Expelled Grey Matter

Although Quarantine was a minor hit it has largely been forgotten due to the fact that it was pretty much a shot-by-shot remake of the Spanish movie [REC] .  Where the original had encouraged improvising and had a number of techniques employed by the directors in order to illicit realistic responses from the cast, Quarantine mostly stuck to what was presented on-screen in the original.  There were a few changes just so director John Erick Dowdle could get a screenwriting credit, but for the most part it is the same movie.  [REC] was not available in the United States when Quarantine was released but, since it became available soon after as well as at the time of [REC] 2 , Quarantine became pretty much unnecessary to watch.   After the first movie is where the two diverge.  The [REC] series went on to have four films, generally telling the story of how the virus was linked to demonic possession and how the Catholic Church accidentally let it get out while experimenting on possessed chi

Whether intended or not [REC] became a film franchise and, being as the first two had Paco Plaza and Jaume Belagueró as directors, they decided to divide the duties when bringing the series to its conclusion.  Plaza went off on a tangent, trying to make a Dead Alive -style horror comedy with [REC] 3: Génesis , and largely coming up empty on both the frights and the laughs.  Belagueró, on the other hand, got the job of bringing things to a close.  Following what Plaza did in the third movie Belagueró gives us a straightforward story and skips over the found footage angle, except for using Angela Vidal's (Manuela Velasco) recordings as a plot point.  The only reference to Plaza's film is the includsion of Koldo's grandmother (Maria Alfonsa Rosa), an elderly lady with dementia who is the only survivor of the wedding outbreak.  Where the first two did show a lot of innovation, however, this last chapter is basically Alien on a boat with zombies.   Angela Vidal, the reporter f

The late 2000s saw a number of classic horror films being remade.  Although a lot of attention was on the biggies - Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street  and Halloween  - the rush to make some extra money on existing properties didn't end there.  There were remakes of everything from the relatively obscure 1940s horror film Ghost Ship to some of the also-ran slasher films, such as My Bloody Valentine .    Released in 1981, the original film was a Canadian entry into the holiday slasher genre and told the story of a survivor of a mine cave-in that goes on a killing spree.  With the killer supposedly dead, the killings pick up a number of years later when the mine owner's son returns to town.  It's largely memorable for the mining outfit, complete with pickaxe and gas mask, with the killer making for a  striking image.  Unfortunately, it was the movie itself that was butchered.  While it had a pretty typical plot - prodigal son returns and is blamed for killings in a sm

In 2007 a movie called [REC] was released in Spain.  A found footage horror film about a television crew trapped in a Barcelona apartment building during the outbreak of a deadly virus, it was originally meant to go straight to DVD but was deemed good enough for theatrical release.  The original movie earned a fair bit of critical acclaim and was a standout in the genre.  Despite its popularity in Europe it did not immediately make it over to the United States.  In fact it seemed like there was a concerted effort to make sure the movie didn't make it here, at least not until Hollywood had a go at it.  Although ultimately forced to admit that it was based on the movie by Paco Plaza and Jaume Belagueró, initially this was marketed in a way that made it seem like a purely original addition to found footage horror that was popular at the time.   Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter), a news reporter for a  Los Angeles television station, is doing a report on the nighttime doings of a loca

After years in development hell Spider-Man made it to the screen in 2002, directed by cult horror film director and comic book fan Sam Raimi.  Though hobbled in some way by real-world events the movie still managed to combine Raimi's signature style with a faithful telling of Spider-Man's origins.  At the heart was a story about Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), in every other way a normal working-class teenage boy growing up in New York, entering adulthood and learning about responsibility, albeit helped along by a bite from a genetically enhanced spider.  Though he loves Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) he has decided to let her go in order to protect her.  Harry Osborne (James Franco), Parker's best friend, is reeling from the death of his father (Willem Dafoe).  Harry is not aware that his father was the Green Goblin that terrorized the city, nor that he was killed by one of his own devices, leading him to devote much of his time in pursuit of his revenge against Spider-Ma

[REC]  introduced us to a sudden strange plague and the plight of the inhabitants of an apartment building trying to survive, while [REC] 2 expanded on the story as it turned out the contagion was not just sickness, but a catalyst for demonic possession.  The second movie ended on a cliffhanger as Dr. Owen, a priest going under the guise of an agent of Barcelona's health department, tries to get his hands on the blood sample taken from a possessed woman in order to both end the outbreak before it starts and give the Catholic Church a vaccine against possession.  However, he is killed by Angela Vida (Manuela Velasco), the television reporter from the first movie and supposed sole survivor, as it is also revealed that the demonic being transfers between human beings as a parasitic worm.  Vidal tricks the health officials outside into letting her out. With the creature on the loose things are definitely going to kick into high gear with the Spanish government having to deal with an o

[REC] made enough money in Europe to get attention elsewhere, most notably with a U.S. remake called Quarantine .  Unlike many early found footage films Quarantine was full-on a cash grab.  Hollywood realized that Jaume Belagueró and Paco Plaza made a nice wad of cash for themselves and, since the formula was already tested and worked, figured that a remake would do the same.  Since [REC] at that point had not been released in the United States they were right. It wasn't just Hollywood seeing dollar signs - or, in this case, euro signs - in their eyes.  Belagueró and Plaza joined forces once again to make a sequel.  One of my few problems with the original is that it started to go through lengths to explain things at the end, when early on they explain that Jennifer's dog Max had been taken to the vet and, though thought dead, woke up and began attacking other animals.  I figured that was all we really needed to know about the origin of the virus, as it is what led to the apar

J. J. Abrams successfully rebooted the Star Trek movie series by making movies for those who do not necessarily like Star Trek.  Thus, they were sci-fi action films rather than tempering the action with thoughts on how humanity will evolve in the future and the challenges it will face.  That meant that while a decent cast was put together to represent younger versions of the well-known Original Series crew very little remained of Gene Roddenberry's original vision.  In fact a good part of the Enterprise crew spent time getting over their personal grudges with each other in the first Kelvin Universe film in order to deal with a vengeful, but ultimately dull, villain. The second movie saw Abrams try to remake Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , only to spend a decade getting yelled at for showing Alice Eve in her underwear.  For the third film Abrams, who was deeply involved destroying what legacy Star Wars had left at the time, left the director chair to be filled by Justin Lin, who i

European films are often far from lacking in imagination.  What they are lacking in, typically, are the funds to bring the writer's or director's actual vision to the screen.  The compromises made often result in some creative ways around problems, but they also often result in some hilarious makeup and special effects work as well. Although certainly not the first film to take the route, The Blair Witch Project was the first found footage film to gain mainstream acceptance.  Until the genre began to wear out its welcome as the 2000s went on it was pretty much a gift from the heavens for independent filmmakers.  They often require minimal locations - typically being real-life locations rather than sets - as well as little cast, equipment and crew.  In many independent productions cast often becomes crew as default, but in found footage this is often the case from the very beginning as the person carrying the camera is part of the story. Rather than being a surprise that a film

Godzilla finally ended up going into full hero mode, once again defending Earth from King Ghidorah and a bunch of aliens bent on conquering our world in Invasion of the Astro-Monster .  So, what was the big lizard going to do next?  He didn't head for Disneyland, but instead of a tropical vacation paradise called Devil's Island where he had a nice bed of warm rocks inside a lava tube to take some personal time off from dueling with other giant monsters.  Unfortunately he doesn't get to rest for long.  Ryôta Kane (Tôru Watanabe), after learning from a psychic that his brother survived the destruction of his fishing boat, is determined to search for him.  After being refused assistance he decides to get a boat for himself, eventually taking a yacht that just so happens to be occupied by a thief named Yoshimura (Akira Takarada).  In tow are a couple of hapless friends, Nita (Hideo Sunazuka) and Ichino (Chôtarô Tôgin).  After encountering a storm as well as the Ebirah, a giant