Oh, The Horror

Back in 1999, two young filmmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, sent three actors into the woods in Maryland with nothing but some camping equipment, a camera and a fabricated myth about a local witch. The film became The Blair Witch Project, and through brilliant editing and even better Internet promotion and myth-building, went on to collect an astounding $250 million at the global box-office. The filmmakers and actors faded into obscurity as rapidly as they arrived, but the film sent shock-waves through the industry as it served as a stark reminder to the studios; audiences like to be scared.

The legacy of Blair Witch is, somewhat ironically, drenched in blood. The horror genre of the new millenium is relatively low-budget, with a renewed focus on violence and gore that would've been branded "Video-Nasty" twenty years ago. The stark difference is that it's now studio-sponsored and dominates the mainstream. The irony arises from the fact that Blair Witch, in common with several other groundbreaking entries in the genre (perhaps most notably the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is an almost entirely bloodless film. Violence is either implied, or occurs off-screen with only sound giving an indication of what's going on; the horror is almost exclusively psychological.

In the years since Blair Witch, however, visual subtlety has been increasingly drained from the genre. It seems audiences like to see characters suffer on-screen, and so each new horror entry attempts to out-do the last when it comes to blood-letting. Yet, despite the increasingly over-the-top nature of the genre, hooks to the real world have proved remarkably effective in securing often massive box-office returns. Blair Witch itself is the best example of this, as Myrick and Sanchez used the Internet to elaborate the myth of the witch. The film itself was presented and marketed as a documentary showing the last few days of the characters' lives before 'disappearing' in the woods. The filmmakers' skill at maintaining the facade was undoubtedley a major factor in the film's stunning success. Even informed audiences found it easy to believe that they were watching real events unfolding before them.

Over the last year, the genre has adjusted to take 'inspiration' from real-life events. The recent Wolf Creek, a tale of three young backpackers stranded in the Australian Outback to be hunted-down and tortured by a sadistic Bushman, was inspired by real-life missing-persons cases and even features an epilogue explaining what happened to the survivors. Similarly, the massively over-hyped Hostel, a gore-fest in which wealthy businessmen pay to torture backpackers (a somewhat persecuted bunch) in Eastern-European basements, was inspired by rumours of similar activities happening for real in the Far-East. The recently-revived Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise also plays up the 'Based on true events' line, as the original concept of the iconic Leatherface was very loosely inspired by the post-homicide rituals of 50s serial-killer Ed Gein.

The most successful franchise, however, is purely fictional. Saw drew direct inspiration from the bleak atmosphere of David Fincher's outstanding Se7en, and focussed on two men shackled to opposing walls in a dank basement, faced with the prospect of sawing through their ankles in order to escape. The film has spawned two sequels, the second of which opened last week, but unfortunately the premise has lost its imagination, substituting plot for ever-more creative ways of killing people. Still, the success of the Saw franchise, and the imminent arrival of Hostel 2, is a strong indication of both the future of the genre, and audience taste (or, perhaps, lack of it). Hostel was marketed as a gore-fest on a level never before seen by American audiences (it wasn't), and Quentin Tarantino's involvement as an executive-producer was emphasised in an attempt to reinforce this; audiences lapped it up.

Despite, then, its often more subtle ancestry, the horror genre looks set to continue (d)evolving into a bloody mess. Indeed, next year we'll be treated to Grindhouse, a double-feature directed by Tarantino and pal Robert Rodriguez, which promises zombies, psychotic hit-and-run drivers and no-doubt blood by the gallon. Still, there'll always be Shrek 3 to sink your teeth into if you find you're seeing a little too much red.

Evolution of the Super-Spy

In the last year, only the controversy surrounding the production of 'United 93', and other 9/11-related projects, has come close in the film world to the scale of the media-storm created by the announcement of Pierce Brosnan's successor, to the role of MI6's least-secret agent. If the myriad websites that have sprung up over the past year are to be believed, Daniel Craig is too unsophisticated, too ugly, too small-time and just too damn blond to make James Bond his own. The critical backlash is unprecedented in the franchise's 44-year history, but the recasting of Bond spearheads Sony's apparent modernisation of the series. After Brosnan's last outing in 'Die Another Day', a film that set a new gadget-low with an invisible Aston-Martin, and showcased some of the worst visual-effects in recent memory, 'Casino Royale', based on Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, promises a return to grittier drama. Craig will play Bond as an MI6 agent newly-promoted to Double-0 status, and the latest trailer suggests drama with a firmer footing in the real world.

The reality is that Bond must adapt and evolve in order to demonstrate his continuing relevance in the post-9/11 world. Audiences are becoming far more accepting of the competition, to the point where questions are being asked as to whether indestructible super-spies have a genuine place in the world. The studios have attempted to update and Americanise the concept of Bond, with varying degrees of success. Perhaps the most overt of recent years has been Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible' franchise, the third of which was released earlier this year. Sharing little in common with the original TV series, beyond the title and the name of the protagonist, Cruise is super-agent Ethan Hunt of the Impossible Mission Force. Indestructible, athletic and increasingly banal, what character there was has rapidly faded beneath the dazzling glow of Cruise's all-too-public movie-star persona. Far less successful, but dosed with more wit, was 'xXx' (marketed as 'Triple-X'), another multiplex-targeted, teen-friendly action-movie starring Hollywood beefcake and man-of-the-moment Vin Diesel (real name Mark Vincent). Beginning with the apparently symbolic assassination of an anonymous but tuxedo-clad spy, the film attempts to establish an extreme-sports star as a reluctant secret-agent, snowboarding (no, really) his way to victory whilst aiming to win the hearts and pocket-money of skater-kids everywhere. The film spawned a sequel but in the process lost its focus, and the franchise descended into generic, teen-friendly violence.

Perhaps the most potent challenge to Bond's supremacy has come from the unexpected success of 'The Bourne Identity'. Telling the story of an amnesiac CIA assassin going rogue in Europe in an attempt to unlock the secrets of both himself and the ruthless committee that created him, the story has some pedigree, its roots found in a Robert Ludlum novel of the same name published in the late 70s. The film is a back-to-basics, stripped-down affair, helmed by respected indie director Doug Liman, and starring under-rated Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. As a character, Bourne is cold, distant, calculating and unsure when it comes to interacting with other human-beings. In stark contrast to Bond, he is also bound by the physical laws of the real world, meaning the violence really hurts, he limps and he bleeds. The original novel is one of three; 'The Bourne Supremacy' has since become an equally-impressive sequel, and 'The Bourne Ultimatum' is due next year, both retaining Damon in the title-role.

With gritty action-sequences that feel more authentic, and a greater focus on character, it seems the success of the Bourne franchise has likely been a major inspiration for the repackaged Bond. Despite the grievances of many hardcore fans, Craig is a talented actor, perhaps the most versatile to ever have been offered Bond, and his work in the excellent British gangster film 'Layer Cake' shows he can handle this kind of character. Either way, after so much controversy, the eventual box-office reception of 'Casino Royale' will have a massive impact on the continuing evolution of the cinematic super-spy.

Hollywood vs The Original Idea

Last Friday saw the UK release of Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a crime-thriller set in the murky underworld of the Boston-Irish Mafia. A well-crafted piece that sees Scorsese return to the cinematic heights he once scaled with GoodFellas, the film is a remake of recent Hong Kong crime-thriller Infernal Affairs. As such, it's the latest entry in a long line of Asia-to-US remakes, which, for all their individual merits, represent perhaps the most cynical side of Hollywood film production. Over recent years, classy Japanese horrors such as Ringu (The Ring), Dark Water and Ju-on: The Grudge, have provided fresh material for Hollywood to plunder, in a time when home-grown originality is increasingly scarce in the mainstream.

Despite being freely available, in their original forms, on both sides of the Atlantic, these movies' collective status as "Foreign Film" has hindered their circulation in all but the most enthusiastic film clubs, academic-film circles and late-night TV schedules. The major US studios, however, are not about to miss out on an opportunity, and as a result all three of the aforementioned titles have been remade in the US, with The Ring and The Grudge spawning more-of-the-same sequels in mirror-image of their Japanese origins. The foreign locations are swapped with suitably eerie American counterparts, big-name or up-and-coming Hollywood stars are signed up to multi-picture deals (as production executives predict franchises), in the case of The Grudge the original Japanese director is hired, and, crucially, the characters all speak English with American accents; two hours of subtitles are often unwelcome in the multiplex environment on a Friday night.

Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with originality. The major studios tend to operate best when a problem can be solved by throwing money at it, which is great when creating a summer blockbuster where regular fireworks will keep the popcorn-audience entertained. Money buys technology, improvements in technology produce better-looking fireworks, and studio-executives everywhere go home happy, slapping each other's backs and giving the effects techie a bonus (maybe). In contrast, original material - namely, decent writing - is harder to come by, and when it does appear, it can be a gamble. It's untested, it's risky, and it's invariably more cerebral, a word which is less likely to appear on the wish-list of the average movie-goer in the multiplex on the all-important opening weekend.

Over the past few years (or longer, as some would argue), the well of originality in Hollywood has become particularly dry, with studios falling back on big-screen versions of classic TV shows, hoping to cash-in on nostalgia and long-established fan-bases, whilst never underestimating the help of modernised premises and current big-name stars. Think of Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels (and its sequel), Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell in Bewitched, Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville in Dukes of Hazzard... I would go on, but for a sudden pain in my head.

Remakes are as effective an exercise in risk-reduction, although the studios have for some time now been gleefully raiding their own archives, as well as those of the Far East. Occasionally entertaining but ultimately soulless "reimaginings" of The Poseidon Adventure (renamed simply Poseidon, perhaps to cater better for the 21st-century attention-span), The Omen, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, to name but four, have all hit cinemas over the last year or so. The occasional involvement of big-name directors appears to offer a degree of validation to the otherwise cynical practice. Of course, each has his own motivation. Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds stemmed from his lifelong enthusiasm for the story. Although massively rushed (barely a year passed from the moment Tom Cruise first read the updated screenplay and committed, to the film hitting cinemas), his version turned into an effective modern invasion-thriller, and has been interpreted, in my view rightly, as the director's response, through allegory, to the events of 9/11. As a 12 year-old boy, Peter Jackson tried remaking King Kong, the film that inspired him to become a filmmaker. As a 12 year-old he failed, but last year his second attempt benefited from thirty years experience and a $200 million budget-increase. While the finished product doesn't quite match the quality of the 1933 original, it comes pretty close. Even 80s indie saviours the Coen Brothers have given it a go, with their version of The Ladykillers, while Steven Soderbergh has given us a remake of Ocean's 11 and a sequel, with a third coming our way next year. With Soderbergh also a former indie saviour, it's almost enough to make you cry. For all the wrong reasons.

Still, these "reimaginings" would dry up without the support of the audience. Whilst the cultural revolution of the 1970s produced an abundance of groundbreaking cinema, from Easy Rider to Scorsese's own Raging Bull, this was before the time of today's primary cinema-going audience, many of whom were not aware that the recent Poseidon was a remake at all. This cinematic amnesia works in the studios' favour, as they take it upon themselves to "reimagine" the hits of the past, in the same manner in which they've approached classic television. Rough-and-ready production-values (originally necessitated by low-budget filmmaking), enthusiastic directors and unknown casts have all been completely reversed, and this trend is set to continue. This month, for example, sees the cinematic release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a prequel to the remake of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and apparently unrelated (except in name, of course) to the two sequels spawned by said original. Next year, we'll be treated to Hannibal Rising, which will be not the first, nor the second, but the third prequel, in terms of narrative chronology, to The Silence of the Lambs. Telling the story of the young Hannibal and how he came to be 'The Cannibal', it's doubtful whether Anthony Hopkins was too upset over losing that particular gig. Instead it serves as still more evidence of how far Hollywood will go to make a buck.

9/11 in Cinema

Historically, America is not great at confronting sources of national trauma. A pertinent example is the Vietnam War, the first major conflict that the US ever lost. After more than a decade of fighting and nearly 60,000 American deaths, the nation slipped into a long period of self-induced historical amnesia, an unwillingness to confront the ghosts of the past. Indeed, it was only in 1986, nearly fifteen years after the American withdrawal from Saigon, that the true realities of the War were first addressed in cinema, with Oliver Stone's Platoon. Even in 1986, Stone had immense difficulty getting funding for a script which had been universally shunned for a decade.

Recovery from, and indeed confrontation of, the tragic events of 9/11, seems to have been more accelerated. After various TV projects telling the same story, Paul Greengrass' outstanding United 93 was released in cinemas earlier this year, to both massive plaudits and massive controversy. Telling the story of the fourth hijacked plane with a notable absence of recognised actors and several air-traffic controllers playing themselves, the film comes across as almost documentary in style, especially as we watch the controllers on the ground reacting to the horrifying events in New York and Washington.

Of course, many believe that United 93 was made 'too soon', coming less than five years after the attacks. Although I of course understand the argument, my own belief is that 9/11 is an unavoidable area of study, in order to attempt to understand and explore the foundation of the Bush Administration's current foreign policy. The roots of the current chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq are to be found in the chaos that was created in New York and Washington back in 2001.

Only months after Paul Greengrass explored the story of United 93 in a gritty, stomach-churning and apparently authentic style, Oliver Stone has won apparently universal praise (in the US, at least) for the first major studio response to the attacks, World Trade Center. With a big budget and a big-name actor, Nicolas Cage, Stone's approach to the subject seems to have been far easier for American audiences to digest. With television schedules around the fifth anniversary of 9/11 crowded with documentaries and docu-dramas exploring the numerous governmental failings that lead to the attacks, it is actually refreshing to hear a story of courage and strength that emerged from the death and destruction. Telling the story of two Port Authority cops who were among the last survivors to be pulled from the rubble of the fallen towers, Stone's film tells the story of 9/11 from two relatively unseen angles; first from inside the towers up to the moment of collapse, and then from beneath twenty feet of rubble as the two men attempt to stay alive, their distraught families living on scraps of information that reach the outside world from the search-teams.

It is by no means a terrific film, displaying many of the negative hallmarks of mainstream Hollywood in regards to tinges of emotional manipulation, and a sequence exploring global reactions to the attacks carries a cringe-inducing crassness. For me, the film was in fact near its most poignant during the opening scenes, as we see a city waking up and going about its business, oblivious to the physical and emotional devastation about to be wreaked upon it. For all its faults, however, the sentiment is right, and is certainly the direction in which we should be headed. With governmental failings identified and (hopefully) addressed, and with chaos subsequently wrought across Afghanistan and Iraq with the resulting wrath of US foreign policy, it has never been more important to remember the humanity that saved lives back on the day that the world changed.