fuck around and find out” film. It’s unhinged and a bit scattered. Many would argue that the film is lacking. Aside from Fred Gwynne’s performance, the acting is stiff, particularly between Mr. and Mrs. Creed. And the screenplay leaves more to be desired for those familiar with the book. And I agree. But this film has stayed with me since I first saw it as a kid in the 90s. Pascow, the friendly ghost with half his brain exposed, was unsettling, and every kid I knew who’d seen the film was terrified of Zelda (who seemed like a totally random aspect of the film). No one wants to go to the darkroom or basement of Zelda’s lair and have her run up on you. And while baby Gage is built up to be the birth control for a whole generation, the real villain is Judd, with his unsolicited advice, stirring the pot of the homicidal undead to come.
Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” has a similar villain, or rather villains, an all too neighborly geriatric couple. Unbeknownst to Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse (John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow), the couple are Satanists and, through their devilish machinations, ensnare Guy and Rosemary in their plot to bring about the antichrist. Guy is a struggling actor, and Rosemary is his young wife who aims to make their new apartment snazzy and comfortable enough for the eventuality of two becoming three.
As with any old New York apartment building, it comes with a history, a grizzly history including child sacrifice and cannibalism. Unfazed by its history, the couple go on about their lives. A suicide marks a twist of fate for the couple as they are then introduced to Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer). The newly introduced neighbors have dinner at Minnie and Roman’s apartment, and that’s when things kick off. While initially put off by the eccentricity of the old couple, Guy decides to go back for more later, leaving Rosemary to marinate in her indifferent curiosity.
Guy finally gets his break after the sudden misfortune of another actor. And Rosemary is lonely. Then, one fine day, Guy surprises Rosemary with his desire to have a baby as soon as possible; he’s even got it all worked out on the calendar. Oblivious and bowled over by this sudden showering of love, Rosemary is beaming, and all is well. Until it isn’t, and poor Rosemary is the victim of a dream sequence rape by Satan himself and then has to endure gas-lighting on all fronts until the very end, when she finally gets to meet her bundle of joy. It’s a trip.
“Rosemary’s Baby” holds a special place in my heart as it is my COVID comfort movie. Only copious amounts of therapy could probably answer the question as to why it is, but truthfully, that does not concern me. I ardently spread the film’s virtues to whoever will indulge me, primarily how it is not too far from today’s reality regarding medical gas-lighting and how it can serve as a lovely icebreaker for awkward dinner parties. “What would you do if you knew you were pregnant with/gave birth to the antichrist?” It’s a question that will first render your dinner guests speechless and then, in turn, render you speechless as they clap back with some of the most disturbing responses.
While I suppose Rosemary’s husband, Guy, is the real villain in the film, it still serves as a cautionary tale to keep your wizened neighbors at arm’s length, lest you desire to be their next ritual centerpiece. Or, in the case of “Pet Sematary,” desire your family to join the forces of the undead. Neither film deserves to be part of some golden film Canon in the Sky, but they do hold their places comfortably in the horror canon.
The PARAMOUNT SCARES VOL. 1 Limited-Edition 4K Blu-ray™ Box Set is now available and boasts collectible items, including an exclusive, full-size Fangoria magazine produced especially for the release. This special edition of the celebrated publication—“first in fright” since 1979—features a curated selection of new and classic articles from the magazine’s archives. The set also includes a Paramount Scares enamel pin, unique stickers, and access to a Digital copy of each film.
