V/H/S/2, Occult, and Special Effects in Found Footage Movies

One of the things that I love about the horror genre is its unique relationship with low-budget filmmaking. Cheaply-made terror trashfests have been a dime a dozen for decades, but on the other hand I cannot imagine where horror films would be today without low-budget classics such as Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Thus, it makes sense that the subgenre of found footage films, films that deliberately look rough and amateurish, has made its home in horror. There are exceptions to the rule (such as Cloverfield, which relied on high-quality CGI effects and green screen composite shots), but the found footage subgenre has largely been populated by filmmakers of limited resources.

With that in mind, what happens when a filmmaker decides to make a found footage film due to budgetary limitations but also wants to include special effects? This post will look at that question through the approaches taken by two found footage titles, V/H/S/2 (2013) and Occult (2009). Both incorporated special effects outside of the usual blood-and-guts stuff, each with varying levels of success. Read on for my analysis, with minor spoilers for both films.

Like the original V/H/S film, V/H/S/2 is a combination of found footage and anthology storytelling; also like its predecessor, it demonstrates that found footage and anthologies don’t really mix. None of the stories presented in V/H/S/2 are enhanced by the found footage visual style, and they might have been scarier had they not been found footage films at all. (This especially applies the story titled "Phase I Clinical Trials", where the protagonist receives an ocular implant that records his everyday life. Because the protagonist has no choice to record everything he sees, this story should have worked as a found footage short. It doesn't.) Even the best story of the bunch, an unexpectedly poignant zombie tale called “A Ride in the Park”, doesn't feel like it had to be shot in a found footage style in order to be effective.

The eco-friendly, mountain biking zombies from "A Ride in the Park" in V/H/S/2.

For as gory as it is--and believe me, it is very gory in some areas--V/H/S/2 features two stories that attempt to include monsters as part of the narratives. "Safe Haven" involves a goat-headed demon, while "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" involves a group of gray-skinned space invaders; unfortunately, both types of monsters look like actors in monster suits. Furthermore, the directors of both stories felt compelled to shoot their parts in a gonzo, over-the-top style, as if the visual overload will compensate for the unconvincing monsters.

"Safe Haven" layers on as much violence and gore as possible and even though the demon has a single line a dialog that ends the story on a morbid, twisted note, the demon’s bouncing goat head on top of a human-proportioned body emphasizes just how hokey the whole story actually is. In contrast, "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" tries to compensate for its low-budget monsters by becoming much shakier than most found footage films. If the idea of shaking a camera as hard as possible to compensate for low-budget creature effects sounds like a bad idea to you, then you know what to expect in "Slumber Party Alien Abduction".

The uninvited guests from "Slumber Party Alien Abduction" in V/H/S/2.

Then again, V/H/S/2 doesn't completely fail when it comes to special effects. The zombie effects in "A Ride in the Park" are convincing, and there’s an eerie creature that appears towards the end of "Tape 49", the main story that ties all the other stories together. The creature skitters along the floor by doing a contorted form of spider walk, and it's one of the most convincing and chilling effect shots in the film. Of course, it also helps that the footage of the creature are fleeting, unfocused and poorly lit--enough to engage the imagination, but not enough to see through the effect.

In contrast to V/H/S/2, Occult (a.k.a. Okaruto) is a single-story found footage film that begins with a documentary team’s investigation of a sudden killing spree at a tourist resort a few years earlier. Their research takes them to one of the attack’s survivors, a homeless drifter who wanders from temp job to temp job. The crew’s interaction with the drifter becomes plagued by a series of increasingly strange events, and the drifter slowly reveals his belief that the attack was a sign from a supernatural force that he has been chosen to perform a special "ceremony" that will allow him to ascend to another dimension.

The director of Occult, Koji Shiraishi, is known for other found footage horror films, including the excellent Noroi (2005). In Occult, Shiraishi incorporates special effects into several of the scenes, including strange, nebulous shapes that appear in the sky whenever the drifter is present and a final shot that shows the fate of the drifter. Unfortunately, none of these effects are convincing, so why Shiraishi used them both during the film and in the film's final frames seems like a serious misstep on his part. After all, he did use special effects in Noroi but those were simple effects that succeeded in conveying an eerie, ghostly mood, so I don’t understand his difference in approach for Occult. Yet in spite of weak special effects, Occult works because of the strength of the story, its convincing characters, and its mood of dread that gradually increases throughout the movie.

Occult: Sky worms from another dimension?

It may sound like a cliché that good acting, direction and writing can save a film with weak special effects, but Occult shows that this rule also applies to found footage films. This also explains why an anthology format doesn't work for found footage: With so little time to build a narrative, characters and mood, it’s no wonder that most of the stories in V/H/S/2 went straight for explicit visual shocks even though the low-budget effects used to provide the shocks fail to deliver. Ultimately, found footage works best with stories that emphasize mystery, suspense, and the unknown, while visual effects are better left to filmmakers with bigger budgets.

Big 'Bots and Belligerent Behemoths Clash in Pacific Rim (2013)

Since I'm planning to wrap up 2013 with a look back at a few examples of Japanese robot toys--one of my favorite kind of toys--I thought I would kick off this year-end series of posts with a review of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, one of the big-budget releases from last summer that I missed when it was playing in the theaters.

Summer blockbusters have never been held in high regard by the film critic community, and such critics have been particularly displeased with Hollywood's over-usage of CGI effects to produce increasingly bigger and louder blockbuster movies. To be sure, such criticism is not entirely inaccurate: CGI does permit the creation of larger-scale environments and set pieces in ways that miniatures, matte paintings and other practical effect techniques could never allow. As such, CGI has enabled the production of many, many summer blockbusters that are enormous in terms of spectacle but conspicuously short in terms of creative ideas and conceptual depth. Pacific Rim is not one of those movies, because del Toro eagerly packs every frame of his film with enough details and ideas that fans who know what they're looking at will be reviewing this movie for years to come. Pacific Rim is a "big" in every sense of the term--big CGI, big landscapes, big battles, big ideas, and big ambition. In fact, I can't think of how any other special effects technique other than CGI could have accommodated del Toro's story.

In a nutshell, Pacific Rim is about a group of pilots, military leaders, scientists and technicians who build and operate giant robots called "Jaegers" that are designed to fight a seemingly endless series of giant monsters called "Kaiju" that have been emerging out of the Pacific Ocean for years to regularly trash the nearest city. The movie takes places during the closing days of the Kaiju war, when the Jaeger team is planning its final offensive that promises to put an end to the Kaiju menace.

Pacific Rim is a well-made film in every aspect: a well-written script, a well-cast ensemble of actors, and a well-directed approach to the material. Yet to really appreciate this movie, one has to understand that it is a tribute to Japan's "Super Robot" fantasy-science fiction genre and its "Real Robot" spin-off subgenre. Super Robot and Real Robot anime and manga usually involve giant robots that are piloted by human beings to fight giant monsters, other giant robots, or both. The Super Robot genre began in the mid-50s with the manga series Tetsujin 28, and it has continued with popular titles such as Mazinger Z, Mobile Suit Gundam, Patlabor and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

One of Pacific Rim's Super Robots, complete with "Rocket Punch" action.

Pacific Rim also draws inspiration from Japan's kaiju movies (ergo the collective name of the giant monsters in Rim), and the monster designs in the movie demonstrate how much del Toro and his production crew love and understand kaiju films such as Godzilla and Mothra. Nevertheless, most of the film's other details--the characters, their technology, the situations they face and the world they inhabit--are clearly modeled after Super Robot and Real Robot narratives. To put it another way, Pacific Rim is to Super Robot and Real Robot stories as Star Wars is to pulpy sci-fi space operas such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

With so many details spread throughout the movie, some aspects feel somewhat lacking. In particular, so much detail is applied to movie's fictitious world (a world where there's even a black market for dead Kaiju parts) that the characters feel more like broad personality types than fully-developed individuals. We see bits and pieces of who they are and their roles within the beleaguered, monster-pummeled society they represent but not much more than that; at times, it almost feels like watching Top Gun with giant robots instead of fighter jets. Yet del Toro's enthusiasm for the material permeates every aspect of the film, so I enjoyed geeking out with him just to see what kind of unique interpretations he could put on machines and monsters that are so closely associated with Japanese pop culture. To say that del Toro went above and beyond what he set out to do is an understatement, making this one of his best films to date.

If you don't understand why anyone would want to make a big-budget, live-action film based on anime and manga stories about giant robots, then Pacific Rim probably isn't for you. Otherwise, if you love big brawling 'bots and are looking for an example of CGI done right, then go grab some popcorn and treat yourself to del Toro's magnum mecha opus.

The Fantastic Four(th): A Review of Lou & Yana's JawsFest 4 DVD

They said they wouldn't do it ... but the fans demanded otherwise. Thus, with great pleasure I had the privilege of recently receiving a screener copy of Lou & Yana's JawsFest 4: Revenge of the Finatics DVD. This DVD marks fourth and final installment in Lou and Dianna "Yana" Pisano's series of fan-made videos that are devoted to Jaws, the franchise that it spawned, and the locations at Martha's Vineyard and elsewhere that made the franchise possible.

Of course, the Pisanos' previous trilogy of JawsFest DVDs are extremely comprehensive about Jaws and its connections to Martha's Vineyard, so what could possibly be left to cover? PLENTY. Read on for my complete review of Lou & Yana's JawsFest 4, a DVD with plenty of interviews, location tours, sing-a-longs, and shark jumpings.

For those of you who are familiar with the previous three Lou & Yana's JawsFest DVDs know, their productions are mostly tied to the JawsFest events that were held in Martha's Vineyard. The first DVD features footage from the first JawsFest in 2005, while the third DVD features footage from another Jaws event (a pseudo-JawsFest) in 2011. JawsFest 4 covers JawsFest: The Tribute, the third (and possibly last) Jaws-centric Martha's Vineyard event that was held in 2012. I wasn't able to attend any of these events, so I'm very thankful that the Pisanos made the effort to capture footage from each of them and make it available to other Jaws fans who couldn't be there in person and who may never visit Martha's Vineyard at all.

JawsFest 4 does a commendable job in providing the highlights of JawsFest: The Tribute. It features cameos from many franchise alumni, including Jeffrey Kramer, Susan Backlinie, Lee Fierro, Joe Alves, Carl Gottlieb and Tom Dunlop. Even special effects wizard Greg Nicotero makes an appearance due to his astonishing contributions to the event that included life-sized replicas of Jaws actors Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. There were Jaws screenings, autograph tables and panel discussions--including a panel called "The Women of Jaws" that was hosted by none other than Yana Pisano herself!

Yana Pisano (far right) and "The Women of Jaws".

In previous JawsFest DVDs, the Pisanos visit many sites on the island that were featured in Jaws, Jaws 2 and Jaws: Revenge; in JawsFest 4, the Pisanos up the ante through their active involvement in several JawsFest events. The DVD shows them acting as tour guides, both on the water and in a bus, alongside fellow "Finatic" Jim Beller. Not only has Beller appeared in the previous JawsFest DVDs and worked with Matt Taylor in assembling photos for the book Jaws: Memories From Martha's Vineyard, he also had items from his vast collection of franchise memorabilia put on display in Jaws- and shark-related museum exhibits in both the U.S. and abroad. For JawsFest 4, Beller contributed some video footage from a July 2012 exhibition called SHARK, which was curated by famed marine conservationist, author, and painter Richard Ellis at the Nova Southeastern University’s Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Why the Chamber of Commerce of Martha's Vineyard doesn't have the Pisanos and Beller on retainer is still a mystery to me.

JawsFest: The Tribute is only part of JawsFest 4; it also includes footage from the Jaws ride at the Universal Studios theme park in Florida, a ride that closed in January 2012. The DVD features plenty of Jaws 2 stuff, including footage of Florida locations seen in the sequel and a Jaws 2 cast reunion that was held in Los Angeles in March 2012. These tidbits neatly dovetail with Lou Pisano's other recent Jaws 2 efforts: Not only was his three-part retrospective, "The Guts of Jaws 2: Appreciating An Underappreciated Sequel", published in SCREAM magazine (you can read the entire article here), but he is also at work with Michael Smith on an upcoming book about the sequel. (Smith also helped with the production of JawsFest 4.)

The Pisanos, adrift in a sea of Finatics on Martha's Vineyard.

Yet with all of the interesting Jaws stuff that it offers, JawsFest 4 wouldn't be entertaining if it weren't for the Pisanos and their merry band of Finatics. Since the release of their first JawsFest video, Lou and Yana have been making a name for themselves within the fan community and building a fan base of their own. By the time JawsFest 4 rolled into production, plenty of Finatics were willing to contribute whatever they could to bring the JawsFest series to a delightful close. If you've seen the previous DVDs, you'll see plenty of familiar faces on the screen; even "Sir" Edward McCormack and Mike "Quint" Hadji, two Finatics from England, contributed some amusing video clips from their corner of the globe as part of the series' finale. Furthermore, the Pisanos have a wonderful chemistry as a couple and that chemistry, along with their infectious enthusiasm, carries over into each of the fan projects they do. In short, if they're having fun you'll be having fun too, and JawsFest 4 is a big bundle of fin-tastic fun.

Click here to learn more about how to get a copy of JawsFest 4 and other related DVDs. While the JawsFest DVD series is officially over, the Pisanos have plenty more "Fests" in store for fans like you and me. In addition to the aforementioned Jaws 2 book project, they also have produced the HalloweenFest DVDs, a short movie trilogy that's a tribute to John Carpenter's classic slasher films, and Lou & Yana's TalkFest, an ongoing online radio show that airs weekly on the Blog Talk Radio site. TalkFest recently recorded its 100th episode and the Pisanos also produced the Lou & Yana's TalkFest: The Movie DVD, a video that was recorded during JawsFest: The Tribute and is a companion piece of sorts to JawsFest 4.

JawsFest 4: Revenge of the Finatics--I've got mine!

A Self-Made Superhero Gets an Upgrade in Iron Man 3

Due to financial problems beyond my control last summer, I have begun to catch up on all the box office fun I missed just a few months ago. First up: Iron Man 3, the concluding chapter in the trilogy about Marvel's resident techno-genius Tony Stark and his super-powered alter ego.

Iron Man 3 opens with Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) still reeling from the events in The Avengers movie. Overwhelmed by the many possible threats that could doom humanity, he has become obsessed with upgrading Iron Man--and himself--to counter any and all future menaces. Further complicating the picture are the appearances of the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), a terrorist mastermind who has been orchestrating a series of surprise attacks around the world, and Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a corporate rival who threatens to topple Stark Industries through his own "think tank" called Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM). When a surprise attack by the Mandarin forces him away from home and friends, Stark has to rely on his intelligence and resourcefulness to stop the Mandarin and uncover AIM's secret agenda.

Long story short, I loved Iron Man 3 and I regret not seeing it in 3D on the big screen. It's everything a high-octane superhero film should be: witty without being campy, compelling without being ponderous, and thrilling without being shallow. It succeeds as a sequel, building upon the events in The Avengers and the previous Iron Man movies to reflect how Stark and his two closest allies Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) have changed over the course of the stories. It also has a plot that makes ample usage of many characters and ideas from the Marvel universe (e.g., AIM, Extremis, the Mandarin, etc.). If Iron Man 3 is any indication of how Marvel plans to develop more movies based on its vast universe of characters and settings, then I think that superhero movie fans are in for many more blockbuster treats in the summers to come.

As I mentioned in my review of Iron Man 2, superhero stores are at their most compelling when they act as parables of power. As such, Iron Man 3 brings Stark's personal crisis about his responsibility towards others to a complete circle. In Iron Man, Stark bowed out of the international arms race because he felt that he could do more good as a superhero; in Iron Man 3, Stark has to come to grips that he never really left the arms race at all, that by becoming Iron Man he just exchanged his participation in one arms race for another. This is an intriguing dilemma for a superhero movie to portray, and Downey's performance as Stark is up to the challenge. (In light of the film's plot, I think that putting Stark on movie's poster as a falling Icarus was a nice touch.) The fact that the film is able to tell an entertaining story by largely keeping Stark outside of his Iron Man armor--working out his problems without routinely resorting to superheroics--speaks to how well made Iron Man 3 is. I also liked the film's jab at how the modern military-industrial complex needs to create villains for the sake of maintaining profit. In fact, given his role in RoboCop, I suspect that the inclusion of Miguel Ferrer in the cast of Iron Man 3 was a deliberate wink to Paul Verhoeven's dark satire of America's militarism.

I'm sure that Hollywood's current infatuation with superheroes will eventually reach a point of diminishing returns, but Iron Man 3 indicates to me that we are far from that right now. Until DC and its corporate masters at Time Warner come up with a better series of superhero movies, I'll be happy to make mine Marvel.

Alien Abductees Get Even in Altered (2006)

As movie monsters go, filmmakers have gotten plenty of mileage from the concept of extraterrestrial threats. There have been countless movies about high-tech alien invaders (War of the Worlds, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers), parasitic alien biology (Alien, The Thing), and too-close-for-comfort contact with an alien intelligence (Fire in the Sky, The Fourth Kind). In the midst of this crowded field of alien terrors is Altered, a 2006 creature feature that was directed and co-written by Eduardo Sánchez, co-writer and co-director of The Blair Witch Project.

Altered is about four men who were abducted and tortured by alien visitors when they were teenagers. After years of unsuccessfully coping with the trauma they endured, three of the men decide to hunt down and capture one of the visitors as an act of retribution; yet once they capture an alien, they're not completely sure of what they should do next. To make matters worse, their alien captive isn't quite as helpless as he looks and he has some sinister plans of his own ....

I'm recommending Altered to creature feature fans for many reasons. It's a well-made film that takes a unique approach to both alien horror movies and modern alien abduction lore. It effectively uses practical effects to bring its alien menace to life (no CGI here), and it also does an excellent job at balancing the horror with some bits of clever humor. Some scenes feature inventive examples of splatstick humor, and there are a few bits of redneck humor because the abductees in this movie are working class southern white men. However, this is not Tucker and Dale vs. Evil--Altered is a tale of terror at its core. In fact, some of the concepts and visuals in this movie reminded me of Scanners and The Fly, two classic "body horror" films by David Cronenberg.

Because most horror films feature characters who are being stalked by and defending themselves from a monster, the movie's story about men who search for and capture a monster makes it very different from most other films of its kind. Even though Altered is a horror movie, the pacing of its story reminded me fatalistic pulp crime dramas that begin with a major event (e.g., a bank heist gone wrong) and then subsequently unravel as the protagonists attempt and repeatedly fail to cope with the events they set in motion. The film also lets you understand the characters and the bitter motivations behind their actions. While hunting extremely deadly monsters sounds like something only a fool would do, you come to realize how the abduction left the main characters so broken in their adulthood that alien hunting has become the only meaningful thing left for them to do with their lives.

Altered ranks alongside Abominable and Alien Raiders as one of the better low-budget creature features to be released within the last ten years. It's everything that big-budget alien movies such as Signs and Dreamcatcher should have been but weren't, proving that some of the best horror films out there are the ones that never made it to national movie theater chains.

Weekend Detention Becomes a Death Sentence in Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)

When a movie opens with a SWAT team bursting into a school library to find a teenager holding a bloody fire ax and surrounded by corpses--one of which being so fresh that it hasn't even collapsed to the floor yet--you know you're in for something different. Such is the case of Bad Kids Go to Hell, a 2012 movie that was directed and co-written by Matthew Spradlin. Spradlin based this movie on his best-selling graphic novel of the same name; however, because I haven't read the graphic novel yet, I can't say how faithful the movie is to its source material and which one is better.

After its jarring first scene, Bad Kids Go to Hell goes back eight hours to when six students at Crestview Academy, an upper-class private school, arrive for a day-long session of Saturday detention in their school's library. When one of them suddenly dies under suspicious circumstances, the other students begin to fear for their own lives. Is there a killer in their midst, or is something else afoot that's orchestrating their collective demise?

While I was watching Bad Kids Go to Hell, I had a tough time pinning down what kind of movie it wanted to be. It has plenty of horrific scenes and imagery, although it does not have the mood of a horror film; it doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's neither a comedy nor a horror film parody either. After seeing the final scenes, what I can say it that it is an extremely misanthropic and dark humored morality play. Many have viewed this film as a horror genre version of The Breakfast Club (1985), but its overtly sardonic attitude toward its story and characters puts it in the same class as another 80s teen movie, Heathers (1988).

What impressed me the most about this movie is its plot adheres to standard teen horror conventions, and then twists them around to the point where you’re not completely sure of what to expect. Like most teen horror films, the kids who are promiscuous, drink alcohol and do drugs wind up dead in one way or another; however, unlike most teen horror films that keep their characters and plots simple, Bad Kids Go to Hell provides plenty of background details (both explicit and subtle, and through dialog, flashbacks and visual cues) about how the characters connect to each other and the school's own sinister history, and how these relationships set the stage for what happens during Saturday detention. Watching Bad Kids Go to Hell is like watching an elaborate, Rube Goldberg story configuration click together sequentially, plot point by plot point, to deliver a gleefully pitch-black ending. Sure, some of the subplots feel unnecessarily convoluted and not all of the jokes hit their marks, but rarely have I ever seen such an elaborate contraption in the service of such morbid and cynical humor. When I say that this film is cynical, I cannot stress it enough; in fact, even though it looks and feels like a teen movie, this film is so cynical that I doubt most teens would fully understand or appreciate what it is trying to do.

Bad Kids Go to Hell isn't a flawless film; I've seen better blends of horror and comedy than this one, and it's not nearly as ambitious or insane as another recent offbeat teen film, Detention (2012). Then again, I love grim-humored satire that proudly wears its cynicism on its sleeve, so I enjoyed watching this movie even if it doesn't completely work. If you like that kind of humor too, then you should give Bad Kids Go to Hell a look.

Retro Review: Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

The way I see it, one of the great things about being a horror film buff is the joy of discovering older films that never caught on with larger audiences but still serve as impressive examples of horror cinema. My latest discovery is Let's Scare Jessica to Death, a 1971 creeper that was directed by John D. Hancock.

I first noticed this film when I saw it on the shelf at our local video store back in the '80s, but I didn't pay much attention to it because I never heard of it before. Yet as the years went by, I noticed how this title kept popping up in many horror film reviews, books, articles and Web sites, so I finally got around to watching it the other week. Fun trivia fact: Let's Scare Jessica to Death is the film that landed Hancock the job of directing Jaws 2, but he was fired from that sequel due to a disagreement he had with a Universal executive. Stephen King has also mentioned in interviews that this movie is one of his favorite horror films, and you can see its influence in one of his novels from the mid-70s.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death begins with the titular character Jessica (Zohra Lampert) traveling with her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman) and their friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor) to a small town in rural New England. Jessica was recently released from a psychiatric facility, and Duncan purchased an abandoned farm outside of the town as a place for his wife to heal and resume her life. Soon after arriving at her new home, Jessica begins to see and hear strange things around the farm that may be linked to its legendary past. Is Jessica relapsing into insanity, or is someone trying to scare her to death?

To say much more about Let's Scare Jessica to Death is to give away too much. What I can say is that it is very similar to films such as Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil (1973) and Francesco Barilli's The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974) in that it is a moody, dreamlike story about an emotionally fragile woman who is in the thrall of an unknown force that slowly unravels the fabric of her sanity. Like other films of its kind, Let's Scare Jessica to Death takes its time to set up many different details within the narrative--details that don't make much sense at first--all for the purpose of delivering a relentless ending that ties it all together in a matter of minutes and leaves you reeling over what you just saw. The revelation of who the 'us' is that's suggested in the title (i.e., Let's is a contraction for 'let us') was something that I didn't see coming at all as the film reached its concluding scenes.

If you prefer horror films that have oodles of violence, jump scares and gore, Let's Scare Jessica to Death won't hold your interest at all. Yet if you're interested in older horror films that crawl under your skin through ghostly imagery, strange landscapes, disorienting narratives and pervasive dread, you should give this one a try.

Ghost Shark Review: Just When You Thought it was Safe to Swim with a Ouija Board

Ripoffs of the classic creature feature Jaws are a dime a dozen, especially if the ripoff in question also has a monster shark similar to the one in Jaws. Usually, these kinds of ripoffs try to distinguish themselves with by putting the monster sharks in an unlikely location (in a lake, in a supermarket, in a research lab, in a tornado, etc.) or giving the sharks some unique attribute or ability (swimming in the snow, swimming in the sand, etc.). Yet for fans of Jaws ripoffs who are looking for something a little different in their derivative entertainment, Active Entertainment has decided to ripoff the least of the Jaws movies, Jaws: The Revenge, with its latest film Ghost Shark. If anything, Ghost Shark proves that if you ripoff the lowest point of a popular franchise, you at least have a decent shot at making watchable (albeit not very memorable) entertainment. Read on for my complete review.

Even though the location and characters are different, Ghost Shark shares the same central concept as Jaws: The Revenge: A monster shark that's out for revenge against a group of people. Yet unlike Revenge, which was produced to showcase the acting talents of a studio executive's wife (yes, really), Ghost Shark is a cheap excuse to set up a series of increasingly preposterous shark attacks. Whereas Revenge kept piling on absurdities in its story to accommodate its unlikely star and astonishingly prohibitive production schedule, Ghost Shark takes the absurd concept of a vengeful shark and knowingly pushes it even farther every chance it gets.

Ghost Shark starts with an inept fisherman and his dimwitted daughter on a charter boat trying to catch a prize fish in the wee hours of the night before fishing season ends. Just when they hook what they perceive to be their winning fish, a large great white shark snatches it out of their grasp, which launches the frustrated fisher-folk into a violent rage against the shark. As the dying shark lurches away from the boat, it finds its way into a cursed cave where it becomes a ghost shark that wreaks havoc in a neighboring coastal village. Because it's a ghost, the shark can now attack wherever water is present: buckets, swimming pools, fire hydrants, bath tubs, toilets, emergency sprinklers, water coolers, leaky kitchen pipes, water toys, rain, bikini car washes, etc. With the local authorities baffled by the sudden explosion of grisly deaths, it is left to a group of teenagers to discover the secret of the ghost shark and put its reign of terror to an end.

No water container is too small for Ghost Shark!

If the premise of Ghost Shark sounds silly to you, then you know what you're in for. The cast that plays the teenage protagonists looks like they just arrived from the Disney Channel, and they come across as a much blander version of the teenage characters from Scooby Doo. This kind of film exists to providing a high body count of bloody deaths and in that sense, Ghost Shark delivers to a point. To its credit, the film eschews CGI effects for a practical effects shark made by Shark City Ozark. (You can see behind-the-scenes pictures of Ghost Shark at the official SCO site, and you can read my two-part interview with SCO owner Mike Schultz here and here.) The mechanical shark itself is actually a three-foot mechanical miniature that is inserted via green screen shots, but it looks great and moves mostly like the real thing. Indeed, watching a practical effects shark instead of a CGI shark gave me flashbacks to Roger Corman's numerous cheapjack creature features from the pre-CGI era. Good times, indeed.

Oddly, my biggest complaint against Ghost Shark is that it doesn't go far enough with its whacked-out premise. Sure, the script's dialogue is clunky and its characters are cardboard, but the film's flat direction is what really keeps the flick from hitting its high notes. Even though he has a few special effect-laden titles under his belt, director Griff Furst appears to have no idea about how to shoot special effect-driven scenes to their maximum effect. He doesn't even know how to shoot the scale-sized mechanical shark to get the most shock value out of it. Ideally, this kind of film should play as a gorier, goofier version of Jaws parodies such as Saturday Night Live's "Land Shark" skit or the Carol Burnett Show's "Jowls" skit. Instead, even the film's most outrageous kill scenes are shot without the slightest hint of dark humor or morbid inspiration. It makes me wonder what an experienced professional such as practical effects guru "Screaming Mad" George would have done with Ghost Shark.

Worst case of acid reflux ever.

Ghost Shark may not rank among the best of the Jaws ripoffs, but it's still more fun to watch than Jaws: The Revenge. To Jaws ripoff fans, that's got to mean something, right? If not, that's OK--Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws is already on its way.

V/H/S (2012) Movie Review

With V/H/S/2 set for national release this weekend, I figured that I should finally see the first movie in this fledgling found footage anthology franchise. I enjoy the horror subgenre of found footage, but anthology movies never appealed to me so I wasn't particularly interested in seeing V/H/S in spite of the buzz that it has generated in the horror fan community.

Regardless, I'll give V/H/S credit: It's the first film that attempted to combine the visual style of found footage with the anthology approach to horror. While the end result isn't a success, it has enough interesting ideas to whet the appetite of found footage fans for what a better film could do with the same approach. Read on for my complete review.

Anthology movies are usually hit-and-miss in terms of quality (some more "miss" than others), and V/H/S is no exception. V/H/S is divided into six stories:

* "Tape 56", directed by Adam Wingard. A group of criminals that record their crimes and sell the footage online take a job that requires them to break into a house to find and retrieve a particular video tape. When they arrive at the house, they find a corpse sitting in front of a stack of TV sets and VHS players. "Tape 56" is the framing narrative for the rest of V/H/S, with the other stories being represented by tapes the criminals watch during their search.

* "Amateur Night", directed by David Bruckner. Three friends set up a motel room and a hidden camera with the intent of making amateur porn video with the women they plan to pick up during a night of bar-hopping. Their plan goes horribly awry when one of their intended sex partners reveals that she isn't what she appears to be.

* "Second Honeymoon", directed by Ti West. A married couple's second honeymoon is disrupted by a series of increasingly strange events.

* "Tuesday the 17th", directed by Glenn McQuaid. Four friends go on a camping trip to an isolated location that was the site of several brutal murders the year before.

* "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger", directed by Joe Swanberg. A girlfriend tells her boyfriend via video chat about odd noises she hears in her apartment during the night. She uses her laptop's built-in camera to show her boyfriend what happens when she decides to investigate the noises, and in doing so she learns that she's not alone.

* "10/31/98", directed by Radio Silence. A group of college students get together to go to a Halloween party, but wind up somewhere that is farthest thing from a party.

As with other entries in the found footage subgenre, the crucial detail is whether the movie benefits from using the found footage aesthetic. If you're going to shoot a movie as found footage, then the movie has to integrate that detail as a primary part of its narrative; otherwise, the movie might as well be shot as fiction films usually are and not as found footage. Unfortunately, the found footage style does not add much to the stories in V/H/S. Each of the protagonists use consumer-grade video cameras to document key moments of their lives in some way, but the cameras and the act of using cameras do not feel integral to the telling of the stories.

Further hindering the quality of V/H/S are the stories themselves, which are neither original nor engaging. I’m particularly disappointed that the film did not take advantage of one of its own recurring plot points--the idea of a collector who amasses a sizable inventory of footage of people in final days, hours and minutes of their lives.

Even though V/H/S won't bring any new fans to the found footage subgenre, it does have a few noteworthy moments:

* There's a chilling scene in "Second Honeymoon" involving video footage shot in a hotel room in the middle of the night. While this doesn't sound exceptional on the surface, director West sets it up to be the most memorable sequence in the movie.

* "Tuesday the 17th" is like an abbreviated slasher movie, but with two unique details: its "final girl" has a very disturbing idea about how to stop the killer, and it uses static and digital distortions in the footage to indicate the direct presence of a malevolent force. The distortion effect is unnerving to see--it's sort of like the Predator's cloaking device, only much more surreal--and it's a shame that the story didn't make better usage of it.

* "Tape 56" and "Amateur Night" play with the idea of sleazy digital voyeurism, although both use it as a plot device to set up the protagonists for their grisly yet predictable fates. Yet when I watched these characters plan and execute abusive, violent and exploitative activities for the sake of recording them for profit, I couldn't help but to think of recent all-too-real controversies surrounding high schools in Steubenville, OH and Saratoga, CA, where teenage rapists used digital media to document and brag about their crimes. With that in mind, I'm guessing that a found footage variation on I Spit on Your Grave is only a matter of time.

From what I've heard so far, V/H/S/2 is a better movie than its predecessor. In contrast, V/H/S is an intriguing but unsuccessful experiment with the found footage subgenre, and it thus would only be of interest of the subgenre's most devoted fans.

30 Years Later, Jaws 3D Swims Back to the Movie Theater

My source of disposable income has been tight as of late, so I've fallen behind on this summer's recent blockbuster releases such as Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel. However, my financial problems haven't kept me from squeezing out enough cash to see a limited release of a film that I missed seeing in the theater during its original release in 1983: Jaws 3D.

As I wrote in a previous post about Jaws 3D, "I have a soft spot for the third entry in the Jaws franchise because it was THE film that got me interested in 3D movies. ... Before Jaws 3D, I had a ViewMaster toy and a few sets of reels, and I also knew about previous horror and sci-fi movies from the 50s that were shot in 3D--movies such as Creature from the Black Lagoon, House of Wax and It Came from Outer Space--courtesy of the Crestwood House books and their ilk. But Jaws 3D solidified in my mind just what the illusion of three dimensions meant in terms of movies (as well as comic books and later video games), thus starting my lifetime affair with 3D entertainment. Furthermore, Jaws 3D was the only one of the 3D movies from the early 80s that caught my eye, since it was the only film to offer the chance of seeing one of my favorite movie monsters jump out of the silver screen and into the audience."

The rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia aside, I believe that if you can't see Jaws 3D in a 3D format then it's not worth seeing, because most of the film's effects vanish in a 2D format. In the era before digital filmmaking, studios didn't have the option of converting a film to 3D in post-production. A film had to be shot in 3D for it to be released in 3D, and 3D cinematography required additional planning, funding and technical expertise as part of the production process. When seeing an older 3D movie in 2D, you're missing half of the movie; hence, I've spent the last few years trying to find a DVD copy of Jaws 3D in 3D to see what I was missing in the third Jaws movie.

So far, I've picked up two low definition copies of the Japanese laserdisc release from the 80s, with one copy in anaglyph 3D and one in field sequential 3D. Yet because I never saw the film during its original theatrical run, I had no standard by which I could evaluate these copies to determine how accurately they imitated the original theatrical 3D experience. Thankfully, the nearest Alamo Drafthouse Cinema solved my problem when it announced that it was going to hold a one-night showing of Jaws 3D in 3D last weekend as part of its "Summer of '83" series. Read on for more details about my retro-Jaws experience at Alamo, and what it might mean in regards to future Blu-ray releases of the Jaws sequels.

If you've never been to an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema theater, you're missing a fun movie experience. Alamo holds all sorts of film-related events, and it includes an on-site restaurant that allows you to order food--from snacks to dinner platters--to eat during the movie. For its showing of Jaws 3D, Alamo offered its own Jaws 3D dinner special of fish and chips (see below). I didn't order the special for fear that I would somehow smudge my 3D glasses.

Since this showing was part of Alamo's "Summer of '83" series, it was preceded by a half-hour's worth of various video clips from the early 80s in order to get the audience in the right mindset before showing the big block of 80s cheese that is Jaws 3D. The clips included the SCTV Count Floyd "3D House of Beef" skit, game play clips from Activision's Fishing Derby video game, advertisements for public aquariums, and beach-themed commercials for brands such as Coca-Cola and Wrangler. Inserted between the clips were 2D ads for other 3D movies from the 80s: Amityville 3D, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, and Treasure of the Four Crowns. I suppose that Alamo's inclusion of these ads were to remind the audience that 3D movies made a brief comeback in the 80s, but they also reminded me that a lot more money was spent to make Jaws 3D than was spent for most of the 3D titles from that decade.

As for the movie itself, I was amazed at how good the 3D effects were. Many of the notorious gimmick shots (e.g., the bleeding fish head, the floating dismembered arm, the partially disappearing mini-sub, and the pirate skeleton in the lagoon) looked exactly how a good 3D gimmick shot should look, with objects appearing to hover in the air over the audience. There were some minor flares of ghosting from time to time and some of the gimmick shots didn't work at all (e.g., the "biting" Jaws 3D title graphic in the beginning of the film), but none of these glitches were enough to ruin the overall 3D experience. Futhermore, I now believe that Sea World must have been more satisfied than anyone else with how Jaws 3D looked as a finished product. Each of the 3D shots that involved things specific to Sea World--dolphins, killer whales and acrobatic waterskiing--were nearly flawless.

I have heard over the last few years that a digitally remastered version of Jaws 3D has been appearing in theaters and 3D festivals around the world, so I can only assume that what I watched at Alamo was one of the remastered prints. The film didn't have any blemishes and scratches, the colors were vibrant, and the sound quality was clear, so I obviously wasn't watching a 30 year old print. However, there were enough inconsistencies in the print to indicate that if this was a remastered print, the remastering process only went so far. Many shots were sharp with minor film grain, but some others were very grainy. I also noticed a few shots that were flat in hue and/or slightly out of focus, and almost all of the scenes that involved blue screen composites were of poor quality.

I'm not sure if the remastering process exposed flaws that were already present in the original print or if something else was at fault. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information about when the remastering was done, who did it, and to what extent. I even stayed through the all of the credits to see if extra information was added to identify the remastering team behind the Jaws 3D print I was watching, but nothing was there.

So, while I was satisfied with finally seeing Jaws 3D on the big screen, the print quality left me wondering what Universal has in store for the three Jaws sequels. Since Jaws appeared on Blu-ray last August in a fabulously restored format, there has been much speculation in the fan community about if and when the sequels will appear on Blu-ray. On the basis of what I saw, I think that the sequels will either not be released on Blu-ray or if they are, they will be of low quality with little to no bonus features. I'm also basing this prediction on two other details:

* Universal has been very stubborn about the Jaws franchise over the years, so much so that it frequently has been left to the fans to share information about the movies and preserve artifacts from them because Universal refuses to do so itself.

* High-definition versions of Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge have already appeared on on-demand video services but not on Blu-ray.

Between the on-demand releases of the sequels and the limited theatrical re-releases of Jaws 3D, Universal probably believes that it will get the greatest return on investment with these venues of distribution and not through Blu-ray. This is very frustrating, especially since Universal has the resources to correct the misaligned 3D shots in Jaws 3D but won't anyway. With that in mind, I strongly recommend that fans of the Jaws franchise and 3D movies in general should watch Jaws 3D on the big screen whenever it's possible, because I doubt that it's going to be available in any other format.

Remembering Return of the Jedi

This last weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the theatrical release of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which was released on May 25, 1983. Being a life-long Star Wars fan, it would be wrong for me not to do some kind of retrospective about this moment in modern geek history.

At the time of its release, Return of the Jedi marked the end of an era for me. Star Wars wasn’t just my gateway drug into all things geeky; it was a rehab-worthy addiction that began with Star Wars in 1977 and ended in 1983 with Jedi. That’s six years of toys, books, comics, posters, bubblegum cards, board games, magazines, t-shirts, Underoos, pajamas, bed sheet sets, window curtains, towels, wallpaper, drinking glasses, vinyl records, and dozens of other licensed items that I cannot recall at the moment. That list doesn’t include the release of Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and the subsequent theatrical re-releases of both Star Wars and Empire before the arrival of Jedi; each of these trips to the movie theater helped to spur the anticipation for anything and everything connected to the Star Wars franchise.

What might have been: Revenge of the Jedi poster

After spending so many years being obsessed with one franchise--a lifetime in the eyes of a child--things just weren’t the same after Jedi. At the time, George Lucas and Lucasfilm didn’t seem interested in continuing the Star Wars franchise (at least on the scale of another movie trilogy), so a pervasive feeling of finality had set in quickly after Jedi left the theaters. Marvel kept publishing issues of their non-canonical Star Wars comic until 1986 and Star Wars would appear every now and then on TV with the Ewoks and Droids cartoons and the Ewok TV movies, but the fan enthusiasm that permeated the years of the original trilogy had evaporated. There were no new movies on the horizon, so kids my age sobered up and moved on to other things.

Looking back, I don’t recall anything else like what the original Star Wars trilogy brought to pop culture, or any other series that provided the kind of final act that Jedi was. There have been plenty of fantasy and sci-fi trilogies since then, as well as noteworthy third movie installments in other film franchises, but none of them could match the mood of Star Wars. Sure, Lord of the Rings was a popular movie trilogy, but you could always read the novels if you couldn’t wait for the next movie installment; in contrast, you couldn’t read ahead in the Star Wars trilogy, so you had to wait three years at a time with everybody else for the next movie. There were also other movie-only trilogies such as the Back to the Future and The Matrix trilogies, but their mediocre second installments and overall lack of kid appeal quelled whatever excitement those series could muster.

George Lucas and R2-D2, surrounded by the original Star Wars trilogy in miniature.

Between its overall quality and uniqueness, as well as its significance both within the original trilogy and to the prequel trilogy, I think that Jedi is a gem of a film that deserves much more respect than it gets. At its heart, the Star Wars series is sci-fi pulp serial along the lines of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and the visual sophistication of Jedi is a celebration of that kind of storytelling. It featured a huge selection of new aliens (Jabba the Hut, Admiral Ackbar, the Rancor monster, etc.) and action sequences that pushed the envelope of what practical special effects were capable of during the early 80s. While these dazzling visual treats flashed by on the silver screen, story arcs came to an end, an empire lost its emperor, the Jedi were beginning to return, and a cast of characters who matured over the course of three movies made their final curtain call. If another movie trilogy provided a better ending than Return of the Jedi, I can’t think of one.

Remembering Roger Ebert (1942 - 2013)

I’ve been very sick for the last week, so I’m way behind on a few things I want to cover on this blog. Yet it would be remiss for me not to put in a few words about the recent passing of legendary movie critic Roger Ebert. While this blog is not exclusively devoted to movie reviews, I see Ebert’s influence in my writing and my approach to horror and sci-fi pop culture, much of which is driven by cinema.

It’s been said that through his books, TV shows, and other efforts, Ebert brought the practice of movie criticism into a more personal, less formalized perspective. It is likewise impressive that he did this at a time when the production and distribution of movies have changed so drastically, from something that could only be experienced in the movie theater to something that can be accessed almost anywhere at any time and on demand. I discovered Ebert the same way many people did: during the mid-80s on his syndicated TV show At the Movies with fellow film critic Gene Siskel. The VHS rental industry was coming into its own at that time, and I noticed how even that show soon made some changes to make room for new releases on VHS. (It should also be said that last week saw the passing of Eurotrash master Jesus “Jess” Franco. Even though there are many more popular and accomplished film directors in Europe, Franco developed an American fan base through distribution into VHS rental shops across America. Click here for more thoughts about that.)

If Ebert did anything, he showed how the critical analysis of movies has the potential to enhance one’s enjoyment of movies--that actually thinking about what you watch makes you appreciate it more than if you did not. I’m certain that many people still don’t understand this concept, since many (including quite a few professional film critics) appear to equate criticism with open hostility and snide insults. Yet because of his approach to criticism, Ebert didn’t just review films; he championed them. He provided commentary tracks for DVD and Blu-ray releases of movies (including a track for one of my personal favorites, Dark City) and would draw attention to limited-released movies that would otherwise be forgotten.

While I’m not even close to the kind of film buff that Ebert was, I’d like to think that my blog adheres to the standard of film criticism that Ebert himself endorsed. If anything I’ve written here has encouraged readers to think a little more about the films they are watching or choose to see an obscure movie instead of a hyper-promoted blockbuster, then I think Ebert would be proud.

Old Super 8 Home Movies Make the Final Cut in Sinister (2012)

For as much as horror movies are associated with scary monsters that are made possible through complex special effects, some of the most noteworthy movies are the ones that take something that is so ordinary and harmless and turn it into the source of unimaginable terror. Such is the case with the Super 8 movies that form the center of Sinister, a 2012 film that was directed and co-written by Scott Derrickson.

Sinister tells the story of Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), a true crime novelist who moves his wife and kids to a small town in Pennsylvania where a family was massacred by an unknown killer. Oswalt hopes that his research into the murders will provide him with a new bestseller that will rejuvenate his stalled career. While his family moves into their new home, he finds a box of Super 8 home movies in attic that were shot of different families at different locations, from the 1960s to the present. Strange and eerie things begin to happen as Oswalt researches the films to understand their link to the murders he is investigating, things that push him and his family deeper into a mystery that isn't meant to be solved.

Sinister feels like a hodgepodge of ideas from other films that feature found footage, ghosts and slashers, but the end result of this combination is a creepy, compelling film that boasts a strong performance by Hawke and haunting direction by Derrickson. Even though seasoned horror fans will figure out the film's final twist before the characters do, Sinister is so well produced that it will keep you watching until the final twisted frame.

Even though Sinister is not a "found footage" movie like Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, the Super 8 home movies that Oswalt finds become an intimidating force during the course of the story, thus turning an obsolete media format into a vehicle for hallucinatory nightmares. In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Derrickson revealed that he shot the Super 8 movies before shooting the rest of the film. "I think that creating the Super 8 imagery before shooting the body of the film – along with finding the music that I found – had a lot to do with the overall impact of the whole film," said Derrickson. "Those elements set a tone in my mind that represented what the movie was going to feel like. I bought 9 music tracks ahead of time and shot the Super 8 films to those tracks. ... In some ways I think buying that music early on was the wisest move I made when making the film. I can’t imagine what the movie would be without them." In that observation, Derrickson is absolutely correct. Imagining Sinister without its Super 8 movies is like imaging Alien without the artwork contributed by H.R. Giger.

When considering the creative influences in Sinister, the most obvious would be The Shining, Ringu, and H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House" story. Yet with its depiction of the insanity that erupts when voyeurism collides with obsession, Sinister's most interesting themes are similar to those in David Cronenberg's Videodrome. Derrickson's film is not nearly as bizarre as Cronenberg's, but Hawke's intense portrayal of a man falling under the hypnotic thrall of disturbing moving images is reminiscent of Videodrome's doomed protagonist Max Renn (James Woods).

Invisible Demonic Terror Returns to Suburbia Again in Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

Among modern horror film franchises, Paranormal Activity is the only one that has been able to consistently use the "found footage" style of storytelling throughout each of its films. Other franchises that began in the horror subgenre of found footage all jettisoned that style at one point or another. Some did as soon as the first sequel (Blair Witch Project, The Last Exorcism), while others did so later (REC). Yet upon my viewing of Paranormal Activity 4, this franchise's accomplishment is looking rather dubious. After all, why stay within the style of found footage if it begins to hamper a franchise's storytelling possibilities?

For as competently made as it is, PA4 serves as a reminder that its franchise needs to make some major changes very soon to keep its central story engaging and avid fans interested in more PA movies. Read on for my complete and spoiler-free review of Paranormal Activity 4.

Paranormal Activity 4 takes place in 2011, when a family in a suburban neighborhood takes in their neighbor's child Robbie (Brady Allen) after his mom is suddenly rushed to the hospital. During his stay, Robbie begins to bond with the family's youngest member Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp)--a bond that sparks suspicion in older sister Alex (Kathryn Newton) when strange, inexplicable things begin to happen in their house.

I wasn't completely dissatisfied with PA4, because there are plenty of scary ideas embedded within the story. It provides some more ideas about how the cult that was introduced in PA3 operates, and how children play a key role in the cult's grander scheme. Such a scheme explains a crucial plot twist that happens during the middle of the film, a twist that honestly surprised me but was logically consistent with the PA movies that came before it. PA4 also makes use of the Xbox 360's Kinect feature in a very creative, creepy way.

Because of the low-budget nature of found footage movies, PA4 has to rely on a lot of strategically placed obscurity to keep the special effects budget at a minimum. In doing so, this sequel mostly relies on same bag of tricks used in the previous films: characters reacting in horror to something just outside of the camera's view, supernatural entities appearing as powerful, fast-moving blurs, etc. These tricks worked well enough in the previous films, but they're begging to show their age in PA4.

Just as the camera angles are set up in PA films to hide certain visual details, the films are also structured in a way that conceals key plot points until near the end (or at the very end) of the film. As such, PA4 recycles plot details from the previous two sequels--the protective sister figure from PA2, the children who have strange imaginary friends from PA3--as a way to keep things going until the final reveal. Further dulling the sequel's creative spark is that its setting and characters look almost identical to settings and characters from the previous films: upper middle class people living in upper middle class households. To go by the situational logic of the PA franchise, supernatural entities are only interested in terrorizing people who prefer suburban living and fall within a particular income bracket.

Watching PA4 was like watching one of the later seasons of The X-Files. You sit through a lot of stuff--some familiar, some different, some scary, some boring--for the sake of learning a bit more about the grand conspiracy that ties everything together, only to be left with only a few more small details to ponder at the end. PA4 is shorter than a season of The X-Files, so it at least has that going for it. Yet if this franchise is going to have a future, it has to do something different to keep the story fresh and scary. Otherwise, future PA sequels will be the kind of footage that no one wants to find.