Not since “Silence of the Lambs” has such a violent, bleak and nihilistic film risen to the top of the Hollywood heap and taken the Oscar for movie of the year. In some ways, “No Country For Old Men” (Miramax) is even more horrific than “Silence.” Equal parts western revenge story, drug gangster picture and stalker tale, this Cohen brothers production takes good guy/bad guy conventions and twists them into a pretzel.
And that’s why we were shocked when “No Country For Old Men” took best picture. We would have thought the Academy would be appalled by the fact that Javier’s sociopathic character Anton Chigurh is, in his own way, the most principled individual and that the protagonist, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is an opportunistic petty criminal/Vietnam vet who thinks he can get away with stealing millions of dollars from drug dealers, knowing full well that the last people they were supposed to do business with were slaughtered by an unknown assailant.
Morality is flipped like in inverted cross in this story, and ultimately everyone who gets in the way of Chigurh, good or evil, is in some scalding hot water. These folks include a bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) and a cop by the name of Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who enter the picture to further distort and complicate matters.
As much as the viewer may want “No Country” to adhere to traditional plot conventions, the movie constantly strays from the norm and never shies away from brutality to make its point that for every action there’s a consequence, no matter how seemingly random or chaotic as it might be. Beyond the stellar cast, there are some gorgeous landscape and setting shots and enough action to please Sam Peckinpah. Even without Chigurh’s weapon of choice - an airgun used to kill cattle - “No Country” is totally metal-friendly. Though we gotta add that the lethal device is the coolest thing we’ve seen since Rose McGowan strapped a machine gun to her leg stump in Robert Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse: Planet Terror.”
Carver (Allumination) — The plot of this gory flick is similar to that of every other psycho-killer, torture movie featuring redneck Neanderthals who feed on snuff films, and stupid young adults who watch a camping adventure turn into a terrifying massacre. But while “Carver” draws from all the slaughter story cliches, it’s still terrifying, stomach churning and captivating. The scenes of sadism and humiliation are unrelenting and one in particular left us wincing and shielding our privates. “Carver” succeeds by not being silly, moralistic or at all restrained. What little humor director Franklin Guerrero Jr. incorporates into the plot is blacker than night — blood spurting reminiscent of “The Evil Dead,” characters desperately having to poop in gross-out toilets covered with feces and used condoms. Such over-the-top scenes actually soften the terror just a bit, but overall, the abundance of savagery and grisly special effects make “Carver” horrifyingly entertaining. Disregard the predictable plot and slide into the blood-soaked abattoir.
13: Game of Death (Dimension Extreme) — More of a twisted thriller than a straight-up horror, this Thai movie still offers several deliciously gory scenes and a couple hard-to-watch segments. One, in which the hero eats a plate of excrement for cash, makes the bug consuming tests in “Fear Factor” seem, well, not so repulsive. The plot of “13: Game of Death” takes the reality-show-meets-murder-and-mayhem template to new heights. After an impoverished musical instrument salesman is fired for not meeting quota, he receives a call on his cellphone from a mysterious source offering him the chance to play a game for the opportunity to win some major cash. His first test is to kill a fly on the wall. The second is to eat it, and from there the tasks become increasingly more violent and unpalatable, many drawing from tormented experiences from his youth. The movie works because it comes across not only as a contest of human endurance, but also as a test of humanity, morality and the fragile balance between sanity and madness.
Awake (Sony) — The plot elements for this thriller are all there and, were it executed with less Hollywood polish — by someone like Nacho Cerda or David Cronenberg — it could have been completely horrifying. But instead, director Joby Harold turns “Awake” into a ho-hum 80-minute long potboiler that’s watchable, but disappointing. The basic story involves a young genius millionaire with a bad heart and even worse ability to judge other people’s character. When he goes in for a transplant, the anesthesia paralyzes him, but he remains conscious and able to feel every agonizing scalpel stroke. As terrified as he is by this, it’s the stuff he hears while he’s supposed to be under that takes his fear to a new level.
Borderland (Lionsgate) — One of the movies from the second annual “After Dark Horrorfest,” “Borderland” follows three college buddies who travel to Mexico to take drugs, drink too much and pick up prostitutes and inadvertently find themselves in the cross-hairs of a drug cartel that engages in Satanic sacrifices so the devil will protect them from their enemies. Director Zev Berman prevents “Borderland” from being just another teen slasher by unraveling the story as more of a brutal drama than a flat-out horror story. Sure, there are gory elements — like when a cop gets his eyes gouged out and dropped into a jar of water — but extreme violence is never the focus, and it’s never rendered with overly splattery special effects. In the end, Berman makes the film’s ghastly atrocities frightfully believable by buoying them with strong acting, dark, oppressive lighting and an unflinching plot, which, he claims, is based on a true story.
