How to Horror: Entrance and Sinister (Reviews)

    For anyone who knows me, [REC] has become a common staple of my vocabulary. When I saw that little Spanish horror film it opened my eyes. I hadn't been that scared since I was 7 and saw The Exorcist with my entire VERY Catholic family. THAT was terror.

    But for years after seeing The Exorcist, no film managed to frighten me. The Ring was engrossing, Cloverfield and Blair Witch were thrilling, and the Sixth Sense pulled the rug out from under the audience, but none of them were scary.

    Books were scary. Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft. I ate these up and watched Guillermo Del Toro create the monsters of old in the films of now, all the while wondering what happened to horror in cinema.

Nosferatu begins with a man welcomed into a Castle during a storm.

Comfort is key.

    Where [REC] got me was the long drawn-out opening, a late night report that has the same passing as Nightly News. A small crawl without a hint of danger. Too few horror filmmakers realize that the reason King and Poe and Lovecraft hooked us was the reality and weight of the situation. They felt real. And in that, familiar, and therefore comforting. It wasn't until the final pages that Poe and King and Lovecraft all brought out the madness and delusion and Rats in the Walls that stuck in your mind.

    So I was perfectly fine watching Entrance, a 2011 indie film from Los Angeles that spends 60 minutes of its 80 minute runtime on dialogue.

Dialogue.

Inane, boring talks.

   Wait wait wait, you're recommending a movie that's BORING for an entire HOUR?

Yes.

   I've read often on the internet that Entrance would benefit from a massive trimming, turning it into a 30 minute short film, 10minutes of dialogue, and the last 20 minutes of the film intact.

But that doesn't work.

    Entrance's last 20 minutes work so well BECAUSE you just watched 60 minutes of boring LA twenty something life. These characters, by all means, are normal people that you've probably met and talked to. So when things go south, they go VERY south.

    Entrance thematically analyzes isolation, specifically isolation in a major city. And to say that NOTHING happens in the first 60 minutes would be an understatement. The isolation builds, and creates so much dread and tension that you wonder WHEN the characters will die. But the film holds off. It makes you wait. Leaves you comfortable.

    On the more mainstream screen, Sinister is going to be the biggest horror film of this year. At least, I'm hoping it will be. Because it realizes that comfort is crucial.

    Our protagonist in Sinister has a family. In fact, Ellison has a nice family and the opening move to a small town benefits them. It's the obsession that doesn't. And obsession is as scary a film as isolation.

    Both Sinister and Entrance posit that you aren't safe anywhere. Not alone, not with your family, not in a big city, not in a small town. But they hold off their scares until the audience AND the characters feel safe.

   Both also have a luscious direction and cinematography that only aids in the tension and build up. Entrance feels like an indie drama for the first 60 minutes, and then in the last 20 minutes has a ONE SHOT take of terror. Sinister's score and camera and cinematography rises and falls as Ellison uncovers more and more.

Style and comfort and scary ideas.

Worth your time and money? Yes, very much so. If you have the patience to watch a very indie, very slow LA film, Entrance is right there. If you ache to watch a mainstream horror that actually scares, Sinister is your bag. If you watch both, you'll have a night of wonderful dreams for sure.

Homecoming Week

    There's a sort of magic that comes with Texas High School Football. And it's difficult to describe if you don't experience it for yourself. It's a total subculture that fascinates me, and I can only imagine it fascinated those involved in Friday Night Lights and the likes of Texas Football epics.

Homecoming Week, until the Playoffs, is the epitome of High School Football in Texas. An entire week devoted to this team and this game and this Friday Night. Then there's a dance.

It's a nice ritual, lighthearted even, because even if the team loses, the dance always cheers everyone up.

Homecoming dance is Prom's crazy cousin. Shows up early, dances crazier, dresses more casual, and makes every one laugh.

Here's to Homecoming Week!

The Race for College Admissions

Well not so much a race, as much as a colosseum of cats, clawing and hissing at each other.

Let's admit it. It's September! The cool kids are talking and thinking about Homecoming or football, THEY are the lions, and WE, are the kittens.

The kids who are taking and retaking both the ACT and SAT so that we can apply Early Decision to Ivy Leagues.

The kids who are pestering counselors about school forms while they're trying to fix first semester schedules.

The lions are getting high and getting drunk, and the kittens are staying up until 1am on eprep dot com. For real. I have done it.

And meanwhile, us kitten are few in litter at our own school, but reading College Confidential, we find the cougars. The kittens who started way earlier then us. We scored 30's on the ACT and they scored 36.

The lions could beat up the cougars, but the cougars could outwit the lions. And us kittens can't do anything to anyone.

And now, the lot of us are placed in a mad dash to submit everything before November 1st, when College Admissions will seal our fates as we quiver in fear of December 15th's notification date.

The lions will hang back and apply regular decision in January, the Cougars will cross the finish line, and the kittens will jump in and hope to scrape by.

Here's to all the kittens, racing toward Early Admission.

This was a bad metaphor and I apologize.......

The Influence of Teachers

    Teaching seems like a difficult line of work to pursue if only for the loss of momentum. I've been Chief Student Aid for the English Department at my High School for more than 2 years now, and I have seem some terrible classes treat teachers in ways that make me sick.
 
    But I've also seen teachers respect their students and seen the students return that respect. It's in those instances that I see the faculty smile and glow in what I'm sure is always their end goal.

    Teachers have a ton of influence on students. So today, was a bit disheartening.

    "I have news for you, folks. Boeing does not build engines that fall off."
     Sitting in my Economics class on September 11th, the board reads "3 major economic questions..." But the topic never comes up. Mr Hainer, our professor, asks the class where we were on that tragic American day when New York, and all of America, trembled. The stories overflow lachrymose or jovial, but honestly, it's mostly accounts of what we saw in our parents and family that day.
    We were all too young, 6 or 7, and none of us were in New York, so we're afforded a sort of safety blanket to what resounds as a horror story for Americans world wide or a lead-in into jingoism. Suffice to say that when its Mr. Hainer's turn, his story bears much more gravitas. He's lecturing to impressionable teenagers now, but back then, when the towers still stood, he was working in DC. He recounts 1977, his first visit to the World Trade Center, watching the two river flow through New York as a clear sky rolled over the Twin Towers. He recalls taking his daughters there. He also recalls September 11th, 2001, when he stood outside the pentagon, smoking a cigarette on his break, and seeing two fighter jets shoot past him.
    "The story of United 93," he tells us, "is a fairy tale." The plane went down but, by Mr Hainer's account, it "had help going down. Engines don't just fall off. They get shot off." Usually in this class I appreciate his conservative ideals as a breath of fresh air from all the "liberals" and self-proclaimed "hipsters," but today it bothers me, that what he's saying is snaking its way into my classmates' minds and nestling in there as fact.
    Before, he's told us things like: "Capitalism is a synonym for freedom," and "Wall Street brokers work as hard as anyone else!" But today it feels like more than Right Wing Thought. To debase our journalistic institutions, which I admit, are far from perfect, and imply that not one person out there knows the truth.
    Because in moments like this one, I really wonder if teachers are aware of their impact on students. Does Mr. Hainer know that all the kids in my class left certain that United 93 was shot down by our own military? Not to mention that he specifically told us this was a media cover up perpetuated by our "incompetent" journalists. I don't know much about missiles or aircrafts, but I don't think two fighter jets could shoot down a 757 and know that it wouldn't hit somewhere crucial or drop dangerous debris all over DC.

But anyway.

Teachers matter. And I think sometimes they need to be reminded.

Web Series

     I've been watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Girls and Breaking Bad and Squaresville and because my last short film was such rousing success, (I, myself, don't even know if I'm being sarcastic) I have decided to write a web series entitled "Youth." 

     I registered the youtube account and everything, even though right now it's just a story on paper. The problem with a Web Series is that I can not do it myself. I'd need a cast, and one that could constantly be available for filming. This is a problem because my friends are High Schoolers and all of us are in a bunch of extracurricular so where do we find time. And I can't cast actual actors because they'd want to get paid.

So

what is there to do.

How Cities Are Our Partners In Crime

 
      Sometimes your girlfriends are too far away or too busy for a sleepover and your bros are too lazy or sleepy to get off their couches, and in those times, we turn to our windows. Whenever you pick a job or an apartment or maybe even a restaurant, the view outside is most often a heavy factor. Usually after "smell" and definitely as important as "How much A/C in here/does it get too hot?" Of course the view is no where near as important as "Will Ryan Gosling or Neil Patrick Harris walk by here," but few things are. Needless to say, we love our cities. Our towns. Our communities. In those times when you feel just a bit too alone for your own comfort, looking out toward an electrifying skyline or perfectly placed clouds reminds you that everything's okay, if only just for a little while.

     Woody Allen and countless romantic comedies have made us fall in love with New York. The Rockefeller ice rink, the coffee houses, rooftops where you can rendezvous unbothered and uninterrupted. Truth is,  each of us yearn for this sort of oasis, and actively seek it out when we choose where to live. Maybe you grew up watching 90210 or The O.C and now you crave a coastal city. Or maybe you read Anne of Green Gables and wish for rolling hills. Or maybe Neil Gaiman and Doctor Who and the Olympics have you orbiting towards London. WHATEVER THE CASE MAY BE, we're searching for a latitude and longitude that will become a friend. One that will stay where we need them and hug us with its stars each night. 

     When family or friends live out of town and they come visit you, there's a sort of power that comes with knowing all the good restaurants and street routes. It isn't unlike introducing them to your new roommate. "Oh hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! Have you met my friend New York City? Yeah, she's the one I'm always talking about!" You know your city well, and you're proud to show it off, good Italian food and all! 

     How you discovered those routes and those restaurants will be stories in and of themselves. Adventures tucked away inside your memory vaults for when you need cheering up or a nice anecdote at a party. Your first days, lost among the gibberish street names. Your intimate nights, driving down now natural roads, finding the hotspot to blast music or grab midnight snacks. And then you're acquainted. You'll spend the rest of your time sharing experiences with your city. Loving it for certain blocks of paradise, and getting grumpy with it for certain bumpy roads and uneven sidewalks. But you'll get home, after long days of work, and even if your whole life has been flipped upside down by personal turmoil, and even if your favorite store got renovated, the city stays pretty much the same. Just like you. Altered in tiny bits, but pretty much the same.

     Therein lies the comfort. Sitting on your couch with your bowl of cereal, you can look out your window and see the same friendly buildings.

     "Thanks for being here when I need you."

     And the next day, with the Sun filling your window and lighting the view, it will be there still, to greet you good morning.

Summer Art Spree

  As pretentious as it might sound, I don't think it's enough to CREATE art, you've got to share it. Even if it's a short story or a diary entry you're embarrassed of. A doodle in your notebook or a gem of a quote you thought of. Not enough to make magic, you've got to put it to use.

  In a way, I think that's why I love quotes. They're little snippets of art and wisdom usually summed up in a sentence or two. This helps in the remembering. Unless you're me, with chalk on a sidewalk, and can't recall one good quote to save your life. If you're me, you'll remember the quotes as soon as you get home and the chalk is out of your hands and the sidewalk resting miles away.

  Quotes are like slices of an elaborate wedding cake: easy to hand out and always delicious. But the masterpiece from which the quote was born is the entirety of the cake: layered, gorgeous, and intricate.

  I'm never seen anyone over the age of 35 writing on a sidewalk with chalk and I hope that changes soon. More people need to share art. Lend your friend an album, a book, watch movies with them, share quotes and stories and then write them on the sidewalk for all to see.

  We live in a world of roughly 7 Billion people. For world peace to even be fathomable, we've got to not only BE happy, we've got to share it with our neighbors.