The Art of Edvard Munch

This is Edvard Munch.

This is the painting you all have seen and know him best for.

 

HOWEVER, there are so many more paintings by Munch that are creepy, intriguing, unsettling, beautiful, sad, and downright chilling.  Munch was born in December of 1863 in Norway.  His mother died of tuberculosis when he was only five years old.  Edvard was often sick and kept out of school for much of the winters, during which he developed his drawing skills to keep himself occupied.  His father was obsessively religious to the point of psychoneurosis and often sternly reprimanded his children saying their mother was watching them from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior.  Munch's persistent illness combined with his father's temper helped inspire many of his nightmarish and melancholy paintings.  He felt that death was constantly advancing on him.

Later in life, Munch left college to become a painter, much to the chagrin of his father.  He experimented with naturalism and impressionism but didn't feel a true connection with these art styles.  Munch began a period of reflection and self-examination and recorded his thoughts in his "soul's diary."  His most famous work The Scream, first painted in 1893, exists in four versions, two pastels and two paintings.  The Scream has been widely interpreted as representing the anxiety of modern man.  Here is Munch's description of how The Scream originated: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature."  So...that's creepy.

Inheritance (1897-1899)
Munch witnessed an event in Paris that led to the creation of this painting.  A mother in a hospital waiting room held her dying child on her lap as she cried.  The child had contracted syphilis and is depicted with an abnormal-sized head, gaunt limbs, and rashes.  The falling leaves on the mother's skirt represent death.  This picture provoked much backlash in Munch's day.  Sexuality and venereal diseases were seen as taboo subjects and many felt Munch had crossed the line with his depiction of a harsh reality in this painting.

Self Portrait in Hell (1903)
Munch's peculiar self-portrait depicts himself naked in the garden of his summer home.  This unnerving painting indicates how troubled Munch was and how he perceived his position as a man and an artist, figuratively in hell.  The large black mass to the left forms a threatening shadow believed to be either the grave or a giant black wing.  However, Munch has not painted himself succumbing to his demons.  He poses strongly, confidently, as though he is the dark ruler of his own private hell.

Death of Marat (1907)
Based off of the painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered French revolutionary leader, Jean-Paul Marat.  Munch's style is erratic, agitated, and heavy.  This was said to reflect his disturbed mental state at the time, as this was painted shortly before his mental breakdown and resulting therapeutic treatment.  Munch stated with this painting, he had an urge to "break the areas and lines."

Workers On Their Way Home (1913-1915)
"Under a cloudy, winter evening sky, a gaunt column of workers, an unstoppable human tide, flows ‘through the cold blue shadows’ of a sunless, treeless, Nordic street. The central figures challenge us with their dark, hollowed-out eyes, their upright posture and clenched fists conveying a sense of determination, solidarity and defiance. They sport beards, soft hats and blue jackets with brown trousers and dark vests. One has a distinctive white face—from dust or disease?"


Shown below are more works from Munch I find to be particularly unnerving and sad, though beautifully executed.

Golgotha (1900)

Jealousy (1895)

Agony (1895)

Throughout the course of his career and life, Munch suffered from crippling anxiety coupled with excessive drinking and brawling.  Munch entered therapy in 1908 and was treated with "electrification."  Interestingly, in the 1930s and 1940s, Nazis labeled Munch's art as "degenerate art" and removed 82 of his pieces from German museums.  Munch died at the age of 80 in his home near Oslo but not without having left his mark on the world in both pop culture and to us creepy aficionados who always like to dig a little deeper.


-Amanda


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Starry Eyes - Movie Review

Starry Eyes
2014
Dir. Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch

Spoilers ahead

Starry Eyes is a recently released horror film and I have to say, though I had heard nothing of it before randomly running across it on Netflix and the user reviews were mixed, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked Starry Eyes.  It was a reasonable mix of gore, supernatural elements, human depravity, and uncomfortableness.  Very often horror movies start out with a big scare and then trickle deaths or scary moments throughout the film, culminating in the final epic death scene.  Starry Eyes took a bit of a different approach, starting out slow and creepily building throughout the entire film until all of the epic-ness was crammed into about the last 25 minutes.  But it wasn't in a boring or dull way.  There wasn't a ton of filler and then a bit of action.  It was consistently unsettling and curiosity-evoking throughout the entire film.

Our film focuses around Sarah, a skinny self-conscious diner waitress by day and aspiring actress by night, as so many seem to be these days.  She has an audition for a film "The Silver Scream" produced by Astraeus Pictures in which she meets two super dicky casting directors who basically blow her off and she goes to have a meltdown in the bathroom, pulling her hair out, screaming, acting generally crazy.  The female casting director catches this tantrum and brings her back to the audition room to reenact it.  Sarah falls on the ground convulsing and screaming and the casting directors are intrigued by her passion and unbridled emotions and she gets a callback.

It all goes downhill from here.  On her second callback, Sarah enters a dark room and is asked to disrobe.  The lights go out and then proceed to flash in a strobe light effect as we see shadowy figures and quick shots of Sarah with sharp teeth and bleeding from the mouth.  This whole scene is very artsy but done quite well.  Throughout the film, we are also introduced to Sarah's roommates/friends who are all douchey southern Californian "stereotypical theater kids."  They are critical of all of Sarah's attempts at acting and do nothing but condescendingly criticize her on a regular basis.  Sarah learns that the producer of the film wants to meet with her and he is a creepy older man who explains to Sarah that "The industry is a plague of shallowness" and he "Wants to capture the ugliness of the human spirit."  He offers her the role in the film but also wants a BJ, of course.  Sarah runs away, disgusted.

A bit later, Sarah and her friends take some ecstasy and have a pool party and in the midst of her high, Sarah calls the producer back and says she really wants the part.  She heads to Astraeus Pictures and basically is propositioned by the producer to kill her old life and step inside the gateway of a glorious new life as she is surrounded by men in creepy black masks and hoods.  The music builds, the tension increases, the audience is on the edge of their seats as we wonder what Sarah is going to do...

He gets the BJ he wanted, afterall.

Then the movie progresses into the second half, which I consider to be the gross but awesome half.  Sarah is at a true turning point and starts to experience oddities that both confuse and exhilarate her.  Sarah experiences intense stomach pain, drools at work at the diner and slaps her boss, gets fired, vomits, has her hair fall out and her fingernails fall off, asks her roommate if she is on period because she can smell her, and tells her best friend to F off.  Granted, I summarized all of these occurrences in one run-on sentence but this evolution of Sarah's character from a walked-all-over but quiet sweetheart to a gross, dirty, sick asshole is simultaneously intriguing and heartbreaking.  Her physical corruption alone is hard to watch and I really have to give it up to the hair and makeup team on the film as they made Sarah look repulsive in a very sad way.

Our movie reaches its highest tension point when Sarah's eyes cloud over, she bleeds from the mouth and private parts, throws up a ton of maggots in the bathtub, and starts to lose all of her hair.  She gets a call from the producer telling her she can die and be forgotten or be reborn.  "It's time to become one of us.  It's time to be remembered."  Sarah goes on an absolute rampage killing all her friends/roommates.  Several are stabbed multiple times and the goriest death is when Sarah pounds her friend's face in with a dumbbell, completely obliterating her face and head.  At the end, hooded figures come out of the shadows and bloody naked Sarah emerges from a grave, bald, muddy, and with freakishly long fingernails.  She receives a special birthday package from Astraeus with a gown and wig inside as she admires her beauty in the mirror and we see shots of various old Hollywood glamorous stars in the background, as we are led to believe perhaps they too were patrons of Astraeus Pictures.

 

The thing I like about Starry Eyes is even though it's gross and gory and sexual and desperate, it never spells out exactly what the leaders of Astraeus Pictures are.  Are they members of a cult?  Are they vampires?  Are they witches?  I thought they were vampires due to the various comments about blood throughout the film but Sarah isn't seen with the generic vampire teeth at the end of the film.  My husband watched it as well and he found it to be somewhat boring and he didn't pick up on the vampire theme at all, so maybe I'm crazy?  However, that's what I actually love about the movie.  It makes so little sense and leaves so many questions unanswered but not in an enraging way.  It doesn't project the annoyance of sparkly Twilight vampires but instead has the audience witness a nasty, gory, gross, and debilitating process of being reborn and the struggle that comes with choosing a new life and abandoning everything you thought you once knew.  The rebirth, the brainwashing, the ravenous side of Sarah is glamorized.  Even after she has killed all of her friends, she feels beautiful, sophisticated, and more alive than ever.  Starry Eyes is twisted.  It's complicated.  It's sad and it's gory.  More than anything, it's different.  I grow tired of the same old repetitive horror movie formula, so for that reason alone, Starry Eyes gets two thumbs up from me (but only one thumb up from my husband!)

-Amanda

Entity - Movie Review

Entity (2012)
Directed by Steve Stone
-Spoilers ahead-

The best parts of the movie Entity are the first five minutes and the last ten minutes.  This may sound anticlimactic but in all honesty, the middle hour and fifteen minutes of the film are a healthy mixture of boring, generic, found footage-esque paranormal cliches and legit spooky and disturbing moments.  So, let's start from the beginning in Sadovich, Russia in 1983.  We see a naked, gaunt, screaming man, Mischka, in a cell with a dirty old bed, completely freaking out, yelling in Russian, convulsing while strapped to the bed, popping up into the camera unexpectedly, and then legit FLOATING face down in mid-air.  Yep, now I'm freaked out.

 

We flash forward to present day where we meet a group of five hiking through the forest.  We have Kate, the host of a TV show, psychic Ruth, author Yuri, and sound guy and camera guy, David and Matt.  The group is investigating a 1998 case where the remains of 34 people were found in shallow graves in the middle of the forest.  Police investigations were inconclusive and the case was closed after only one search by the police.  Psychic Ruth is here to lead the investigation and hopefully bring some answers to light on what happened to the 34 people.  We see Yuri being interviewed by Kate, as he was the one who initially brought the story to the TV show to cover.  He has a special interest in the case that is yet to be revealed.

 

The group reaches an open field wherein Ruth begins to get visions of several sepia-toned apparitions with cloudy eyes and ratty hospital gowns speaking to her in Russian, one of which pops up in her face and makes us all collectively poop our pants.  Ruth gets a vision of several men and women being lined up in a row and shot in the head one after another.  She leads the group to the other side of the trees where they find a massive abandoned warehouse.  They experience all the paranormal haunting cliches such as hearing screams, breathing cold air, hearing voices saying "They shouldn't be here" and an electric chair that moves on its own.  Ruth sits in the chair and sees an old man getting electroshock therapy and comes to the realization that, "They put people like me here" meaning the 34 people killed all were thought to have some sort of psychic ability.

 

The group continues to explore the building and finds a corridor of cells where the psychics were kept for months in the dark for observation.  There was one who was different from the others, Mischka, whose strong presence emanated from his bed.  We see Mischka pop up again right up in the camera and we all collectively poop our pants AGAIN.  Matt, the cameraman, decides to set his camera up outside Mischka's cell and leave it there as they continue to explore.  Also at this point, David, the sound guy disappears and we later see him being tossed up and down and slammed into the floor like a rag doll by Mischka. 

 

We have a momentary break in all the excitement by finally gaining an understanding of why Yuri is so interested in this case.  Turns out, Yuri has been here before and was testing Ruth to see if she could find the place on her own, to see if she was a true psychic.  Yuri enlightens us that the facility was run by the government who wanted to see if psychics could read enemy minds or locate strategic locations over long distances.  The government officials tried to increase the prisoners' psychic powers by introducing electric currents into their brains and keeping them in dark soundproof rooms for months to weaken their other senses and strengthen their psychic senses.  When the place was eventually shut down, they took the bodies of any people who were still left in the facility and buried them in the woods.  This is when I forget about the stupid paranormal cliches of this movie and it gets my solid seal of approval for the uniqueness of this back story.

Ruth has finally had enough and says they need to get out but Yuri breaks bad and says they cannot leave.  See, the love of Yuri's live, Tasha, was a psychic and is one of the 34 dead.  He needs Ruth to find her and bring her peace.  As they go on a search for Tasha, the group walks through a hallway and then the double doors slam and lock, leaving Yuri on the other side.  He hears Tasha calling to him and as she follows her image down the hallway he gets blindsided by Mischka's spirit and he and all the other spirits engage in a scream-fest.  Bye bye, Yuri.  Ruth sprints out on her own as Kate and Matt try to escape the building altogether.  We see Mischka attack Ruth and as she's bleeding and about to pass out, she whispers, "Let me help you."  We see creepy naked Mischka hovering on the ceiling and whimpering.  He crawls over to Ruth and convulses and screams in her face and we fade to black.  Kate and Matt decide they can't leave Ruth behind and come back to find her beat up but peaceful that she was able to help bring Mischka peace.  Well, surprise, Mischka is still lurking around and he guts Matt and throws Kate through the air against a wall.

 

Kate wakes up in Mischka's bed and our movie comes to its depressing close.  Kate walks past all of the cells in the corridor and sees David, Yuri, Matt, all "alive" and solemnly staring at her from their cell beds.  Ruth walks out of her cell with clouded gray eyes and speaks in Russian, "You can never leave here now" and then walks backwards and exits like a boss.  Kate suddenly sees visions of all the former dead prisoners as a single tear rolls down her face.  She goes back to Mischka's cell and sits on his bed contemplatively as opera music plays over the scene as we watch Kate slowly become more and more transparent and then fade away completely.  Very powerful ending (and I'm not being sarcastic for once.)

Here's what I like about Entity:

- Mischka is creepy, crazy, out of control, and always moves in a blur, a shadow, night vision, darkness.  We never see a clear well-lighted shot of what he even looks like.  His erratic movements and constant shrieking and growling and thrashing add to the mystery and depravity of his spirit.

-There is a good effort put forth to creating tension at a pretty steady pace throughout the film.  There are heartbeats pounding over the particularly intense scenes and always fast camera movements to cement the feelings of insecurity and chaos.

-There's no happy ending.  And I like it.  Not every horror film, especially paranormal ones, needs a happy ending where the spirits are put to rest, the demons are exorcised, the house is free of spirits, and everyone goes back to their normal daily lives.  No!  Entity leaves us with a feeling of dread, hopelessness, no peace, no resolution for the souls who died there.  Now we know there are even more souls trapped there than before and any who come to explore in the future will likely be trapped as well.  There is no closure.  The mystery will continue.  No one on the outside gets any answers or any clarity.

I definitely recommend Entity if you can get past the typical paranormal cliches and over-acting of the lead character, Kate, and focus on the deeper depressing story and the awesomeness of Mischka's crazy ass.

-Amanda

NOAA Unidentified Sounds

NOAA stands for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and they have a great habit of capturing some creepy sh*! on their autonomous hydrophones.  I already have a pretty large fear of the deepest darkest parts of the ocean, the creatures which may lay below, able to survive places man cannot venture to, lurking around down there unbeknownst to the human race, huge, many teeth, slow or fast-moving....*shudder*  Below I have inserted audio clips of some of the strangest and creepiest recorded unidentified sounds.  Keep in mind, these are nothing but simple sounds but when you try to picture in your mind WHAT exactly may be making these sounds...your imagination can start to unnerve you very quickly and very easily.

Upsweep

Recorded in August of 1991, Upsweep consists of a "long train of narrow-band upsweeping sounds of several seconds in duration each."  The source of Upsweep has been tracked to a location of inferred volcanic seismicity and seems to be seasonal, reaching its peaks in Spring and Autumn.  The source level was strongest in 1991 and has been declining ever since but can still be captured on the hydrophones throughout the Pacific Ocean.  Upsweep is more precisely located near Antarctica, about 2,500 miles west of the southern tip of South America.  It was originally believed that the Upsweep sound might be fin whales but this theory was debunked in 1996 when researchers argued there wasn't enough variation in the tone for it to be created biologically.

Bloop

Bloop is perhaps the most well-known unidentified sound.  At least it's the first one I heard of many years ago.  Bloop was captured in 1997.  The sound is apparently consistent with the noises generated by "icequakes" or large icebergs scraping along the ocean floor.  What's creepy about Bloop is that it is several times louder than the loudest recorded animal, the blue whale.  However, some believe that maybe Bloop is evidence of an even larger life form lurking in the depths of the oceans.  Interestingly enough, no other Bloops have been recorded since 1997.



Julia

I'm simultaneously creeped out by this and laughing beause it sounds like Chewbacca yawning before taking a nice nap.   Julia was recorded in 1999 near Antarctica.  Julia lasts 15 seconds and is said to be the sound of a large iceberg running into the seafloor.  I'm going to hold my ground that there's a really large species of underwater Chewbaccas that are just really sleepy.


Slow Down

Slow Down is pretty dang creepy to me.  Recorded in 1997, the source is believed to be an iceberg becoming grounded.  Slow Down's sound slowly decreases over the course of SEVEN MINUTES and has been picked up several times each year since first being heard in 1997, according to Wikipedia.  Apparently Slow Down is the result of the friction caused by a large sheet of ice moving over land.




Train

Recorded in 1997, Train rises to a quasi-steady frequency.  Once again, the origin is likely to be a very large iceberg grounded in the Ross Sea near Cap Adare.  Interstingly, Train was the unidentified sound I was able to gather the least amount of information on during my research.

So, lovely readers, how do you feel about these unidentified sounds?  Are they not creepy at all?  Are they slightly unnerving?  Do you believe them all to be iceberg shifts or volcanic activity or is it possible there is something else down there producing these noises?  I guess we are left only to rely on science as best we can in this situation, but if even the greatest scientists classify these sounds as "unidentified", is it possible that they could be made by something we couldn't even imagine?  *shudders again for good measure*

-Amanda

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White With Red

Sometimes I make the mistake of just assuming that people know what creepypasta is.  I feel if you were to stumble across our blog and invest any amount of time in it, you have some interest in the creepy, horrific, odd, and disturbing, BUT why should I assume you know what creepypasta is?

Creepypasta, as defined by Google, is "the name given to all kinds of weird, urban legend-type things going on in the Internet.  Some are stories, some are images, some are videos, and all of them are potential making-you-crap-your-pants material."  Long before the days of the internet, horror lovers were left to rely on film, literature, and music in order to experience the creepiness they craved, but with the advent of the world wide web, we now have infinite creepiness at our fingertips, just a click away.  The accessibility of creepiness on the internet can have a mixed reaction.  On one hand, it's amazing to be able to explore various websites (Reddit being a large contributor) and find new and innovative creepy stories to pore through on a lazy Sunday.  On the other hand, there is a plethora of complete crap out there probably written in a span of ten minutes that is generic and grammatical error-laden, whipped up with the hopes of becoming the next big viral creepy superstar.

However, to give creepypasta the respect it is somewhat due, I would be remiss if I did not mention White With Red, one of the very first creepypastas I was exposed to probably more than five years ago.  White With Red reads as follows:

A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. She explained that it was a storeroom, and that it was out of bounds. She reminded him of this several times before allowing him upstairs. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed.

However, the insistence of the woman had piqued his curiosity, so the next night he walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye. What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was incredibly pale. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. Was this a celebrity? The owner's daughter? He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity but decided not to.

As he was still looking, the woman turned sharply and he jumped back from the door, hoping she would not suspect he had been spying on her. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn't make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red. He felt embarrassed that he had made the woman so uncomfortable, and hoped she had not made a complaint with the woman on the front desk.

At this point he decided to consult her for more information. She sighed and said, "Did you look through the keyhole?"

The man told her that he had and she said, "Well, I might as well tell you the story of what happened in that room. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in there, and we find that even now, whoever stays there gets very uncomfortable. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red."


Simple, straight to the point, and if this is the first time you've ever read this story, I hope it elicited at least some sort of response - a slight case of the chill bumps, a tingle up your spine, an inward uncomfortable chuckle.  One thing I can appreciate about kindred spirits across the world, creepy-lovers such as ourselves, is they take it upon themselves to recreate creepypastas in video format and post them on YouTube for all to see.  Brandon Christensen is the producer, director, and editor of the White With Red adaptation linked above and Matthew Greene is the director of photography, producer, and post-production.  Published in August of 2013, not even two years old, Christensen's video has gotten nearly 100,000 views on YouTube, on a channel with only seven videos, the rest receiving only 39-1,500 views.  Yes, to all you doubters, creepypasta has quite a devout following.

Judge for yourself how you feel Christensen and Greene were able to capture the creepiness of White With Red.  Also, please enjoy this link to the site, The Floor is Now Lava, featuring a cartoon version of the White With Red story.

White With Red Comic

As a self-proclaimed creepy-lover, I sometimes feel I am desensitized to all the creepy, weird, and strange things I look up on a regular basis, but if I am able to put myself back into the headspace of when I first started discovering creepypasta and ran across stories such as White With Red, I remember the ingenuity that first drew me in all those years ago and I smile in reverie at the beginnings of creepypasta and look forward to the days ahead as the only way to go from here is up.

[Did I just get somewhat sappy on a post about a made-up ghost in a hotel room?]

-Amanda

We Are What We Are - Movie Review

We Are What We Are
2013
Directed by Jim Mickle

Spoilers Ahead

In the history of the Hand of Jessee blog, I've reviewed slashers, thrillers, paranormal, found footage, '80s films, and B movies.  I felt it was only appropriate to review a film topic I'd never touched on before: cannibalism.  So, there's that.

We Are What We Are could've gone one of two ways.  It could've been an all out nasty, bloody, meaty, chunky, gorefest from start to finish or it could've been what it actually was, a slow burner, leaving more to the imagination than the eye. Until the end, that is.

Our film centers around the Parker family, Frank, Emma, Iris, Rose, and Rory.  The film begins with Emma Parker staring solemnly out the door on the last day of her life.  Upon walking home from the store, Emma sees a sign posting of a missing girl and immediately starts bleeding from the mouth, faints and dings her head on a pipe, falling in a shallow fountain and drowning.

We are then introduced to the rest of the Parker family, your typical portrait of a down-home, southern, conservative, plaited-hair, ruffled dress, and suspender wearing family.  We are made aware that the Parker family is on a very strict fast imposed by Frank, leaving his two daughters, Iris and Rose, and young son, Rory, starving.  We are treated to a pretty gross autopsy scene of the mother, Emma, where we learn that she had early onset Parkinson's.

As the film progresses, we learn that there has been a string of missing girls around town and bones have been turning up in the creek and nearby forests and trails.  Frank eerily spends a lot of time out in his shed, the sounds of whimpering and crying muffled underground.  Rory makes the mistake one day of going down in the basement and we get our sole jump scare of the movie when a hand shoots out from under a crack in a door, grasping at Rory.  He is caught by Frank and sternly reprimanded.

We later see Rose reading their family history from a diary that has been passed down generation to generation.  Apparently in previous eras, to survive their family had to rely on "eating meat."  We're not talking about cows or pigs here, people.  Iris frequently expresses that she wishes her family wasn't the way they were but Frank is sure to let them know that God chose them to be that way and if they are not, they get sick from "the poision" and die one by one.  Clearly, this dude is not firing on all cylinders.  Oh yeah and Frank has started to suffer from frequent nosebleeds and hand tremors.

The biggest point of tension in the movie comes when Iris, as the eldest daughter, is forced to replace her mother's role in preparing dinner.  She must go down to the basement with a scythe and after uttering, "It is with love that I do this.  God's will be done", kills one of the chained up women and then traces the meaty parts of her body with lipstick and drains her of blood.  Meanwhile, the nosy neighbor, Marge, hears the screams coming from below the Parker house.

We see the Parker family having a super meaty stew and are forced to endure close-ups of Frank's slurping and chewing and stew-stained beard for much longer than necessary.  All this time, the town sheriffs have been investigating the disappearances and start to put two and two together and suspect the Parkers.  The town doctor also sheds some light on the subject as we learn that Emma had not Parkinson's but Kuru Disease.  The main cause of Kuru Disease is dun, dun, dun cannibalism.  After catching Iris having sex with the youngest sheriff out in the woods, Frank decides it's time to punish his evil smite-worthy daughter and bring down the whole family by poisoning their stew with arsenic.  Well, let's just say the girls do not go down without a fight.

After an epic chase scene, a shoot-out with the doctor, Marge getting her throat slit, Frank convinces all the children to reconvene at the dinner table and finish their meal.  He lets them know, "All is forgiven in the eyes of the lord" and kisses them on the mouth.  Well, Rose decides to break bad and legit chomps into Frank's neck while Iris stabs him in the hand and starts eating his hand and arm.  We then basically have a five to ten minute scene of the girls eating their father to death and then driving out of town with their little brother and the family diary to live happily ever after (?) 

We Are What We Are had its fair share of pros and cons for me. 

Pros
- The cinematography was beautiful.  The film was awash with shades of blue, gray, beige, and other neutral colors.  There was not a single bright color in the film.  Everything was muted, pale, and rainy.  The nature shots of the town were fabulous, especially the shots of the forest and streams during rainstorms.
- In conjunction, the sounds are great as well.  We hear trickling water, crickets chirping, ticking clocks, but never jump scare shrieks, tension-building drums or violins, or harsh noises of any kind.
- The acting is done very well.  The girls, Iris and Rose, are very convincing in their roles as young intelligent girls wanting to break free but restrained under the harsh rule of their father.  Frank is a convincingly creepy and intimidating, soft-spoken, slow-moving dictator.

Cons
- I appreciate a good slow burn and build-up but We Are What We Are was almost a bit TOO slow-moving at certain points.  With about 45 minutes left to go in the movie, I started to lose interest and had to pause and come back to it.
- I would've liked them to explore a little more of the family history of how they became cannibals and why the tradition was so strongly upheld over time and also more about the Kuru Disease and its effects on the body.
- It's always a little gross to watch someone get eaten, but I guess that's a subjective con.

 

Anyway, overall I give We Are What We Are a positive rating for its unique take on the horror genre and its risk-taking.  This film serves as proof that you don't need to see every grimy gory detail in order to be left with an unnerved and unsettling feeling as you complete a film, impressed with its execution but never really wanting to watch it again.

-Amanda

Presumed Dead - Maria de Jesus Arroyo

It is a deep-seated fear of many to be buried alive or left for dead.  It is the driver of many an urban legend where one is presumed to be dead, placed in the morgue, and is later found out to have been alive.  One would think with the advances in today's medicine, the possiblity of mistaking a human for dead and leaving them in the morgue would be impossible, right?  Right?  Surely a highly-trained medical staff couldn't make this type of mistake.

Incorrect.

 

On July 26th, 2010, Maria de Jesus Arroyo was rushed into a Los Angeles hospital, a victim of cardiac arrest.  Doctors assessed the situation, noted that Arroyo was 80 years old, and essentially must've thought, "She's old.  Her heart gave out.  Pronounce it and take her the morgue."  It was found later that the hospital had inconsistent records of Arroyo's EKG, which would have determined if her heart was still beating at the time.  When the time came for the funeral home employees to prepare Arroyo's body for her funeral service, her body was found face down with cuts, scratches, and bruises all over as well as a broken nose.  Arroyo's injuries were so severe, they could not even be covered properly with funeral makeup.  Her family was instantly suspicious and contacted the hospital staff as well as hired an attorney to sue for mishandling of her body.

Turns out, when Arroyo arrived at the hospital, she was not dead but merely unconscious.  The cuts and bruises on her body were a result of Arroyo's frail and confused 80 year old body awakening inside a refrigeration chamber and trying desperately to free herself with as much stamina as she could muster.  Eventually, Arroyo's body gave out, resulting in her death due to hypothermia and asphyxiation.  The lawsuit of mishandling was immediately changed to, in not so many words, mistakenly declaring dead and 'freezing alive.'  Unfortunately, 17 months had passed from Arroyo's death to the time the trial finally took place and the one year statute of limitations had expired, leaving the trial judge to dismiss the family's lawsuit.  Thankfully, as late as April of 2014, nearly four years after Arroyo's death, the judge's decision was overturned and Arroyo's family was able to pursue further action against the hospital.

I once read someone describe hell as knowing you are dead and still being able to experience all five senses but being eternally locked inside of the darkness of your own mind, unable to move, unable to breathe, scream, or respond to anything.  You can see only shades of darkness but hear everything.  You can taste, smell, and feel, but not move the tiniest of muscles.  One can only imagine Mrs. Arroyo's final moments were somewhat of a hell before ascending to heaven, locked in a cold dark chamber, confused, disoriented, and ultimately, hopeless.  May she rest in peace.

Truly depressing, truly nightmare fuel.

-Amanda

The Den - Movie Review

The Den
Released 2013
Directed by Zachary Donahue

=Spoilers Contained in Review=

The basic premise of the film The Den is a young woman named Elizabeth has received a grant to conduct a study on human behavior on the internet, pledging to be connected online 24/7 to a video chat service called The Den, in hopes of interacting with as many people as possible and recording each and every conversation.  Sure, this sounds relevant in today's technology-driven society, with Skype, ChatRoulette, FaceTime, and all the other social media platforms with which today's youth can get themselves in trouble with.  We are all warned from an early age of the dangers of interacting with strangers on the internet, never knowing for sure who we're talking to or what their true intentions are.  Elizabeth herself encountered her fair share of weirdos on The Den ranging from naked old weirdos pleasuring themselves on camera to the age-old favorite, the Nigerian prince needing your bank account routing number in order to transfer you a million dollars or some such nonsense.

One night, Elizabeth and her best friend Jenni are having a beer and on The Den when they come across a still photo of a teenage girl smiling at the camera rather than a video feed, with the screen name Pyagrl*16.  When Elizabeth leaves the room, Pyagrl*16 sends Jenny all sorts of crude messages and signs off.  Later that night, a hacker logs into Elizabeth's computer and we hear muffled screaming in the background.  We are led to believe something real sketchy is up with this Pyagirl*16 chick.  All along, Elizabeth has been neglecting her boyfriend, Dominic, in order to focus on her project, but he decides to come over one night and the hacker records them having some 'adult time' and sends it in an email to the president of the organization that gave Elizabeth the grant, resulting in her funding being suspended.  Things take a turn for the worst when Elizabeth witnesses the girl in the Pyagirl*16 photo having her throat slit on camera by a mysterious burlap-sack headed man.

Later on, we see this same man lurking in the back of Dominic's car and kidnapping him as well as luring her best friend, Jenni, over to Elizabeth's house and then smashing her head into a desk. Elizabeth later finds Jenni in her bathtub with her wrists slit.  Probably the worst act of Burlap-Sack Head is when he breaks into Elizabeth's pregnant sister's house, tapes her mouth shut and holds a knife to her very pregnant stomach.  Thankfully though he does not kill her.  The police are called to help Elizabeth investigate this crazy asshole but they prove to not be very helpful.  Eventually Elizabeth herself gets in a fight with Burlap-Sack Head, stabbing him and all, but she still gets caught and dragged to a mysterious dungeon where she awakens with a camera attached to her head.

She is forced to watch her friend Max be smothered to death and then her boyfriend Damien be attacked.  Turns out there is a group of these burlap-sack head guys all working together to pick off Elizabeth's friends one by one.  Elizabeth is forced again to fight off the men and almost escapes completely but there proves to be too many fighting against one and she is caught and dragged back into the dungeon.

We see Elizabeth bloodied and hung from the ceiling of the dungeon and then shot in the head.  Just lovely.  The riveting (I use this word sarcastically) conclusion of this film actually shows a creeper purchasing a video of Elizabeth's death online.  Then we realize there is an entire website dedicated to these snuff films, where you can pay high dollar to watch the elaborate back stories leading up to people's actual murders.  Isn't humanity great?

So overall, I have to say I feel rather 'meh' about this film, borderlining on disappointment.  There was nothing truly scary about it, save for a jump or two that were mostly just cheap scares that added nothing to the plot.  It reminded me of a young adult version of the film Megan is Missing which is about a teenage girl talking to crazy men on the internet who end up kidnapping her and doing terrible things to her and her best friend.  It seems as though films like this have a very very smothered message of warning people about the dangers of creeps on the internet, but rather than portraying this message in a truly instructional or thought-provoking way, they just fill the films with as much gore, violence against women, rape, and torture as possible.  Yes, I understand there is a certain market for this type of film, but I would like to see someone go against the grain and create a horror film around the internet/video chatting that is maybe less violent and more truly scary and/or creepy.  I think it's totally possible.

Many people out there are aware of what's called the "dark side of the internet."  This can range from things as innocuous as blogs like ours that highlight creepy content and discuss it (at least hopefully) intelligently and creatively.  [Hey, we try :)]  Sites like Reddit and others have their fair share of creepy content as well.  Then there is the even darker side, which I can't say I'm too familiar with myself, but where apparently you can partake in all sorts of illegal and disturbing activity.  The internet is an odd concept and though it can be truly rewarding and allow you to create connections and relationships or maintain them with loved ones and friends, it can also open a portal for sad and disturbed individuals to do truly traumatizing things to people.  So all I can say, dear reader, is tread lightly and if it gets too bad, spend a few hours cleansing your mind on http://cute-kittens.tumblr.com/.

Signing out,

-Amanda