Contagion

One of the scariest movies of my lifetime is one I didn't even see at first. It was the Fall of 1983, right in the gut of Reagan-era Cold War paranoia and ABC decided it was time to play on everyone's #1 fear, nuclear war (the Pac-Man fever epidemic being #2). When The Day After premiered it did so behind a genius marketing campaign that warned parents to keep their children away. The network set up a 1-800 number for worried viewers to call. They played the second half of the movie commercial free. And, most unbelievably of all, they aired an actual intellectual discussion after the film featuring none other than Carl Sagan and William F. Buckley. They weren't messing around. I remember hearing about it on the school bus the next day from a friend whose parents didn't seem to care about his fragile young psyche. And then I forgot about it until the day, years later, when I caught a re-airing on cable. And damn if I wasn't grateful for having avoided a childhood full of nightmares.

The key to good horror--and really that's what this was--is the feeling of helplessness instilled in the viewer. What can we possibly do if our leaders decide to start throwing missiles at each other? As rhetorical as that sounds, I'll still answer to stress my point: Nothing. We can't do anything to stop the bombs from falling or to reason with a great white shark or hide form deadly virus. The key to good horror is to make us realize how weak and human we really are. The Day After was successful by showing how easily normal, middle American life can be reduced to ashes. Despite it being such a politically-charged issue, there really was no political agenda behind the film itself. It said, this is what would happen, and really there was no spinning that reality. It was frightening in how low key and stark the presentation was. You thought, uh, yeah, this could actually happen.

Viruses can happen, too. They have. Worldwide pandemics are part of our history and, as cyclically ignorant as we would like to pretend to be, they will be part of our future. So, it's odd that there have not been many cinematic attempts to capture the terror of a global outbreak in a realistic, non-zombie way. Well, there was Outbreak (1995), of course, although all I really remember about that was it starred Dustin Hoffman and monkey who later was on Friends (that was the same monkey, right?). That was the height of the Ebola virus, which we were told was going to kill us all. SPOILER ALERT: It didn't. But the fact that the movie itself was not very memorable even though it tackled a timely legitimate real world fear came to mind as I watched Steven Soderbergh's updated (though monkey-free) version, Contagion.

Contagion is a well made film. It's directed by Steven Soderbergh and has an all-star cast of quality actors (and as I've said before, Matt Damon is at the top of his game right now, the kind of actor whose presence alone makes movies better). But...there's something missing. The idea of a quickly-spreading deadly virus is terrifying, but that threat never felt immediate. The number of victims in this movie is staggering, yet the impact never hit home. I'm not sure if it was because they try to spread the drama too wide (I still don't understand Marion Cotillard's storyline other than she was not on screen nearly enough) or if the action moved too fast. Something stopped it from connecting on that visceral level that movies like this need to work. I certainly didn't dislike this movie, but I can't help but wonder what the point was. Here's the virus, here's what happens, here's the cure, the end. It's all very clinical. I'd say it needed more heart, but I don't want this to start sounding like a hack sports column. MINUS

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

So, James Franco is a criminally irresponsible scientist who tortures animals so he can cure his father's Alzheimer's which is the exact same plot as the far superior Deep Blue Sea, except with chimps instead of sharks. And that's not an insignificant difference, either, as nobody cares about sharks. Anyway, he works at one of these high tech labs that movies like this always feature and that always place such a high value on "profits" that they will back an experimental drug based on the handsome scientist's assurance that it basically works. Here that means until a chimp goes nuts and wrecks the place. Fair enough.

Except that the chimp went nuts not because of the drug but because she was trying to protect her newborn baby that no one in the lab seemed to know existed. They didn't even know she was pregnant. This chimp they spent millions of dollars testing and observing. Then again, this is the same lab that hired James Franco as its lead researcher.

But leave it to our boy James not to be discouraged. Not only does he take the baby chimp home to live with him, but he decided that the father he cares so much for would make the perfect subject on which to test his untested drug. Not only does it work--his dad can act like John Lithgow again--but the baby chimp, Caesar, is really freaking smart. Like, its mother genetically passed down the drug smart.

So a few years go by and Caesar is really smart now, for a chimp, and everything is sweet and rosy until one day Caesar gets out (yes, he's still living with Franco and dad) and bites the finger off a neighbor. Not good. So Caesar is taken to an ape sanctuary outside of town (the town being San Francisco). Even though we are led to believe the sanctuary is either government-run, or at least sanctioned, it is run by Bryan Cox and his evil twerp son, Draco Malfoy, as a mini primate prison. It's like Midnight Express for monkeys. But James Franco is too heartbroken to check out the facility and so leaves poor Caesar alone in the big house. There's a brief scene where Franco acts like a dick to a city clerk by trying to get his court date moved up, though why he isn't in jail for illegally housing a vicious animal is never explained. Or why his neighbor chose not to sue him for everything he had. Also, his dad dies, though we're not sure if it's from years of injections of the drug. Also, his lab assistant dies, though we are sure it is from minor exposure to the drug. It's a finicky drug.

Inside monkey hell, Caesar eventually gets even smarter somehow and manages to escape back to Franco's house to steal two canisters of the super drug out of the fridge and expose all his other inmates to their Brainiac effects. Instantly, all the other apes, including an orangutan and a gorilla, are people smart and they go Attica on the place. They escape and invade San Fran because why wouldn't they. I should also mention that Caesar can now speak. I'm not a scientist but I don't think that's how biology works.

Anyway, the number of escapees somehow triples and they all descend on the city to go apeshit. They even spring their cousins from the zoo and, despite not having been exposed to the drug in any way, the zoo chimps join right in. There are also more orangutans and gorillas for no explained reason.

Allow me to pause here and link to this article that points out that there are only 23 known apes in the Bay area at the present time.

Back to the movie, the apes are rampaging across the Golden Gate and they overrun the comically inept SFPD who can't shoot straight and are really good at running in fear. Caesar them leads his army to their new life among the Redwoods. The end.

This, of course, is supposed to lead to this small band of apes evolving beyond humanity and taking over the entire world. I can't wait for the sequel. MINUS

Apollo 18 (2011)

So I thought I needed to explain my tweet. Yes, this faux doc about "found footage" from a secret 70s moon mission is essentially Blair Witch in Space. Or Paranormal Activity in Space, depending how far back you want to take your cultural reference. But, it's not all that bad--not as good as the prior, but better than the latter.

My problem with A18, besides taking a little too long to get to the tension (felt like the script padding it probably was), is that it ultimately failed to deliver the kicker at the end. While I thought Paranormal Activity was a cheap stunt of a film, it did know how to close. This movie pulled its finishing blow, giving us just what we expected and nothing more. Honestly, I think they could have made the same movie with a better result if they had just spent a little more time developing the drama and raising the stakes.

Okay, SPOILER ALERT. I can see how they sold this story: astronauts discover "other" footprints on the Moon. Boom! There you go, solid hook. Who left the footprints? Dead cosmonauts who themselves had been on a secret mission years before. Gold. But, then what? No one wants a cold war political thriller here. So, how did the ruskies die? Well, something else is on the moon, too. Of course, horror's hot right now. So, some sort of alien monster naturally. However, it can't be too advanced. No humanoid ETs with spaceports we can see from Earth. Plus, we're spending most of the budget on food services. So, little creepy crawly...rock crab looking things? Rocks, right, they would have to look like rocks. No need to get all sciency, though. The audience is more than willing to buy aliens of any biological make or model. Almost done. I'm assuming the aliens kill the astronauts? What else would we do in the third act? So Astronauts arrive on the moon? Check. Astronauts find something weird? You got it. Astronauts bite it. And scene. But won't everyone see that coming? So what? The trailer will kill. Plus, it's only 86 minutes. MINUS

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