Hotel (2004) dir. Jessica Hausner

Logline: Irene, a reserved young woman, takes a live-in job at a hotel in the German countryside and soon discovers that the girl who previously held her position disappeared suddenly without giving notice. While attempting to discover what happened to her predecessor, Irene encounters the quiet hostility of her co-workers, learns of the legend of a local witch who once lived in a cave, and finds herself drawn deeper into the woods...

Germany and Austria have had a spotty history with horror films. Though the German Expressionist movement gave birth to cinema's first great horrors (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Golem (1920), Nosferatu (1922)), the country's horror film history has been colored since then by its sparsity. The Krimi films of the 1960s dabbled in the horrific (bloody murder committed by zany, perverse masked killers), but the 1970s featured an almost total lack of original German or Austrian productions. (Germany did, however, co-finance other European horrors, including several Italian gialli and more than a few of Jess Franco's films.) In the 1980s through the early 1990s, an underground gore movement began in Germany, resulting in fare like The Burning Moon (1982), Nekromantik (1987), and Violent Shit (1987). Since then, all has been quiet.

The exception is Jessica Hausner's Hotel, an exquisite, subtly menacing film that--lacking a cinematic heritage--finds its roots in a different art form with a long tradition in Germanic cultural history: the fairytale. The fairytale influence is understated but always present. Here we have, at its simplest (which is not to call the film itself simple), a cautionary tale about an innocent seduced by evil temptations and gobbled up for her transgressions. We have the folksy rural setting, a witch living in the forest, and a lucky pendant that (the film strongly implies) provides physical protection. Some of the fairytale symbolism is overt: Irene, decked out in her red hotel uniform and sporting the missing employee's red-framed eyeglasses, looks as if she's on the way to Grandmother's house, while her new, local lover--smiling widely and lasciviously as they ride the elevator to her room for some late night rule-breaking--has some awfully big teeth. Irene is repeatedly drawn to the forest, despite its dangers, outside of the cold, sterilized modern protection of the hotel (dangerous in its own way, perhaps), her curiosity leading her to an inevitable end. We receive the sense that the forest and its purported witch have a long tradition of swallowing up fallen innocents (Irene discovers the name of the missing hotel employee, along with the names of several other young women and their lovers, carved into the bark of a tree outside the witch's cave), and that Irene could not put a stop to her metamorphosis into this fairytale archetype even if she desired to-- which, of course, we're not sure she does.

The film's pacing, visual style, and sound design are entirely its own. Long, brooding shots of poorly-lit vacant lobbies, corridors, and rooms are filled with the creaks and hums of a location with horrid vitality slumbering in its very foundations. A regularly-repeated audio motif of sourceless screams echoing from the trees punctuates the forest's timeless menace. The hotel and its surrounding forest have the ability to create endless walls of shadow at will, beckoning Irene to probe their depths and borders. All of the film's technical competencies converge to produce a terror without release, almost unbearable in its relentlessness. At scant over an hour, any complaints over the film's lack of action (eg. "NOTHING HAPPENS!") are absurd and issue from a shallow reading. Hotel is a piece of modernized folklore at its finest, as ambiguous as it is ambivalent, and sodden with a brand of creeping unease that contributes mightily to its veritable feast for the film-going senses. The fact that it has taken me this long to even hear of the film is inexcusable, but points toward the film's need for increased awareness from the horror community.

Despite my belief that most dedicated horror viewers and scholars would appreciate what's being offered here, Hotel also exists as a fairly unique film in genre cinema. One can't even make critical connections between it and other films without sounding convoluted: it's as if, halfway through filming Hotel Monterey, Chantal Akerman decided she'd rather make Polanski's The Tenant infused with the mythological ambiguity of The Blair Witch Project. I suppose someone could attempt to make the case for the film transcending its genre trappings, but doing so would seem to be missing the point. Hotel, along with other recent European horror films like Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day (2001) and Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani's Amer (2009), is working towards reconfiguring the genre, shirking high concepts, body counts, and typical frights in favor of reducing horror to its fundamental, archetypal essence. (That these films are being created primarily by female directors is all the more exciting. In the long history of horror cinema, women have rarely been at the helm, and the fact that these three women have been independently responsible for three of the strongest horror films of the new millennium serves to demonstrate what a colossal loss it has been by keeping horror a boy's club). If these films have the sort of influence that I hope they will, we could be looking at a new European horror renaissance-- one fueled not by the lengths to which the films will go to shock, as do those entries of the regrettable New French Extremity*, but by the desire to give expression to those fears that lurk down in the very depths of the human condition.

*Denis' Trouble Every Day has long been--I feel erroneously--linked to the New French Extremity. If you need me to explain the differences between what Denis' film is doing and what something like À l'intérieur (2007) or Martyrs (2008) is aiming for, well, how about this: Trouble Every Day brings the themes of monstrous sexuality hinted at in Harry Kümel's Daughters of Darkness (1971) to a boil, while À l'intérieur and Martyrs are content to throw gallons of blood onto the screen and entice their actors to never stop screaming.

[REC] 3: Genesis (2012) dir. Paco Plaza

Logline: A sequel/prequel/something-or-other to the two previous times that a couple of cameras got trapped inside a quarantined building chock full of demon-possessed zombies. This time out, a wedding reception gets iffy when the guests start trying to chew each others' faces off. Will the newlyweds arrive at the airport in time to catch their flight to the honeymoon? Will there even be a honeymoon? Discover the answer to neither question (but do discover your tolerance for pain) in [REC] 3: Genesis.

A short time ago, I imagined that if the world was just, kind, and fair (as we so often hope it is despite the evidence), then The Devil Inside would be the worst horror film I would see this year. The world, ever-willing to let me writhe in agony from the moderate comfort of my couch, bestowed upon me Paco Plaza's [REC] 3: Genesis soon thereafter. The Devil Inside is a pointless string of video images shoddily crafted for the sole purpose of generating ticket sales that dwarf its production budget-- this makes it a contemptible work, I'm sure we can agree. On the contrary, [REC] 3 is an idiotic film, all too confident in its nonexistent wit and charm; a film not only alienating to fans of the series' previous entries, but also assuredly daft to even those souls latching on to every insignificant entry in the past decade's zombie boom. It's a film whose motives are entirely perplexing, fashioning a wildly uneven end-product capable of eliciting no more than groans less passionate than those of the shambling undead. I despise and have no respect for a film like The Devil Inside; I can only pity [REC] 3.

So the biggest issue is the film's tone. While the two previous [REC] films (which I've enjoyed to varying degrees), busied themselves by being no more than relentless P.O.V. roller-coaster rides, [REC] 3 decides that it will be a horror comedy of the zany, gross-out variety (its obvious touchstones being Dead Alive and The Evil Dead, though its mundanity and graspings for emotional resonance mark it as an ill-advised attempt at Shaun of the Dead-level comedy). It's fair to assume that this switch-up of the series' M.O. would be off-putting even if the switch were largely successful (imagine if, after Parts 1 and 2, the producers of the Friday the 13th series then jumped straight to Jason Goes to Hell for their third outing). But the comedy that fuels the film (if we dare call it comedy) is roughly as subtle as the electric mixer that our heroine shoves into the mouth of a zombie in the third act. Whenever it's obvious that we're supposed to laugh (such as during the several low angle shots offering us deliberate peeks up the bride's torn dress, or when a Child Entertainer named Sponge John (copyright issues, he repeats) is forced to evade the zombie horde in his bow-tie-adorned sponge costume because he's not wearing anything underneath), its humor falls somewhere below the lowest common denominator. On most other occasions, it's unclear what reaction the film is aiming for-- when the new husband lops the arm off of his infected wife and she tells him immediately after that she always knew he'd make a good father, are we intended to chuckle? It hardly matters when considering that we never feel the urge to, but even so: why then continue that climactic scene by tossing in false and cloying emotional notes and resolving the whole bloody affair as a bullet-riddled melodrama? The parts don't mesh, and each part would produce a dreadful-enough film on its own. Those first two [REC] films, if nothing else, were at least visceral and frightening. [REC] 3 is just goopy, and it can't figure out the proper pronunciation of "boo!" Our heroine wields a chainsaw and our hero dashes around in a protective suit of armor, and somehow [REC] 3 is still devoid of charm. Looked at in one way, that's an accomplishment.

Putting aside its narrative failings, it's also one of the more annoying recent examples of a film exploiting the found footage aesthetic without bothering to commit to it. The initial two [REC] films were found footage through-and-through, even if they never bothered to divulge how the footage was recovered (it didn't matter-- those [REC] films used the FF aesthetic not because of its storytelling potential but because of where it placed the viewer in relation to the action on screen: as a part of it. This is a different approach from most other FF films (even those that are exclusively P.O.V.) and it produces an effect akin to those motion theater rides I used to go on at the local Funscape, or (as a reference for anyone who is not me) Disney World's Star Tours). [REC] 3 needlessly stamps out on the found footage route for approximately twenty minutes before having one of its characters smash the camera in disgust at the operator's contrived rationalization for continuing to film (a staple of the genre: "people need to know what happened here!") and quickly transforming itself into the traditionally-lensed, cliched zombie comedy I've already described. It makes a few momentary relapses into FF by way of security cam footage and helpful night-vision navigation, but it never attempts to attain its predecessors' immersive effect (little of the zombie carnage occurs in the FF sections). If Plaza (co-director of the first two films and sole director here) is so determined to separate his film from the aesthetic that dominated the previous entries, why remind viewers of how much better they were by including and then disposing of such a blatant visual reference back to them? (Even the sequel to [REC]'s American remake, Quarantine 2: Terminal, knew not to make this mistake). Is Plaza's more-than-figurative smashing of the camera supposed to imply that his traditional approach is better? An awfully misguided assumption if so. Regardless, it's not as if adding a shaky camera operator to the exact content of this film would make it any more palatable. Like the drunk uncle who crashes the film's wedding and introduces the infection to the guests, [REC] 3 is embarrassing, unwanted, and fundamentally diseased, inspiring in all who it encounters a desire for it to wander off to some secluded corner and mercifully expire.

Meltdown 03: Lost & Found (Part V)

Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (1998) dir. Dean Alioto

One of the few pre-Blair Witch FF films, Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County is an expanded, slightly higher-budgeted remake of the director's own UFO Abduction a.k.a. The McPherson Tape (1989), a hoax tape that was passed around the UFO community for years on home-recorded bootlegs as some of the most compelling evidence of alien contact. Of course to our eyes now it looks rather quaint, but if you can transport your mind back to 1989 it's easy to imagine the film's effect. Coming so early in the initial FF movement, Alien Abduction doesn't have much prior material to rip off, and so manages to stake out its own ground, unlike those of the current decade who seem all too aware of their predecessors' tricks. The film's desire to be mistaken for genuine found footage is its greatest asset-- events unfold in real-time, the situation escalates as one would expect it to (rendering the camera's constant presence more natural), and characters act believably (the C.O., soon after his first alien encounter, wets himself; he then spends the next few minutes running upstairs to change his pants). Moreover, the film's premise is spectacularly eerie: the large McPherson family gathers on the old, remote homestead for Thanksgiving dinner as an alien spacecraft lands nearby, knocking out the electricity and forcing the family to hole up in the house to defend themselves. As the house is transformed into a creepy, candlelit rural haven from the slowly encroaching alien presence outside, the film builds so well to its climax that when it arrives it cannot help but be a disappointment (it is). The film's low quality home video resolution is also a benefit in that it makes the few brief shots of the aliens all the more convincing, allowing us in one extreme close-up to see the peach fuzz coating the scalp of one of the aliens. The found footage is inter-cut with brief, non-distracting interview segments with various "authorities" (on UFO abductions, video manipulation, and the like) around commercial breaks (Alien Abduction originally ran as a TV special on UPN). The best of these is an interview with the film's director, Dean Alioto, who claims that he believes the footage is real, but if it is a hoax then he "should have directed it." Wink!

In Memorium (2005) dir. Amanda Gusack

In Memorium [sic] is a film notable for misspelling its own title. Someone involved in the production, or maybe one of its fans (?), has taken to smugly claiming that it's "Paranormal Activity before Paranormal Activity," which is utter horseshit because there's almost nothing shared between the two. While in Oren Peli's film the lunkhead Micah plants his camera around the house in order to capture the supernatural shenanigans afoot, In Memorium features its lunkhead protagonist setting up cameras around the house he is renting because he has cancer and wishes to record his body wasting away in its final month of life (because, what else is he to do?). This lunkhead only just so happens to capture some ghostly goings-on because, as it so happens, his illness has supernatural origins (Gasp! This aspect is actually kind of neat, in a deranged way. The premise is that a shitty dead mom is returning from the grave to enact revenge against her embarrassed sons. Whoops, *SPOILERS*). It's a bad movie-- one proudly displaying melodramatic acting, a shaving cream bikini, and a recurring joke about stale crackers-- but I'm probably being more hostile towards it than it deserves because its use of the FF conceit is a total joke. The dying lunkhead has installed security cameras covering every inch of his rented house, but instead of the footage looking like actual security cam footage (see: Paranormal Activity 2, Apartment 143) it's more akin to a series of cinematic medium shots that you would forget were meant to be coming from consumer cameras if not for the fact that every once in awhile you catch a glimpse of one strapped to a wall. The film also edits its scenes between different camera angles, allowing for cinematic perspectives but obliterating any semblance of FF verisimilitude. I do, however, thank In Memorium for one brief line of dialogue that shall stick with me for some time to come: the dying lunkhead, when describing how he met his girlfriend on the set of an independent film, relates that "the film cost nothing, but she looked like a million bucks." One of those things is true.

The Devil Inside (2012) dir. William Brent Bell

A complete and unrepentant waste of everyone's time, The Devil Inside has approximately one novel idea: the notion that there is a group of rogue, unsanctioned priests performing exorcisms all around Italy. The rest, as they say, is garbage. Most of the notes I took during my viewing of this film became incredulous questions rather than  observations: "is this a movie? are these even characters? am I supposed to buy this as High Definition footage from 1988? is that what's called "development"? are these supposed to be set pieces? what does this ending offer to the story? what story? who are they trying to fool here?" After fourteen films in a row, it's only The Devil Inside that has managed to make me angry. It's neither frightening, interesting, original, nor enthusiastic (jeepers, even Blackwood Evil has it beat on that last count). For a film about the salvation of souls, it sure could use one of its own. Sniff that irony. It's a cash-grab with a well-edited trailer that somehow managed to net over $100 million, despite its R-rating. A FF film has never given me motion sickness, but I'm feeling queasy now. Is this the genre's death knell? It certainly feels like the death of something or other. My innocence? The FF genre is in a weird spot halfway through 2012-- yeah, we had Chronicle, but we also had Project X. Today, a new Asylum FF flick (which they have the gall to label under the genre "Reality") is being released, to the cheers of no one. Where do we go from here? Can this genre, battered and bruised as it may be, be rescued? Where are the innovators and the storytellers? Innocence lost, but they can't steal my optimism: those champions will arrive, and soon. But they won't be the minds behind The Devil Inside. Of this I can assure you.

Meltdown 03: Lost & Found (Part IV)

The Haunted House Project (2010) dir. Cheol-ha Lee

Today's three entries are mostly ghostly. Considering the mammoth success of the Paranormal Activity franchise, it's to be expected that some filmmakers with low ambitions might try to wrangle that same lightning. As of this writing, no independent paranormal FF film has come close to replicating the Paranormal Activity films' simple and effective formula (easily on display with minor variation in each of the three (soon to be four) films, all of which--I must point out--are available to rent or to own, prospective filmmakers take note). Rather than mocking up a streamlined scare presentation in line with those films--following their clear program of metered frights and escalating chaos--the copycats see fit to linger their productions on a whole lot of nothing, hoping that their atmospheric locations or actors' "performances" can occupy the gaps. Guilty of these sins is today's first entry, South Korea's The Haunted House Project, which barely manages to distinguish itself from the smattering of recent paranormal investigator-centric FF flicks (Grave Encounters (2011), 8213 Gacy House (2010), Episode 50 (2011), Evidence of a Haunting (2010), today's Apartment 143 (2011), and so on ad nauseam). The location is a rundown cookie factory (the filmmakers mistaking "horrifying" and "horrifyingly delicious" for synonyms) and the investigators--though clearly giving it a go--could trick you into believing they arrived on set sans pulses. Predictably, it's not until the final act that the film even begins to register as a horror film, and I will admit that these twenty or so minutes have a visceral quality to them that I found pleasant. Two moments in particular stood out to me as deserving of being housed in a better film: in one, a crew member is unexpectedly dragged through a doorway by forces unseen and found afterwards with his head twisted 180 degrees; the second concerns a skittish female investigator who has been possessed by one of the cookie factory's ghosts and now engages in some too-flexible torso contortions. Even then, after singling them out, I can't call either moment striking in its originality, but they are elevated by the film's better than average cinematography. Regardless, there's nothing new with the application of its FF method either-- in this case the action is filtered through the further contrivance of a news crew following the investigators. A slow news day, and dull bullhorn to my second.

The Amityville Haunting (2011) dir. Geoff Mead

The Asylum, the production house responsible for The Amityville Haunting, is more widely derided for their endless string of micro-budget mockbusters (see: Transmorphers (2007), Snakes on a Train (2006), American Warship (2012)) all timed for release in conjunction with their blockbustin' better halves, the intention being to (I guess) trick old folks out of their rental money (an astounding business model in 2012, I'm sure). Anyway, Asylum must have been pretty thrilled when the low-cost FF movement reared its pretty head as a bankable format because they've already cranked out more of them than just about anyone else-- Monster (2008), Paranormal Entity (2009), 8213 Gacy House (2010), Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes (2011), The Amityville Haunting, Alien Origin (2012), and 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (2012). The only one I'd seen prior to the specimen at hand was 8213 Gacy House-- it was enough to confirm for me Asylum's mission of mediocrity. But I'm glad I gave The Amityville Haunting a chance anyway, because it's more entertaining in its moronic abandon than the previous three entries in this marathon combined. There's no foundational significance to the location being the Amityville house beyond brand recognition (no attic, no trademark weeping windows, one brief shot of flies), as it seems to be no more than a random, modernized suburban house that happens to eat people (no kidding, there are actual slurp/crunch noises in the soundtrack). The film is constructed around a quite consistent series of house-related deaths occurring to anyone who happens to visit the new family living there (a realtor, a worker from the moving company, the town's resident seducer of teenaged daughters, an old Army buddy). The family is, for awhile anyway, amusingly blasé about the gruesome deaths taking place all around them, and the regular pace of the carnage doesn't leave much room for one's ire at the film to rise too high. The most entertainment the film offers is derived from the C.O., the family's tween-aged son, who expresses fright as if the emotion is akin to that accompanying a stubbed toe and who is always willing to deliver some trenchant observation or maxim to the camera (eg. "Nobody knows what it's like to be a kid except kids!" and "I got in trouble for spying on my sister-- who cares? Everybody gets spied on once in awhile"). Helpfully, his camera's video chooses to corrupt and degrade itself during most of the on-camera death scenes, in consideration of the film's budget. Undeniable junk, but approachable as such.

Apartment 143 (2011) dir. Carles Torrens

While by no means a flawless film, Apartment 143 easily swoops in to steal the day. It's a solid and consistent flick with a simple yet intriguing story to tell. With no nonsense, it does just that. I presume we can rest some of this light praise on the shoulders of the film's screenwriter, Rodrigo Cortes, who in 2010 delivered the Ryan Reynolds vehicle Buried, an equal parts entertaining, gut-wrenching, and preposterous little film, and who here manages to cleverly combine the two most popular found footage tropes of the moment (hauntings and demonic possessions) into one sound, mysterious package. But director Carles Torrens is no slouch either, giving his film a distinct visual appearance despite its found footage approach-- the image here is bathed in muted blues and browns, being as murky and downtrodden as its grim back story of sickness, betrayal, and death. He also manages to corral some decent performances from his cast, who put a good deal of believable emotion into their roles when required. And yes, the film lavishes some necessary attention onto its poltergeist activity, coming off on more than one occasion as pretty creepy indeed. What separates Apartment 143 from so much of the paranormal investigation FF chuff is that it refuses to squander our time setting us and the characters up for the haunting-- the investigators enter the apartment knowing something paranormal is up, and the apartment wastes no time proving it to them. Being so forthright about its paranormal activity from the word "go" allows the film to build up to some intense set pieces. But the film isn't entirely humorless either: my favorite scene features a shot of a widower being forcefully tossed through a glass door by a poltergeist smash cutting to a different shot of said widower and the rest of the crew sitting sedately at the kitchen table eating breakfast. Throw in some delightfully goofy pseudoscience and an engaging mystery surrounding the poltergeist's source-- and I'm well pleased. The lame "shock" ending won't deter from enjoying the remains. Three to go.

The end is nigh: next time, Alien Abduction: Incident at Lake County (1998), In Memorium (2005), and (blech) The Devil Inside (2012).

Meltdown 03: Lost & Found (Part III)

Zero Day (2003) dir. Ben Coccio

If films like the last two served only to break my spirit in re: the found footage film's storytelling potential, a film like Zero Day then barrels into my life to forcefully remind me of exactly how sublime the method can be when used with a deft and subtle touch. There is no question or nagging doubt tossing around in the back of my cranium that prevents me from calling this the best found footage film I've yet encountered (meaning, not just within the constraints of this marathon-- out of all of them). Admittedly, it's not the best found footage horror film, considering it aspires more to dramatic weight than a chilly atmosphere or a visceral boo. But that's also not to claim that the film (which plays out as the lock-boxed confession tapes of a pair of Columbine-esque school shooters) is devoid of its horrific elements-- barring the nauseating release of its inevitable ending, we are also faced throughout with the horror of the two teens' steely determination to carry out their deed. The FF approach goes beyond being merely appropriate to the subject matter, ending up as an essential foundational device. How else could we more closely engage with these boys to understand their true motivations and those that they offer to the world (which are not quite the same thing)? Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003), with its cold, distancing pop psychology and rationalizations, hasn't half the emotional power. The intimacy of the shared video diary in Zero Day creates a direct link between monsters and viewer that is never not unsettling. We find ourselves naturally able to relate to and enjoy our likeable, charismatic protagonists as they show us how to duct tape shrapnel to pipe bombs-- the cognitive dissonance is almost unbearable.

But it's this too-close approach that enables it to be the most sensitive and realistic film to engage with the Columbine shooting. It allows the film to be adamant in not placing blame upon the old whipping posts (we see that the boys' parents are absolute sweethearts; the boys burn all of their personal possessions before Zero Day with the intention of preventing journalists from blowing their influence out of proportion). Our teen heroes repeatedly blame the high school experience and the dreadful treatment they receive from their peers, but the film smartly never openly agrees with them. In fact, all of the visual evidence we're given is to the contrary (both are affable young men who speak to and blend in with others easily; one of them even has a sort of girlfriend). When the camera is passed around a prom limo from which one of the boys has just exited, we hear the remaining teens in the car briefly discuss that their discomfort with the two future-shooters arises not from dislike but from the degree to which the two have chosen to ostracize themselves from the larger high school social life (although, as we see how dreadfully (though benignly) obnoxious the limo teens are, we do not fault the shooters for staying away). The blame that the film's intricate video diary chooses to reveal falls nowhere but on the teens themselves and their narcissistic psychopathy: they're not sure whether they want to will their confession tapes to Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, or Wolf Blitzer, but they both agree that they should leave the tape running as they exit their car and head towards the school on Zero Day, rendering the scene as cinematic as two bold cowboys riding off into the sunset. Zero Day is an incredible film that with little other than two strong teenaged actors and an understanding of the (at that point still infant) FF genre creates a narrative rife with pathos and social commentary.

Paranormal Effect (2010) dir. Ryuichi Asano & Teruo Ito

Paranormal Effect adheres to the old adage "If It Isn't Broke, Don't Fix It, Just Do It Faster and Change It Enough So You Don't Get Sued." The first half is no more (and considerably less) than Paranormal Activity in Japan. It's not simply a rip of that film's broad concept but also its explicit beats: dopey boyfriend buys expensive camera and decides to film everything despite his significant other's pleas against it; dopey boyfriend disrespects the spirit world (here colored with some patented American disregard for foreign traditions and beliefs); a night vision camera set up to document the couple's bed captures the quasi-possessed girlfriend sleep walking off-camera to do whatever it is quasi-possessed women do; quasi-possessed girlfriend, in her sickness, refuses to leave the haunted residence the night before bad shit goes down. It's blatant and all, but then the dopey boyfriend vanishes and we still have half the film left. Left to its own devices, the film is even less compelling: ten minutes of grating psychiatric interviews with the recovering girlfriend (conducted by a Japanese actress hired presumably only because she could read the English lines, if not deliver them) followed by a prolonged dual paranormal investigation/psychiatric rehabilitation back at the old, plagued flat. Adobe After Effects ghosts whiz across the screen or briefly appear in the foreground, and the crew is "menaced." Paranormal Effect's one bit of (pardon pun) effective scare-making is a self-replenishing bathroom tub full of putrid brown water, unsettling in its very clear implication that any number of horrible things could be lurking underneath-- but of course the film spoils this, too, in a pitifully splashy climax. In searching for the film's poster, I discovered to my astonishment that a sequel is on the way. We are twice blessed.

Road to L (2005) dir. Federico Greco & Roberto Leggio

Road to L (or Il mistero di Lovecraft) possesses one of the more intriguing and promising concepts of the marathon, at least for those both bookish and with a penchant for cosmic horror. It strings itself around the fictional discovery of a lost section of H. P. Lovecraft's diary, which strongly implies that a) he once visited Italy (curious, the film tells us, because previously it had been thought that the perpetually cash-strapped Lovecraft had never left America), and b) whatever grim things he witnessed there were directly responsible for his creative transition from writing comparatively simple supernatural tales to the more far-reaching, grandiose Cthulhu mythos. Set up as an Italian documentary crew's investigation of the veracity of the unearthed documents, the film has primed itself for success. This makes it all the worse when it founders under the crushing weight of its own cloying ineptitude. Road to L is hardly even a film. Though its premise is one ripe for exploration, the filmmakers (who apparently possess little deep knowledge of either Lovecraft or Italian folklore) assume that the mystery they've devised isn't even enough to occupy a short film. In the place of, say, an unraveling mystery, directors Greco and Leggio devote approximately two-thirds of the running time to the shrill arguments between crew members (because naturally we do care if it is the audio technician or the on-screen host who is sleeping with the pretty Italian production assistant). Considering that this crew, unlike many FF whiners, is not in a precarious or life-threatening situation, we despise them all the more. This padding is discarded for a brief ending (which features the all important discovery of some grainy found footage). In these final moments, Road to L shoots for the heights of Lovecraftian dread (finding particular inspiration in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"), and winds up somewhere in the dank gutter. Marvel at the sight of out-of-focus fishmen slathered in blue paint-- assuredly, your wits shall scatter. Thus ended the first day of my marathon. Abandon hope, all ye who dare to follow me into day two. You know, in case you were expecting things to shape up, or something.

Our next installment, if you dare: The Haunted House Project (2010), The Amityville Haunting (2011), and Apartment 143 (2011).