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.
