In Their Skin (2012) : Thou Shalt Not Covet...

Is there anything more frightening than a home invasion? While examples of this sub-genre of horror have been done several times before - with many of those films being top notch - there always seems to be room for more fear-inducing cinematic outings of this nature.

In previous movies like Funny Games (both the original in 1997 and the remake version of 2007), À l'intérieur (a.k.a. Inside, 2007), Ils (a.k.a. Them, 2006), and the eerily effective 2008 film The Strangers, they have scared people shitless and made many think twice about being alone in an isolated home out in the boondocks.

But there is one thing I can say about these types of films. They scare me.  After all, what is more frightening that someone breaking into your home (and your life) and wreaking havoc? It's a primal fear in all of us - being invaded, hurt, even possibly killed - in our own home.  The thought of that fractures us to our very being - because we're supposed to be safe in the comfort of our own home, right?

All of the above referenced titles have made me so uneasy - so tense - that I couldn't get them out of my head for days after I watched them. So when I was given the opportunity to see the newest home-invasion flick, the IFC Midnight production  In Their Skin, I jumped on it.

Directed by Jeremy Power Regimbal and starring Selma Blair, Josh Close, James D'Arcy, and Rachel Miner, In Their Skin starts out quiet, with subtle nuances that map out a family's grief and recent heartache. We find out early-on that the Hughes family is struggling to put their lives back together after the death of their young daughter, and have come up to their rather swanky family cottage in the woods to attempt to get back to the normalcy that is their life. We are privy to the fact that a couple's marriage is skating on thin ice and this might be their last chance at redeeming happiness.

When they are awakened very early one morning by loud noises in their yard, Mark (Close, who also co-wrote the film) is startled to find a couple and their son rooting around in their yard.  They introduce themselves as the The Sakowskis, a family "just down the lane".  They have come to the Hughes house to meet their neighbors and bring them some fire wood. Huh?? After a blundering conversation that is more awkward than neighborly, the Sakowski's have somehow invited themselves to dinner at the Hughes'.  Believe me when I say: it is obvious to anyone watching that something is just not right with the Sakowskis - which the Hughes' are about to find out. 

Bobby (D'Arcy), Jane (Miner) and their son Jared (Alex Ferris) show up for dinner and eagerly  meet Mark's wife Mary (Blair) and son Brendon (Quinn Lord).  Almost immediately Bobby begins to ask personal (verging on intimate) questions about Mark and Mary's lives.  Jane is a mousy, ungraceful stray that takes all her cues from Bobby - who scolds her on occasion for doing or saying inappropriate things. It's obvious that she doesn't think for herself for fear of heinous repercussions. The dinner is disastrous, and the tension between the two couples could be cut with a knife. The conversation turns towards all the blessings that have been bestowed upon the Hughes family due to their well-paying careers and affluent lifestyles. Jealousy rears its ugly head oh so gingerly, but it is apparent that the Sakowski's are green-eyed and anxious to live their own lives like Mark and Mary.
Soon, Jared and Brendon head upstairs when Bobby suggests they check out Brendon's room, giving the adults the opportunity to become even more uncomfortable.

Bobby spills wine on himself seemingly on purpose, and is happy to be able to take his shirt off and replace it with one of Mark's.  As if this isn't weird enough, we soon are privy to the two boys upstairs activities, which ends up including Jared holding a knife to Brendon's throat. Screaming ensues, children are comforted, and the Sakowski's are asked to leave - nicely at first, then forcefully when it seems they don't want to make their exit.

Things take a hideous turn for the worse when the family dog is let outside after the Sakowski's have left.  A gunshot is heard, and then another - and Mark urges his family to hide out in the bathroom while he checks it out. Needless to say, the next thing we know, Bobby and Co. are back and ready to take over.  And I'm being completely literal here.  In a twist that is different than most other home invasion horror movies, it appears that Bobby and Jane don't just want to invade the Hughes' home - they want to live their lives.  There is a very chilling scene just after a violent outburst in which we see Jane imitate Mary with an intentional yet uncanny creepiness that makes the bizarre couple's intent glaringly obvious.

In Their Skin isn't breaking any molds here within the home invasion sub-genre, but what it does have going for it is fine performances by all the leads. I didn't even recognize Rachel Miner right away - the last thing I'd seen her in was Penny Dreadful (2006). James D'Arcy is a British actor whose next role is as Anthony Perkins in the upcoming Hitchcock (2012).  He's got crazy down pretty good here in this film, his Bobby is so eerily bizarre, so disturbing, that it sets the stage for the entire film. And though I've never thought much about Selma Blair's acting ability, I've reconsidered and would have to say this may be some of her most honest work.

If I were to find a fault with In Their Skin, it may be the almost unbearably slow pace.  I'm all for building tension - and this film has it in spades - but there is so much quiet time here that when you do have a bit of violence it can be a bit off-putting. But the suspense is palpable and causes an anxiety that doesn't show up in most horror films. The reason for that is simple: it could happen to you. And just as The Strangers warned us before, the reason could simply be because you were home.

In Their Skin opened in limited release November 9th.

Tell Tale (2009): Hideous Hearts Need Not Apply

Naturally when I came across this title when surfing TV the other night, I knew I had to DVR it for future viewing.  I mean, it had to be some kind of re-telling of Poe's classic short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, right?   And seeing as how that is my favorite of Poe's stories, I hit record.
Having just finished watching Tell Tale, I can assure you:  this is not a "version" of the Poe tale.  They have used a few elements of the story within the film (in particular the character being able to hear heartbeats, albeit it is his own heart), and one character even says aloud the famous line: "...it is the beating of his hideous heart!" But other than that, this film is unrelated.  That being said, it really wasn't a bad movie.  It had its moments.  Apparently the film couldn't find studio funding so went straight to DVD.  I'd never heard of it until now.

Terry Bernard (Josh Lucas) is the lucky recipient of a new heart.  His transplant came on the heels of another man's murder, however, and just after surgery Terry has some strange experiences in which he can "see" his donor's last moments, including the faces of a few unknown assailants. 

As if Terry doesn't have enough to worry about, his young daughter Angela has Scleroderma (a chronic systemic autoimmune disease in which the connective tissues and internal organs harden to the consistency of bone) and apparently her mother couldn't handle that and up and left them. Bitch.
Thankfully she has a wonderful doctor (Lena Headey of '300' fame) who not only gives her superior care, but has taken an interest in Dad as well.  How convenient.

Anyway, just as Elizabeth (super-doc) and Terry are starting a relationship, Terry starts having more "memories", essentially visions or flashbacks, if you will, of his donor's death. Triggered by running into a skeevy paramedic in an alley outside the hospital, Terry has a vision of said paramedic and begins to question him to see if he knew his donor, which causes an altercation in which the paramedic tries to harm Terry with a piece of broken bottle. They struggle and the paramedic ends up with the glass in his chest, drops to the ground and promptly dies.

This situation only causes Terry's visions to amp up. He delves into the death of his donor by contacting the detective who was on call the night of the donor's death.  Detective Van Doren is wary at first, but when Terry explains his flashbacks well enough that they coincide with the details of the crime, Van Doren takes an active interest in the case again. 

Unfortunately, the further Terry investigates into the crime, the worse off his life becomes.  His burgeoning relationship with Elizabeth starts to falter, as she senses something is wrong but he won't produce any information and starts to alienate her.  His daughter has to depend on Elizabeth to take her to school and other activities because Terry is either sleeping off a flashback or in search of more clues. In fact, he often becomes almost like another person when he is in the grips of these flashbacks.

His digging lands him in deep trouble when his donor's killers finally get wise to his actions, though they have no way of knowing the real reason Terry is so curious as to his donor's last moments.  They start putting pieces together, but so does Terry - leading him to actually commit acts of murder on his donor's behalf. Obviously that's where the film takes a bit of a dark turn.

If it all seems far-fetched, that's because it is.  But Lucas's performance is compelling enough that it kept me interested and dare I say, entertained.  Lucas kind of ran the gamut of emotions within the film, and it was the most interesting when he would track down one of the men involved in his donor's murder and "take care of them".
 It was almost like he became his donor for those moments - and in fact Terry's own doctor said that he had "adopted" his donor's blood-type after the transplant.  Meaning that his blood type had switched to the type his donor had. I've never heard of this, so doubt that it can happen- even though Terry's doctor did mention that that occurrence was exceedingly rare but can happen. Hmm......

There is a bit of a surprising twist in the very last moments of the film that I wasn't expecting.  It added a little more to the ending for me and kind of put things in perspective.  All in all, I wouldn't give this an Oscar or anything, but it held my attention for an hour and a half, and you could do a lot worse.

OCTOBER 31: THIRTY-ONE SPOOKY PLACES

"Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?"
~Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

'Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare."  ~Alfred Hitchcock

"I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it."  ~Tori Amos

"O Death, rock me asleep, bring me to quiet rest, let pass my weary guiltless ghost out of my careful breast."  ~Anne Boleyn

"Fear and I were old buddies, despite my best efforts to the contrary." ~ Peter Straub

"To him who is in fear everything rustles."  ~Sophocles

"This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten."   ~David Herbert Lawrence

"We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight."  ~H.P. Lovecraft

"The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you free. " ~Buddha

"What scares me is what scares you. We're all afraid of the same things. That's why horror is such a powerful genre. All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you'll know what frightens me."  ~John Carpenter

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

"We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."
~Stephen King

"I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any. "  ~Lao Tzu

"Fear makes us feel our humanity."  ~Benjamin Disraeli

"Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God."
~Sean Connery

"I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that." ~Kevin Bacon

"Whether you like it or not, you're forced to come to the realization that death is out there. But I don't fear death, I'm a fatalist. I believe when it's your time, that's it. It's the hand you're dealt."  ~Clint Eastwood

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."  ~Mark Twain

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead." ~Albert Einstein

"Fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind."  ~Dale Carnegie

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."  ~Jim Morrison

"Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them." ~ George Eliot

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes..." ~Shakespeare (Macbeth)

'There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear."  ~Ben Johnson

"Where there is no imagination there is no horror." ~Arthur Conan Doyle

"Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table."  ~W. H. Auden

"Fear has many eyes and can see things underground ." ~Miguel de Cervantes

"As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it. " ~Chanakya

"Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself."  ~Samuel Butler

"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places."  ~H.P. Lovecraft

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. "  ~Edgar Allan Poe

                                        HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

OCTOBER 30: THIRTY VINTAGE COSTUMES THAT MAKE US SMILE