GOLDEN GHOUL AWARDS for Achievements in Horror during 2011

     After the mostly-poor and forgettable year for horror film such as 2011 has been, viewed en generale, I decided to make a selection of the best achievements and pleasures I got from horrors during the past year so as to award them with my inaugural GOLDEN GHOUL AWARDS. When I look back, I realize that most of these films I've seen at Vienna's SLASH FILM FESTIVAL. Great selection there!
    These are the best.

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR

O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for CREEPIEST HORROR 

Kyofu aka The Sylvian Experiments

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MOST BRUTAL HORROR

NIGHT DRIVE

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST ARTY HORROR

O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR EXPLOITATION

FINAL DESTINATION 5

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST CREATURE FEATURE

THE TROLL HUNTER

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST FOUND FOOTAGE

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR COMEDY

HELLDRIVER

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST HORROR DOCUMENTARY

CROPSEY

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST DOCUMENTARY ON HORROR

HALLOWEEN: THE INSIDE STORY

GOLDEN GHOUL
for LOVECRAFTIAN MERITS 

THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MOST HORRIFIC NON-HORROR

COLD FISH

GOLDEN GHOUL
for SERBIAN CONTRIBUTION TO HORROR

ENEMY (aka NEPRIJATELJ)

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST DIRECTOR

--- JOE CORNISH
ATTACK THE BLOCK

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST SCREENPLAY

--- TI WEST
THE INNKEEPERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST ACTOR

--- NUNO MELO
O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST ACTRESS

--- SARA PAXTON
THE INNKEEPERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST SCORE

--- JEFF GRACE
THE INNKEEPERS

GOLDEN GHOUL
for BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

--- LUIS BRANQUINHO
O BARAO aka THE BARON

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MAKE UP EFFECTS 

--- TOM WOODRUFF JR. & ALEC GILLIS
THE THING

GOLDEN GHOUL
For SET DESIGN

--- ROGER FORD
DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE DARK

GOLDEN GHOUL
For SUPPORTING ACTOR

--- TIHOMIR STANIC
ENEMY (aka NEPRIJATELJ)

GOLDEN GHOUL
For SUPPORTING ACTRESS

--- REBECCA DE MORNAY
MOTHER'S DAY

GOLDEN GHOUL
for MOST PROMISING DIRECTOR 

--- JUSTIN HEAD 
NIGHT DRIVE

GOLDEN GHOUL
for HORROR BOOK OF THE YEAR
(Fiction)

NEW CTHULHU: THE RECENT WEIRD
--- Ed. Paula Guran

GOLDEN GHOUL
for HORROR BOOK OF THE YEAR
(Non-Fiction)

NIGHTMARE MOVIES
--- KIM NEWMAN

GOLDEN GHOUL
for HORROR BOOK OF THE YEAR
(Unclassified)

ESOTERRA: JOURNAL OF EXTREME CULTURE
--- Ed. CHUD HENSLEY

    The beautiful GOLDEN GHOUL ™ statuette was sculpted by Tijana Jevtić based on the design by truly yours, Dejan Ognjanović.

TOMIE: REBIRTH (2001)

Country: Japan
Running Time: 101'
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Cast:
Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Kumiko Endou, Masaya Kikawada

GHOUL RATING:
**(*)
2+

Story: Hideo, an art student, murders his model Tomie when she, in a fit of jealousy, slices up his portrait of her. His two friends help him bury her body in the woods. Later, however, at a party they notice a girl resembling Tomie. Right then, Hideo is found dead in the WC, with a knife in his neck held by his own hand. His friend Shunichi immediately falls for Tomie, much to chagrin of his mother. Obsession, silly acting in public, decapitation and dismemberment, crawling heads and other strange events follow.

Review:  TOMIE movies are one of the greater mysteries of contemporary horror cinema: this phenomenon should've ended with the first film, as even the original was a barely watchable exercise in boredom. While its atmosphere was occasionally fine, it lacked anything resembling character, plot, logic, sense or enough memorable set-pieces to pay off for the lack of contents generally expected in a good movie. Yet, the haphazard sequence of non-events which served as its 'plot' somehow became the source of a whole series of movies, each duller and more pointless than the previous.

'Wait a minute!' I hear you say. 'Someone actually LIKED those dull-fests enough for them to make a whole series of crappy TOMIE flicks?'
'I'm afraid so,' says I. 'And they are (almost) all available in a single pack now, courtesy of RONIN.' The series is made up of these titles: TOMIE, TOMIE: RE-PLAY, TOMIE: RE-BIRTH, TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE and  TOMIE: FINAL CHAPTER aka TOMIE: FORBIDDEN FRUIT. The one that’s missing in this package is TOMIE: REVENGE.

The mystery of this series' existence may be somewhat elucidated by the fact that it is loosely based on a very good manga by Junji Ito (UZUMAKI). In other words, many people had a reason to expect that movies adapted from a decent comic should also be good. Ah, it was not meant to be. Say goodbye to the comic's creepiness and its clever scrutiny of the highschoolers' moral dilemmas, say goodbye to its insights into the gender and sex politics of Japanese youth – say hello to a series of slow-burning, uneventful, silly, pointless, uninvolving, scare-less excuses for 'horror'.

Alexis Glass wrote a fine introduction to the work of Junji Ito. In it, he points out to one trait which cannot be stressed strongly enough: ''Junji Ito is also well known for eschewing any sort of scientific explanation for the strange events in his comics, concentrating his efforts instead on simply making the horror as visceral and disquieting as possible.''

As all fans of Japanese horror already know, American clear-cut logic and explanations are not always to be found here. Irrationality is a common 'spice' in the Oriental dish, especially in Japanese horror, with its disregard for logic and tendency towards puzzling, open endings. That's all fine and dandy. However, the TOMIE flicks push viewers' tolerance for this approach a bit too far, without ''making the horror as visceral and disquieting as possible''. There is an exchange in TOMIE: REBIRTH which I find exemplary and crucial for understanding this series:

''But why did Hitomi become Tomie?'' wonders one character.
''It does not matter,'' philosophizes another.
''I see. Tomie again,'' accepts the first one stoically.

And again, and again, and again… How or why – it does not matter. Judging on whether you find this exchange creepy, funny or just plain ridiculous you can decide whether you'll give TOMIE flicks a chance or not. Personally, if I were to choose between unkillable, ever-resurrecting baddies, I'd take Jason Vorhees any day of the week and twice on Friday. At least he works on his own dumb level, whereas Tomie does not rise to the ambition it set out to accomplish.
One TOMIE flick not yet reviewed from this collection is TOMIE: REBIRTH, and that is my sad duty. It is directed by Takashi Shimizu in a rare excursion away from his repetitive JUON/GRUDGE movies, but sadly, his creepy touch is largely absent and the flick remains another dreary piece of non-entertainment typical for this entire series.

Shimizu seems bent on boring his audience to tears with his long shots, mostly immobile camera, brooding dark-ambient music interrupted by long silences and other devices commonly found in dull artsy movies, but rarely effective in genre filmmaking, which requires some regard for pacing, rhythm, narrative-drive and structure. None of the latter can be found in this movie, which goes all over the place: without a main character, it deals with a group of barely sketched persons 'distinguished' merely by their good looks and names. There is no suspense nor drama nor horror, for who could care for those ciphers lost in a 'plot' (dis)organized by the principle of 'anything goes'?
For example: one character's mother dies unexpectedly. 'She suffered from a strange illness,' says he, apparently unmoved. When his friend comes to the wake and removes the coffin's lid, he sees the woman's face all hairy, like a werewolf's. Just then, her mouth opens and a stream of long hair flows out. A solid visual is achieved, a jump-shock provided, but then… this boy and his just-orphaned friend shrug it off and never mention it again. TOMIE: REBIRTH is full of such moments. Things... just... happen. With no inherent logic, no matter how limited of constructed.

What's even worse, Shimizu fails to create a feeling of strange events building into an oppressive sense that the whole concept of rationality is existentially undermined – something that another adaptation of Junji Ito, namely UZUMAKI by Higuchinsky, has done effortlessly. What you get instead is the feeling of the scriptwriters who thought: ''It IS crazy, but who cares?'' Lacking focus of any kind, TOMIE: REBIRTH meanders through some longeurs and a couple of memorable scenes (like the never-failing effect of Tomie's detached head, here growing a pair of limbs/tentacles) to its irrelevant, non-poignant 'who cares' ending. And that's it. The tech credits are solid enough, and there ARE duller TOMIE movies than this one, so it can be serviceable in a moment of utter desperation when you have nothing better to watch, but is there anything to recommend it on its own? No, not really.

And now, for the inevitable questions.
One: if you were to see one single TOMIE flick, which should it be? I'd recommend TOMIE: REPLAY. It's as silly as the rest, but at least it's more eventful, with quicker pace and more outrageous imagery than in others (after all, they are growing a Tomie girl in a water tank in this one!).
Two: is this collection worth your while? The answer for most 'normal' film lovers would be 'No!' It is made up of one atrocious (ANOTHER FACE), one poor (the first TOMIE), two watchable but nothing special (FORBIDDEN FRUIT and REBIRTH) and one mildly interesting (REPLAY).

DVD [NTSC, Region 1]:  Image quality of all titles in this collection is barely passable, as they are all muted and washed out, with pale colors and very poor blackness (which is mostly gray). TOMIE: REBIRTH's screen (anamorphic widescreen, 1.85: 1) is additionally cropped so that the effect is that of watching a movie taped off someone else's TV. Audio is in Japanese, 5.1 Dolby Digital, no complaints there. English subtitles are very fine. Extras include: interviews with the cast and director, storyboard-to-film comparison, a look at the special effects and trailers for the five titles in this collection.
    Extras for other movies in this set are like this: TOMIE ('making of' documentary + trailers); ANOTHER FACE (zero: this is a cheap direct-to-video flick, so nothing to add to that); REPLAY (trailers + a 'gallery' of only 4 or 5 Ito's illustrations!); FORBIDDEN FRUIT (trailers + making of).

PS UPDATE: The last addition to this interminable series, TOMIE UNLIMITED is by far the most outrageous, irrational, surreal, out-there wacky gory entertainment, so I urge you to give it a try if you're into this sort of thing. It makes NO SENSE AT ALL, but is full of crazy imagery, ambitious make up and CGI effects (pretty decent in all) and there's never a dull moment! Now, for a TOMIE film, that's a first!

THE BARON / O BARAO (2011)

Directed by Edgar Pêra;

Produced by Ana Costa;

Screenplay by Luísa Costa Gomes, mr. Pêra, based on the novella by Branquinho da Fonseca, O Barão;

Music by Vozes da Rádio;

Director of photography: Luís Branquinho;

Art director: Fernando Areal;

Starring Nuno Melo, Marcos Barbosa, Leonor Keil.

GHOUL RATING:

***(*)

4-

The Baron is a Portuguese film shot in retro-modern-scope, in glorious high contrast Black and White, boasting to be "a 2-D film by Edgar Pêra". One could say that it is modern precisely in its anti-modernity. It is almost impossible to describe this film without relying on comparisons: The Baron looks and feels like a weird re-enactment of a 1930s horror film through the arty lense of a very talented modern director – something along the lines of Almereyda's Nadja, Merhige's Begotten and Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary. There are also droning soundscapes and grotesquely nightmarish non-sequitur situations in which humor and horror are disquietingly close reminiscent of David Lynch. 

The key overall effect is instability. Nothing in the world directed by Edgar Pêra is permanent: the images dissolve or overlap, the lights and darkness come and go, a huge room is suddenly shrunk to a black solitary cell... Nothing is stable. The same goes for his narrative, with only the vaguest respect to linearity and conventional logic. The events are governed by dream logic, and The Baron may easily be one of the most oneiric narrative films in recent times – or perhaps since the days of Jean Cocteau.

For those yearning for plot, here's the essence: it all starts like Kafka's The Castle, with a frail-looking school inspector visiting a remote ("off the maps") village whose name he's forgotten. Unlike K. he is almost forced into the towering prison-like structure and brought to the powerful Baron who governs the region through fear. Just in case there's any doubt, he keeps repeating: "I'm the one in charge!" What follows after the inspector's arrival to the Castle is a series of increasingly nightmarish scenarios, although the terrors are rarely specific. As in the films produced by Val Lewton in the 1940s (humorously alluded to in the prologue), few are the scenes of direct horror, yet the sense of foreboding and doom hangs over all.  

The center of it, of course, is the Baron himself: as played by Nuno Melo, he is one of the most charismatic and memorable "gothic" villains ever since Klaus Kinski had his larger-than-life role in Nosferatu (1979). It is a performance which cannot be praised enough: the entire film hangs on Mr Melo's strong sholders and his commanding, scene-stealing presence haunts the screen even when he is not visible. His Baron is a force of nature and a joy to watch (from a safe distance, that is)! The other players are very fine indeed, but inevitably overshadowed by the iconic presence of Nuno Melo.

Of course, Edgar Pêra as the veteran avant-garde director, Luís Branquinho as his trusted director of photography and Fernando Areal as art director (with his sparse, heavily stylized sets) are equally prominent stars of The Baron. Their job in creating this world of floating shadows and vague nightmares of oppression (political and existential, almost metaphysical) is nothing short of amazing. This is a daring, original and highly memorable work of a true visionary and demands the audience ready and willing to be surprised by something unconventional and new. 

This, however, doesn't mean that the film is all about doom and gloom and slowburning terrors: it is also very funny in its own idiosyncratic and eccentric ways. Its playful absurdities are channeling Kafka's insight of the proximity between horror and humor, and its vision of the world is at the same time very dark, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, too.

This review is based on the film's screening at Vienna's Slashfest, where Mr Pera was a delightful guest. His next film will be a very original adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Horror at Red Hook seen as a parable of racism. Let's pray to the Elder Gods that this happens soon!

Here is the trailer:

This review originally published at Beyond Hollywood.