Collins’ Crypt: 2013 Drawn And Quartered Part III
As explained in the previous installment, this fall had the fewest number of horror wide releases in recent memory. In October, when in years' past there was a new horror flick at the multiplexes every week to cash in on Halloween excitement, this year offered only a single one - even the annual Paranormal Activity entry was delayed until January. So this will be the shortest entry yet - there simply wasn't much to discuss!
September at least gave us a couple options. On September 7th, David Twohy and Vin Diesel saw their wishes come true, as Riddick saw release, nine years after The Chronicles Of Riddick seemingly killed the cinematic portion of the franchise (there have been two video games in the interim). Eschewing most of Chronicles' pseudo-Dune silliness and returning to the style of the original Pitch Black, it was an incredibly fun blend of horror and action, giving us plenty of new monsters while even offering a mini-slasher movie around the midpoint, as Riddick stalked his would-be captors before their eventual forced alliance. And while it didn't exactly break records (it actually grossed less than Chronicles - but that was a PG-13 film that cost 3x as much to make) its take more than double its production budget (nearly 100m worldwide) and it topped the box office on its first weekend, something neither of its predecessors managed, giving Vin his first non-Fast hit in nearly a decade.
A week later, Insidious Chapter 2 took advantage of a rare fall Friday the 13th and scored huge, nearly outgrossing the original film on its first week alone, on its way to a 83m take (160m worldwide) - for a film that cost a mere 5 million. Making its performance even more impressive is the fact that it came on the heels of The Conjuring, Wan's summer smash that covered similar haunted house territory (and also co-starred Patrick Wilson), which put the film at the risk of a bit too much deja vu. I was also surprised that it outperformed the original given how weird it got - a somewhat confusing time travel subplot and the horrible decision to dub Lin Shaye's voice over the much younger girl playing her in flashbacks did nothing to turn audiences off, apparently. I was afraid this would be like Book of Shadows, where I'd have to defend it from naysayers for the next decade, but I guess folks were either on board with its offbeat story, or were so starved for horror entertainment that they didn't care.
The next week, Anchor Bay put I Spit On Your Grave 2 on a single screen, either because they were contractually obligated to or because they lost a bet. This deplorable film grossed 441 dollars, money that could have been better put toward pretty much anything in the world. It was definitely a low point for an otherwise decent year for them, genre-wise - they also gave a respectable theatrical release for Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem (which never would have been a hit, sadly) and the gonzo No One Lives. A few weeks later, another of their titles, Nothing Left To Fear, fared a little better than I Spit Too, grossing about 8k on a mere 5 screens and zero promotion whatsoever (I wasn't even aware it had a theatrical release until I was researching this very column). It's an OK little movie about a Midwestern religious cult - no worse than your average Children of the Corn sequel, though the real selling point for those who saw it was probably the novelty of its producer: none other than Slash himself, who also contributed a song.
Another limited release was Jim Mickle's We Are What We Are, which borrowed the name and basic plot of a 2010 Mexican film, but otherwise carved its own path and proved to be another gem in this promising filmmaker's output. The cast was terrific, the new setting (upstate New York) proved to be an inspired choice, and Jeff Grace's score was phenomenal - I won the CD at horror trivia a couple months back and it didn't get far from my car's player for at least a month. It's hitting Blu-ray in a couple weeks (courtesy of eOne), and I highly recommend looking for it; I didn't do a top 10 list for the year, but it likely would have made it if I had. I can't say the same for Bad Milo! however - it was amusing, and I loved the practical puppet, but there was a clunkiness to the proceedings that kept the movie at bay, and I can not forgive anyone for wasting Gillian Jacobs in a thankless "worried wife" role. I was much more satisfied with Hell Baby, another comic horror film which also starred The State alum (Ken Marino in Milo; Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant in Hell Baby, which they also wrote and directed) and featured Kumail Nanjiani. Neither film played multiplexes (I considered seeing Hell Baby theatrically, but it was an hour's drive - and keep in mind I live in Los Angeles, not some remote Wisconsin town), but will hopefully find their deserving audiences on Blu-ray or on-demand.
The same weekend Bad Milo hit a few screens, IFC gave Dario Argento a rare US theatrical release with his ridiculous Dracula 3D (that and Mother of Tears are the only ones since the early 90s, far as I and BoxOfficeMojo can tell), which featured one-time Dracula Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing, and current NBC Van Helsing Thomas Kretschmann as a Dracula that can turn into a CGI Praying Mantis. The 3D did nothing to help; it seems the filmmakers were afraid the glasses would make it too dark, so the movie is overlit to the point of embarrassment - it can actually hurt your eyes to take the glasses OFF during some of the daytime scenes. But it was one of the few 3D horror releases of the entire year, so there was some novelty to it. And ultimately, Argento has made worse films (1998's Phantom of the Opera comes to mind), so there's something.
And then, on October 18th - a wide release! After being delayed from April, Sony's Carrie remake finally hit screens, mostly to indifference. You'd think the Stephen King brand, the popularity of Chloe Moretz, and the sheer lack of options would result in a bigger tally, but no! The movie barely outgrossed its 30m budget; it couldn't even crack 1m on Halloween, which is when I finally found time to check it out. As expected, there was nothing onscreen that made me understand why they wanted to redo it in the first place - the script was so similar to De Palma's 1976 version that they had to credit that film's screenwriter (Lawrence Cohen), even though he had nothing to do with it. And the casting was baffling; efforts to make Ms. Moretz look like an ugly duckling were unsuccessful, and Julianne Moore was hopefully just cashing a paycheck and amusing herself in the process with her cartoonish acting - at times I longed for the relative subtlety of Mommie Dearest. Plus, Kimberly Peirce had Moretz wave her arms around like Magneto during the prom massacre, making the whole thing laughable (at least when you weren't rolling your eyes at the sub-par CGI). THIS is our main option for October? Pitiful!
And that's it! Sometime in December Magnolia gave one of their blink-and-miss releases to Adri·n GarcÌa Bogliano's Here Comes The Devil (which I quite liked when I saw it at a festival in 2012), but at this point it's silly to even count those since they only focus on the VOD aspect. November didn't have a single genre release (at least, not one with reported box office), and if you didn't live in NY or LA you were shit out of luck in December too. This in a year that saw two of the highest grossing genre films of all time (The Conjuring and World War Z) and a string of major successes (Mama, Warm Bodies, Evil Dead, The Purge) earlier in the year. Hopefully it's just poor scheduling and not a sign of things to come - I appreciate having less work to do when it comes time to write up these recaps, but the FAN in me wants to be at the theater more often! Luckily, January never disappoints, at least quantity wise - the next few weeks will provide a new Paranormal sequel (one that's supposedly pretty good!), Devil's Due which at least has a good cast, and I, Frankenstein, which is already a good punchline. That's already as many wide releases as we got in the entire last 4 months!
