Macabre - I Mean Merry Christmas

I'm staying with my relatives in Northern Finland for the holidays. It's been great fun: here we traditionally stuff ourselves with homemade season cuisines, drill a hole on the surface of a frozen solid lake and take a dive after sauna, and as is usual in Finland, we actually celebrate Christmas on the 24th, unlike rest of the World.
    I don't actually have a film review for today, but I'd like to take the time and say something about a very unique piece of art, which also happens to be connected to this particular holiday.

Rare Exports (2010, Finland)

Find it, if you can. It's worth it. Rare Exports is more scifi than horror for what I intend present in this blog, but I must insist that you take the opportunity to have look if given a chance. It's so dark and so unorthodox for a Christmas movie it's a perfect alternative for a 12 hour montage of Rudolph and shorter-than-life tall actors playing elves. (Not that I don't like traditional holiday films, I just enjoy a new twist to an old concept. Most Christmas movies tend to be poignantly predictable - but since I'm a regular horror watcher, that excuse sounds sort of weak (hence all the drinking games/bingos/whatever made of slasher cliches...).)
    Rare Exports is a perfect holiday film - but this one is not for kiddies. It shows what the actual Santa Claus really does to naughty children. Or adults. And it's not pretty.

Go Watch BBC Nature and Try To Learn Something

This one sat on my DVD-shelf for quite a while. I don't think I'm alone if I admit to prefer any spider larger than a baby's palm to be sealed inside a terrarium. Still, things that can either eat you or lay eggs in your ears during the night tend to make pretty basic mush for all things horror. Here we go.

8 legs (Arachnid)

** (2001, Spain)

As the title suggests, this film has spiders in it. Lots of them. And not just any insects - these are alien and mutated. Normally this wouldn't be a bad beginning point for a typical monster film, but 8 legs doesn't have to offer much more than a 95 minute excuse to postpone doing something useful. Like chores.

After one of the above mentioned creepy-crawlies takes a good bite out of a pilot, landing him to a hospital with foreign symptoms, a medical research expedition is sent to investigate the spiders, which have been pestering the local tribe for a while.

The director Jack Sholder doesn't only break about every rule in horror (concerning the threat of the unknown ) - he trashes them and throws them out of a window. It's very difficult to deliver an artificial but believable and scary creature on the screen, so the Golden Rule in monster horror is to try to be subtle about it and leave as much room to the imagination as possible = show as little as you can.

Of course there are film makers and studios who can pull of a seemingly living giant creature and make it look natural, but when 8 legs was being produced, these people weren't anywhere near it. The visual effects have more resemblance to the 70s film industry than anything from this millennia. By cutting of the beginning credits with their sad attempts at CGI and editing here and there, until the spider wouldn't be more than unnervingly mysterious glimpses, this film could have been exceedingly much more enjoyable.

To me, the method used in here seems unbelievable, because I can't help but to think how much more tasteful and cheaper a more stealthy approach would have been. If you have any doubt, that the enormous space bug you've designed isn't quite up to convincing the audience, then don't throw it on their face in direct sunlight, plastic fangs, hairy eight legs and all! Honestly, I've seen daytime nature documentaries which have made my skin crawl more (even though I'm strangely thankful for the lack of eww-factor close-ups).

The rest of the plot doesn't do any favours for the film, either. The only things that save this train wreck from being a one star piece of junk are Ravil Isyanov's performance as an endearingly weird researcher and the occasional pleasant moments of dialogue.

Trolling - they do it differently in Norway

This September I had the pleasure of attending an outdoor film screening, which was organized as a part of the Oulu Days fair and the upcoming IIK!! - horror film festival. The viewing was held in the middle of pitch-black Ainola Park, making the place more than appropriately staged for a night with the supernatural predators of the isolated Scandinavian woods and mountains.

The Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren)

**** (2010, Norway)

André Øvredals The Troll Hunter is, quite simply, good cinema.

   Compared to the norm in the horror genre, The Troll Hunter has a relatively low rating (PG). This is due the lack of any real graphically disturbing material - even if the film does have its share of paranormal gore. The violence is mostly kept off-screen by the clever choice of editing: The Troll Hunter is filmed entirely in "shockumentary" (or "mockumentary") style, as made famous by the Blair Witch Project.

The story takes place in Norway, where a student film crew takes interest in strange bear killings. They document their investigations, which lead them to their main suspect: a lone, nameless poacher, who spends his days isolated in a foul smelling trailer, but disappears into the woods every night.

It doesn't take long before it comes clear that the shut-mouthed poacher isn't after illegal prey, but the Scandinavian mythological creatures, of which existence the government has hushed up for years. The film crew is speedily convinced to forget everything they've learned from fairytales, as the grotesque reality couldn't be further away from the stories read to them as children. These nocturnal hunters are little more than animals with a peculiar reaction to direct sun light.

The beastly creatures don't have much  resemblance to their speaking, clothed folk lore counterparts, but apparently all stories are rooted to some ions of truth - starting with the trolls thirst for fresh Christian blood.

The absence of astronomical body count or repetitive, blood sprayed jump scares does no harm to the film, but shows that fearful apprehension can be created with very little. The dark, the uncertainty and the imagination of the viewer can reach further into the pits of fear than any film maker elbow-deep in jazzy toys, as proved before in another praised PG horror film, the Orphanage (El Orfanato).

The thing that makes hand-held shock-doc my favourite method of horror filming, is its authenticity. It feels real. For me, the appeal is the same as for people who love to watch a film with buttery popcorn and some killer 3D-glasses. This is why Øvredals decision to present the monsters so early on can be seen as quite risky: when you have a supernatural monster on a killing spree, rampage, on the loose or whatever, no matter how good outset you create, the darn thing is never as scary when you can actually see it.

Fortunately, The Troll Hunter doesn't disappoint. The exquisite visual effects fit to the roughly beautiful Norwegian landscape seamlessly, making it feel as though the green hued night-vision you're watching is just snatched from a nature documentarians leaf-covered  backpack. The troll artwork is clever and adds a three-way bridge between horror, fantasy and humour, balancing masterfully between keeping the story true to its fantasy origins (instead of wooing teenage horror audiences with guts and blood), appealing to the fans of the dark genre and adding some laughs as well. Trolls aren't the most eloquent creatures, but that doesn't diminish their unpredictable, threatening  nature.

The hardcore terror lovers might not warm up to The Troll Hunter, but people who wish to take a peek at something as fresh and unique as the north wind blowing in a Norwegian postcard of a valley, the film will do the trick. Since the film is relatively new and the American version is yet to be produced, I'll take this chance as to sigh in relief. It's unlikely that this good idea will mutilated or copied: for all their cleverness, I sincerely doubt that the trolls have the sex appeal to participate in the on-going boom of "(Insert creature here) are the new vampires!".

Happy very, very late Halloween

I've put a lot of thought into my creative work lately. You see, after finishing my second novel I went through this months lasting dry season when I didn't type a word, much less read anything (not that it's unusual for me; for a writer I read voluntarily awfully little. That's why it's so weird I ended up being a student of literature). I've come to sort of define myself through my writing, so not working for so long was a bit unnerving.

Thankfully, this phase passed. And even though I lost a long period of time I could've used to try and creep closer to my goal as a professional author, those months were refreshing (and not just 'cause it happened to be summer). I had time to experiment on other creative fields. I turned my life long obsession with horror films into something camp, unpolished and naive but gorgeous. The film was my first completed one and it was published online on Finnish All Saints' Day a few days ago.

The reason I'm sharing this, or the fact that the name Raven Reel is actually a translation from the film "corporation" Studio Korppikela's name, is not just because of shameless self-advertisement. I'm hoping to get back to indie films some time in the future, but this blog won't be my means to do that. I'm not sure if we'll hear that much about Korppikela after this post. The reason I'm telling about my first non-budget/no-prospects clip is to show where I'm coming from.

I have an unconditional love for horror films and for a good pile of everything associated with them. I like watching them, last summer I discovered I liked making them, and with my writer backround I've wondered how it would be like to review them. Still, I'm not a film elitist; I have my tastes and pet peeves and it's going to show in my critiques, but I attempt to see the genre as a whole, and the pieces as part of that particular tradition of story telling.

Now the last thing: my film. Unfortunately the audio is entirely in Finnish, but I'm going to give it a try, if someone here would still fall for it (curiousity killed the cat, y'know).

Hugs and knives,
Salatieteilijä