Bad Horror Writers

 

Bad Horror Writers

by Kristin Battestella

These writers thrust into isolated locales, killer nonsensical, deadline contrivances, and horror delirium go from quality bizarre to disturbingly terrible. Read on for the good, bad, and ugly of writers in peril.

Weird but Great

Images – Susannah York (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?) and Rene Auberjonois (Deep Space Nine) star in director Robert Altman's 1972 mind-bending venture with music by John Williams (Star Wars), splendid Irish locales, and freestyle life imitating art characterizations. Tinkling wind chimes and whimsical unicorn readings penned by York go from charming to chilling thanks to eerie artwork and anonymous phone calls providing her husband's hotel address. Typewriters, old school cameras, and horseshoe phones accent the frenetic writer's scribbling as she huddles childlike under the table with her crumpled papers before cowering in the bathroom over the imaginary man kissing her. Crystals, mirrors, a multi-level mod apartment, vintage cars, and a country house show pampered living facades before a disturbing point of view change. Our author sees herself drive up to the idyllic gingerbread house and the doppelganger knows she's watching – forcing viewers to pay attention amid the kitchen knives, smoking flue, and creepy antelope head upside down in camera lens. She was said to live here as a child with her grandfather and works on a jigsaw puzzle when not sticking her tongue out at the lookalike neighbor's daughter and claiming she was prettier at that age. Suggestions of abuse and affairs mount with untranslated French, a dead lover caressing her mouth, and a dirty neighbor licking her face. Balconies or above looking down camera angles reflect the burying guilt or suppressed urges while zooms on the internal retro camera make us voyeurs wonder what saucy it has seen. Shooting with a shotgun versus shooting via the lens layers the scene changes through doorways and tiger, butterfly, dog, or train metaphors. Flashback or phantom encounters with the ghost lover, rough neighbor, or routine husband keep us guessing, for Rene plays Hugh, Marcel plays Rene, and Hugh plays Marcel. Our disturbed wife also sees herself naked as the sense of self breaks with surprisingly calm, collected violence and blood. Not listening to your inner self degrades into fantasy blending with reality and literal over the edge waterfalls. The full circle prism and character study horror looks directly at our camera and our warped self-image. Though too nonsensical for many, such provocative horror leaves us asking questions long after the movie ends.

Had to Fast Forward 🤨

Winifred Meeks – Cliffside waves and “Dramatic Old Timey Music” open this 2021 ghost tale immediately padded with numerous credits, extra long still frames, driving to the seemingly quaint English manor, and no dialogue save for Sherlock Holmes on the radio. Slow, tedious rather than atmospheric shots of the dark foyer, empty rooms, and spooky windows abound amid rambling phone calls from mom and ghostly humming heard by the audience but not the protagonist. A mug and a laptop twelve minutes in are the first indication she's a writer, and supposed slice of life conversations are unnatural exposition about her book series. She watches Nosferatu on mute while we listen to the voice on the phone and observe from outside a rainy window, and it's unclear if this is a poor aesthetic choice or just a ghostly perspective. Deliberate, incidental movements begat drinking wine and watching House on Haunted Hill – entire scenes as if Vincent Price should receive a screen credit – before more radio speeches and laborious phone calls with her cheating boyfriend played over picturesque mountains and floral vignettes. The protagonist is a nonentity yet there's time for her to shower and wear a towel before being suddenly convinced that unseen odd happenings mean the manor is haunted. However the few and far between ghosts are for the viewer not the character – ten seconds worth before ten minutes of birds in the sky, strolls in the woods, and brushing her teeth. Tacked on asthma and a London recovery offer voicemails about clergy and parapsychologist failures, and a Geocities-esque website tells of an unstable religious sailor's wife starving herself while waiting for his lost at sea return. This potentially more interesting backstory is told in five minutes when I had to fast forward over a fireplace, clouds, waves, yoga, and castle ruins. The off putting pretty to look at and listening to nothing disconnect combined with an excessive use of borrowed media makes this on and on, neither showing nor telling twice as long. Perhaps we could forgive the innovative, solo, COVID filmmaking if there was a true narrative, but the haunting is inconsequential to the monotony.

Why Indeed

Why – 911 transcripts, Shakespeare quotes, CCTV footage, and slow opening credits open this 2021 exercise in what not to do. The drive to the horrors actually takes half the movie – complete with blaring music, repeated overhead shots, and a manuscript called “Are we there yet?” The parking garage splatter is well done, but the elaborate kills and exploitative naked girl crawling on the ground are pointless. Ocean hotels, bedroom romps, and camping sex restart the cliches while phone calls repeat everything we just saw. Shaky cam tours of the retreat with anonymous bodies hanging on the stairs and the killer eating his cereal are purely for the audience, and victims asking the titular question before their final head chop are laughable rather than thought provoking. Useless cinematography like a snake eating a frog and pine cones still lifes acerbate the aimless back and forths, convenience store trite, and uninteresting killer vignettes. Humorous cutaways ruin the isolate fears, which themselves jar with the rustic, coffee commercial idyllic photography. What is the woman in peril doing while we're watching the nonsensical crimes elsewhere? Our writer runs around the house avoiding the killer when he was so fast with the meaningless shock kills! His heavy breathing point of view has no purpose if we've already seen him, and once again a one and the same writer and director without a second eye creates an all over the place, first draft narrative. I like the idea of this old school horror stock company, but Chris Browning (Bosch), Natasha Henstridge (Species), Lance Henriksen (Aliens), and more of this cast and crew also teamed up for The Unleashed, perhaps in a fly by night two for one deal. There's no other motivation to this paint by numbers. Backward strobes, sirens, and crime tape montages look like they ran out of money yet the movie ends with derivative one year later book deals, dream scares, and babysitter gotchas. Having no answer to the killer question is probably supposed to be some meta point, but it only leaves the viewer asking why they are watching.