So for the first real entry on this blog in well over a year I am totally not doing what I said I was going to when I gave you that list of things I’d be reviewing and strayed far and wildly into something TOTALLY NOT ON THE LIST. If you have a thing about lists, this probably just completely rubbed you the wrong way. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry, but also, seriously, lighten the hell up. Because this gem of a movie rolled into my hometown for ONE WEEKEND ONLY and I did the only sensible thing a creepy confection in my position could, flapped her hands wildly going “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD” and then proceeded to high-tail herself down to the only theater playing it. If you’re questioning this level of excitement, just what the fricking trailer, and if afterwards you’re still all Mr. “meh, whatever” … well then I don’t think this relationship is going to work after all, I’m sorry honey, we can discuss who gets the kids on which holiday.
Now tell me that doesn’t look magical to you. Or you know what. Don’t. Because you’ll make me angry, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I rip off my clothes and go on a path of destruction, mowing down people in my path, and knocking over furniture. I don’t actually get bigger or turn green or anything, I usually just come home tired and embarrassed, while my poor roommate tells the cops how sorry she is for my immature behavior and promises to try to make wear some sort of covering in public, and you know, stop punching children….
Wait… what was I talking about… and how did I get here? Oh yeah. Anyway, ANYWAY.
Here is the premise of the film at its most stripped down and basic: 26 film makers are given the task of each creating a film that has something to do with death, with the catch that it must also somehow relate to an assigned letter of the alphabet. These short films come to us from all corners of the globe and span a wide gamut of genres and subject matter; from the comical and camp, to downright artsy fartsy, from freaking disturbing, to the incredibly tragic, and then there’s a couple in there that you just sit, blinking slowly, and going “…. The fuck?”
I will not lie to you dear readers, not all of the shorts are good. In fact, some of them made this girl just sit there, scowling in contempt and making a disapproving clucking sound. However, I was at no point bored, nor did I zone out. Which is, frankly, a huge accomplishment, since I generally have such issues with spacing that I have on three separate occasions walked straight into sign poles, and each time it was so sadly ironic I would have laughed if not for the metal buzzing sound in my ears and the mother bitch of a headache, since they were ‘stop’, ‘no parking’, and ‘yield’, respectively. Hell, I zoned out halfway through writing this sentence.
It’s hard to really write a particularly succinct review about a movie that is a collection of shorts, especially when half the fun of them is trying to guess what word they’ve chosen for their assigned letter, and to the credit of the film makers, very few of them were an obvious choice. So here’s the thing; if you want a movie where you’re going to be constantly engaged by the material, then yeah, see it, totally see it. But if you’re prone to fainting or some other form of general sissarey (yes I just made that up, but it’s my word now, and I’m getting it copyrighted) you’re gonna want to take a pass on this one. Maybe go to the bigger theater down the road, catch that new Nicholas Sparks movie, that as far as I can tell is about a girl who cries a lot because she has to ride her bicycle around a quaint beach town.
Your delicate modern, sensibilities, will be offended, there's just no way around that, Gertrude, I'm sorry. Hell, at points my sensibilities were offended and that takes doing. But despite the fact that there are large clumps of this film that are offensive, and even occasionally hard to watch, I'm going out here and saying watch it. It takes chances, and generally speaking, I'm more offended by a movie that leans towards the safe and throws me something trite and predictable, than I am a movie that makes me queasy at points and at others makes me wonder if I'm actually just going mad very slowly. And sure, maybe I'm a little biased here, because when I saw it I had basically the perfect viewing experience a midnight showing with only six other people, in an awesome, tiny art theater with ridiculously good popcorn. Maybe I would not have this level of affection for it if I'd just been sitting on my couch watching it. Maybe. But I would still respect the novelty of it. And that ought to count for something, right? No? Geez, don't be such a buzzkill...
Well, that's it for me, for now at least, but you can look for more of my slightly off-kilter views on things soon.
But now this girl is going to bed.
HI KIDS! Wow, I feel like it was not so long ago that I was all "yeah, I'm gonna start updating again, ALL THE TIME. Really! I mean it!" And then I promptly did no such thing. Wow. I suck. Sorry about that.
I mean, I could sit here and make excuses to you about how being a perpetual university student eats my life and I've barely had time to watch a movie lately, let alone review one. But you deserve better then my whining, so we'll skip that bit. Especially since I know that most of my fellow horror bloggers have a real life that they manage to upkeep as well as their blogs. But, like I said before, I suck, so let's move on.
Eden Lake was the movie I watched to reward myself for making it through the summer semester without defenestrating anyone. I had this whole "If I just get through finals, then I can watch Eden Lake, and eat pizza, and all will be right with the world".
I'm not entirely sure why I decided this movie was going to be my reward, but I did.
No. Wait. Scratch that. I know exactly why I decided this movie would be my reward.
And his name is Michael Fassbender.
I could watch a movie that starred him as a shut in. And the entire film would just be him pointing to various flower pots he'd collected over the years and explaining why he liked them. And I would be happy.
I would come away from that film going "Ah yes, today was a good day indeed." The man is glorious, I'm just saying.
So I set out to watch Eden Lake, and when it was over it had fully solidified for me two facts with which I was already pretty certain of going into it.
1) Michael Fassbender is an exquisite creature who should always do movies that involve him getting shirtless, and preferably, wet.
2) There is no way in Hell that you will get me to go camping.
( seriously, if Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, AND Benedict Cumberatch showed up at my door and asked me to go camping with them ... well, okay, I would go if that happened. But it would give me pause.)
I went into this film convinced that camping is evil. I am a girl of my creature comforts. Don't get me wrong, I love nature, I do; but at the end of the day I like to come home to a hot shower and a clean bed that consists of a pillow-top mattress, with an extra layer of padding on top of that to make it all marshmallow-y. It was long ago established by one of my best friends that in some sort of a grimy hostage situation I would get us all out by the sheer fact that 24 hours without soap would make me go bat shit crazy, and punch a hole through the nearest wall through which me and my fellow captives could escape.
Long story short, me and camping are like oil and vinegar. But enough about me, let's move on to this movie about people who are crazy and actually enjoy camping and sleeping on the ground and other madness.
Meet Jenny (played by the always adorable, even when portraying a complete psychopath, Kelly Reilly) and Steve (played by Michael "sexy shark" Fassbender). Jenny is a school teacher, and I have no idea what the Hell Steve does for a living, maybe he's a swimsuit model or does toothpaste commercials or something, maybe he just gets paid to sit around and look pretty, who knows. They decide that they're going to escape to a remote lake for the weekend that Steve used to go to when he was younger or something.
Steve has the master plan of using the opportunity of this little get away to finally pop the question to Jenny. Because sleeping in the dirt is some people's idea of romantic. It's not mine, but we established that.
There are, at this point I should note, layers of foreshadowing and foreboding occurring now. In the night that they first arrive, apparently to spend the first night in a little B&B, because SLEEPING ON THE GROUND ISN'T FUN, the locals come off as ... prickly to say the least. The couple are either ignored or treated to clipped responses, and then get to enjoy the fine folks being generally awful and back handing their children. Now maybe this is the naive little California girl in me talking, but I thought that trailer trash was something that just happened here in the states. Apparently England has it too, well color me surprised.
The next bit of "this is your sign, just turn the Hell around and go back NOW" comes when they actually reach the titular lake, only to find the surrounding area fenced off to be redeveloped into a gated community. Jenny, in an unknowing voice of doom asks at this point "Who are they so afraid of?"
Oh Hunny. You don't even know. You don't EVEN know. Just let me hold you.
When they get to the lake is when we meet the band of merry miscreants who will be our antagonists for the evening. Hoodies. Yay hoodies!
What starts out as a minor confrontation between Steve and the leader of the pack of delinquents, Brett (played by Jack O'Connel, who I can't hate, because he will always be Cook from Skins for me, and I love Cook from Skins), which escalates to their car being stolen and demolished, which FURTHER escalates to the teenagers hunting Jenny and Steve through the woods.
Because camping is bad.
If you go camping you will be hunted down and tortured by psychotic hoodlums.
That being said, I hesitate to classify Eden lake under the umbrella of "torture porn". Because unlike many of the films that are classified as such, the torture isn't really the central focus of the film. It's more in the vein of a thriller in the sense that more of it is about the chasing and the game of cat and mouse and by today's standards, the violence is really quite tame.
The aim here, I believe, was not to make the violence itself be what is shocking to the viewers, but have the perpetrators of the violence and the victim/villain relationship be what makes you honestly uncomfortable. It's incredibly common for a movie to pit adults against one another, but less common to have a group of minors be the antagonists - which can make the viewers uncomfortable on two fronts: First, the idea of what many people consider to be children acting in such a fashion, and Second, the idea that adults would be forced to retaliate, and how far would you be willing to go against a group of, so called, children?
That dynamic is considerably more rare. Though it has been called up in such films as The Children and Who Can Kill A Child, or even such instances at The Bad Seed and The Omen. A plot line in which adults know they must fight back against the younger generation has a way of making an audience a little squirrely.
There is, I feel worth noting, a very interesting psychology within the group of teenagers. The leader of the gang has rather obvious psychosis - in a crazier then a shit house rat kind of a way. But he is not, cut and dried, the worst of the bunch. A fair number of his comrades are equally happy to hunt down and potentially murder Jenny and Steve. And then there is the lone female of the pack, who records the acts of atrocity on her cell phone without so much as a blink.
If Horror Movies are the forum through which movie makers air their fears and dissatisfaction with the world, then Eden Lake can be seen as following in the footsteps of George Romero's trend of social commentary. The message at the core of Eden Lake is not just the fear of what today's youth is becoming; but also a horror at the generation that not only raised them to be such monsters, and then washes their hands of them when they begin to act in the manner they were taught.
And honestly, Jack O'Connell's performance is damn good. You really believe that he will go twenty kinds of ape shit on you if you cross him. And yeah, I was a little biased, like I said before. And sure, in multiple parts I was like "nooooo, he doesn't mean it, not my Jack." Damn my love of skins.
And really, characterization is the strong point of Eden Lake. Even though I have read a fair deal of reviews that contradict this statement. No. You guys are wrong. I can't hear you. Lalalalalalalalalalalalala.
The characters are developed just FINE thank you so much. You really really like Jenny and Steve. You're rooting for them. Goddamit, you WANT them to make it out okay and get married, and go live somewhere very very industrialized and NEVER GO CAMPING AGAIN. I was definitely pulling for them, and no, not just because Michael Fassbender is much too pretty die somewhere that dirty.
And really, if you want to get into characterization and psychology. Let's look at Jenny for a minute.
Kelly Reilly is really a very underrated actress. Who I really should gave a grudge against for the simple fact that she has the ability to keep getting cast in rolls where she gets to make out with Spooky's favorite boys. Seriously - Dead Bodies with Andrew Scott, Sherlock Holmes with Jude Law, and now Michael Fassbender. You bitch. No, I'm kidding, I love you.
Jenny begins the movie as this fragile, non confrontational character. While Steve is ready to tell people off and huff and puff when things irritate him, Jenny is just as happy to let them blow over so no one needs to raise their voice. But as she is pushed she grows from mousey damsel to the sort of heroine you hope for in these kinds of movies. And did I mention she does this all in some of the cutest dresses I've ever seen? Sure, I don't think most people of the camping-oriented persuasion would find her clothing choices good for the great outdoors, but meh. If anything I think the choice to have her run through the movie in demure, feminine clothing, was kind of a brilliant choice.
It's like they said "look at her, she's supposed to be this delicate thing who has small animals do her hair in the morning as she sings. But look what she can become." In this aspect Jenny is much like a heroine in a fairy tale like the Brother's Grimm. But not by Disney. Not by a long shot.
And much like a Grimm's fairtytale you do not just walk away from Eden Lake feeling good about the world. You feel like you need to take a long shower and then watch kitten videos on Youtube for the next three hours. You feel disoriented and more then just a little uncomfortable.
And for that I really do have to applaud them.
Okay, Okay, so strictly speaking, Eden Lake is NOT what I would consider "my kind of a horror film". If you know me, you know I like my horror movies a bit more in the supernatural and psychological department, and less in the "BLOOD BLOOD EVERYWHERE" fashion. Especially since I feel like these days you can't throw a rock without hitting a movie that is just about blood.
I've got news for you Horror Movie Industry, blood all over the place doesn't scare this girl. Hell, that's just a typical Friday night in the Pie household. I think you sincerely underestimate the sheer volume of bandages this girl goes through on a weekly basis. When you're as accident prone as me, blood is about as shocking and uncommon as a roll of toilet paper.
That being said, Eden Lake is not a bad little film. It has a message and it gets it out there. And from a cine-phile point of view it is shot BEAUTIFULLY. I know you can't tell from my grainy screen caps, but there are points when the camera pulls back to show wide angles of the all the nature and is AMAZING. The framing of shots and the subtle score of the film are really just lovely. It's odd to think of a horror movie as pretty - especially when people are getting brutalized and hobbling through a forest caked in their own blood, but seriously, it is PRETTY.
While I don't see myself running out to buy Eden Lake, I don't consider the evening I spent watching it to have been a waste either. And let's not forget the valuable message it has brought to us all:
DON'T GO CAMPING
I know this girl won't be any time soon.
Well, until next time kiddies.
Stay out of trouble AND the woods.
In a totally unbeknown to me coincidence, I sat down to write this review today and noticed that many of my fellow horror bloggers have been participating in "Women in Horror Month". I didn't even know that there was such a thing, but it seems mildly serendipitous that I should be reviewing a book by one of the undisputed Queens of horror during in such a month, Poppy Z. Brite.**
**Note, this article was published years prior to Poppy Z. Brit’s transition, as such this article contains outdated language, and we support William Joseph Martin whole heartedly here at TGDH
Now, that all aside, let's get onto the meat (oh God, that was a regrettable turn of phrase to use in context with this book) of the review.
If you strip Exquisite Corpse down to its bones, (another regrettable phrase, wow, I'm batting zero), it's a love story. A really, really, twisted love story. Even though the two lovebirds in question don't even meet until a little over 3/4 of the way through the book; it's clear, in retrospect, that everything that comes before their meeting is Z foreshadowing their eventual romance, they are each other's destiny if you will. And if you won't, then take it outside, your negativity is bringing down the room.
In a relationship that would put Bonnie and Clyde to shame, our protagonists Andrew Compton and Jay Byrne are two serial killers with the Atlantic Ocean between them. However, as they discover when they finally meet up, they are cut from the same cloth, as they are incredibly similar in their preferences. The main difference between the two - Andrew likes to kill boys, then screw them, then keep 'em in his flat until they smell, at which point he throws them in the Thames.
Whereas Jay likes to screw boys, then torture them to death, and then, finally, eat them.
WHAT A CRAZY RANDOM HAPPENSTANCE AM I RIGHT?!
However, it stands to reason that Jay must be a good deal craftier, because while we begin the book with Andrew wasting away in a British prison, Jay is rumbling the about the streets of New Orleans, picking up transient pretty boys. The first part of the book mostly parallels between these two, Andrew's goings on in England versus Jay's in America. And whilst Jay is busy seducing his dinner, Andrew is pulling off an elaborate jail break that involves fooling everyone into thinking that he's dead and then busting out of the Morgue and pretty much slice 'n dicing his way to the airport. And without spoiling much of the journey of the book for you - he ends up in New Orleans.
Beneath the plot line of Andrew and Jay's eventual love at first sight encounter, there are two subplots; the first of a Vietnamese boy named Tran who is interested in Jay, and has a rocky past including an abusive relationship with his psychotic, HIV positive, ex-boyfriend. The other sub-plot is the HIV/AIDS epidemic in general, to the point that it is almost a character in the work. A third serial killer, if you will. Most of the supporting characters are HIV positive in the work, and it does deal quite sensitively with the subject matter of the men who are slowly dying of the disease. And it's an interesting juxtaposition against the relatively quick, gory, deaths of Jay and Andrew's victims. And its all set against the already macabre associated backdrop of New Orleans (thanks Anne Rice), which is an apt enough location. This is essentially a modern Gothic novel, and what says Gothic better then the French Quarter and above ground mausoleums.
So on a psychological level, that was incredibly interesting. However, as you can imagine with a book about two serial killers in love it is extremely graphic. The details of the murders, necrophilia, and cannibalism leave nothing to the imagination - to the point that I occasionally felt squeamish. ME! I watch slasher movies while eating spaghetti with tomato sauce! So, really, that should tell you something.
Without sounding too prudish, I should also note that it is downright pornographic in points. If Z doesn't pull punches with the violence, then she sure as hell doesn't when explaining sex to the readers. And if I'm admitting that I got a bit squeamish with the gore, I will have to also admit that some of the sex scenes had me clutching at my pearls and lamenting my delicate modern sensibilities, in a full on southern accent.
But I don't want you going into the book, should you choose to read it, thinking it is nothing but "sex,sex,sex, graphic murder, eating people, some more sex" ... sure, there is plenty of that. But there is also plenty of interesting psychology tucked inside as well, especially since roughly a third of the book is told from the perspective of Andrew Compton, so literally, the mind of a serial killer. So, if you're interested in abnormal psychology, or serial killers this might well be your cup of tea. But, like when I reviewed Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, I feel that it's only responsible for me to warn you that if you don't have a strong stomach you should put this book down, now, really.
It's okay, just set it down on the table and walk away. Nobody is judging you, we're all friends here.
So, if you feel like curling up this Valentine's Day with a really warped love story, then PZB delivers that. If not, I don't know, there's always Jane Austen or something. With or without zombies or sea monsters.
So until next time kids, play nice, tip your waitresses, you know the drill.
So, a little while back I saw over at The Final Girl Film Club that the new movie to review was Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse. And I thought "Well, heck, that's in my netflix queue anyway." So, to the top of the queue it went. I will admit that I had more than a little bit of trepidation in watching this one. I know that I am in the horror fan minority here, but I'm really not the biggest fan of Mr. Hooper.
With the exception of Poltergeist, which only sort of counts since it was largely Spielberg's baby, I haven't really liked anything he did. I know, I know, everyone will swear up and down that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a milestone in the horror genre, and that it has such iconic scenes associated with it.
Sorry guys. I just don't like it. I will be honest, however, and tell you that I pretty much automatically dislike anything that has cannibals associated with it. I can't help it you guys, everybody has their thing, mine is cannibals.
But we're getting SO far off topic now. Enough about Tobe Hooper's other productions, we're here to talk about The Funhouse right now. Which, I'm going to go out on a limb here by saying, is my favorite of Hooper's works. Excluding Poltergeist, but we already covered that.
The Funhouse is essentially a Brother's Grimm-esque coming of age tale, modernized, and hidden under the guise of being a typical slasher film. Like the titular funhouse itself, the film is all about what goes on as far as the surface, and then the gritty things happenings that are hidden beneath that.
At first glance, The Funhouse is almost formulaic.
Step 1: Get a group of teenagers together.
Step 2: Introduce some sex and drugs into the mix (with the exception of the mandatory virgin)
Step 3: Teenagers come upon some sort of danger/madman/hillbillies/undead killing machine
Step 4: Said danger will then pick off teenagers one by one
Step 5: Token Virgin goes up against the Big Bad, with some sort of blunt instrument.
Step 6: The virgin escapes alive, older, wiser, and in need of about thirty some-odd years of intense therapy.
Throw in some insane carnies, a weird-ass dark ride (if you don't remember what a dark ride is, shame on you, and go back and refresh your memory), tons of jiggling boobs, and you have the outer shell of The Funhouse's infrastructure.
I'm not saying that escaping terrifying, potentially inbred, carnies is not a key factor to the film. It is. And if you don't really want to have a long think about things and watch the violence, that is potentially enough. However, there is so much more to this film than simply running through plywood sets whilst dodging the Elephantman's ugly cousin.
You just have to know where to look.
To fully understand the heart of the film, you have to understand the film's heroine. Meet Amy Harper.
Amy is in that frightening state of her teenager years in which she is uncomfortably sandwiched between her need to "grow up" like her "cool adult friends", and the crippling fear of what dangers will befall her as soon as she shirks the mantle of childhood in exchange for that of a grown woman.
As much as she wants to be a woman, so much that goes along with it essentially scares the crap out of her. But our little Amy is willing to put on a brave face and stride forward into the great unknown, despite the urge to puke from sheer terror at any moment.
The subtle workings of an after-school special are at work here as well. In the opening, as we see Amy primping for her date, in the background her father tells her how he "doesn't want her going to that damn carnival". Her mother, on the other hand, is busy voicing her disapproval of 'Buzz', the boy who will be taking Amy out.
Basically, Amy's parents tell her "SEX WILL KIIIIIILL YOU"
It was a lot like the Sex Ed bit from Mean Girls
Amy more or less tells her parents that they are full of it and flounces out of the house in her nifty wedge heels. We can wag our fingers and tell her that she should've listened to her Daddy until the cows come home, but if she did then we really wouldn't have a movie.
The aforementioned boy, Buzz, is picking Amy up so they can meet their friends Richie and Liz for a double date at the ominous carnival. I'm not really sure how Buzz fits into this group, because he looks like he's in his late twenties. But whatever. Liz, who I believe is Amy's best friend, is in an established, sexually active relationship with Ritchie. It's fairly evident that Amy not only looks up to Liz, but that Liz's opinion holds a fair amount of sway. I.e. if Liz is doing something, Amy wants to as well.
It's obvious how uncomfortable and inexperienced Amy is where sex is concerned. She shrinks away from Buzz when he starts to come on too strong in the car and is fairly rigid when he attempts to charm her while the four teenagers travel through the carnival. However, after a discussion of her virginity and "saving herself" in one of the Carnival's derelict bathrooms with Liz, Amy seems almost determined to loose her virginity. Even though it's not so much that Amy wants to because she genuinely likes this Buzz fellow, but because it's something that would make her more like Liz.
Sex scares Amy, but she's going to give it the old College Try. So she becomes progressively chummier with Buzz, even thought there are numerous moments where you can still see that she is uncomfortable through her facial expressions. Much like the other instances of Amy's susceptibility to peer pressure, when Ritchie makes the ludicrously moronic genius suggestion that they spend the night in the funhouse ride, Amy foes along with it. Despite the fact that it's, you know, a really really bad idea.
Especially since it becomes apparent that the only reason Ritchie wants them to stay the night in the funhouse is that it seems like a freaky place to, well, get your freak on. So to the funhouse they go, and while our happy couples are in the process of getting down to the nitty gritty there is a general disturbance from beneath the floorboards. Our merry band groups together and peers through the floor boards where they witness probably the creepiest part of the entire movie.
One of the carnies, dressed in a Frankenstein mask is propositioning the carnival fortune teller by means of grunting and waving money at her. It's a short lived encounter, as our boy Franky is not exactly a sexual dynamo, but the woman is still planning on keeping the hundred dollars she, pardon the pun, squeezed out of him. This makes hulk mad, and he murders the her to get back said cash.
Further proving to dear, sweet Amy that, oh yeah, SEX KILLS.
Needless to say, our band of heroes goes from "Hey look! It's Live Weird Porn!!" to "HOLY CRAP! THERE'S A KILLER ON THE LOOSE!". Except with way less panic then that, because they only make a fairly half-assed attempt at escape, despite having just witnessed a murder and knowing that there is just no way that this is going to end well.
So after some unenthusiastic shuffling around wiggling door handles, they decide that the best plan of action is to go back to the scene of the crime and sit on their asses doing nothing. Because that is OBVIOUSLY the best decision. After some time Frankenstein boy comes back with his angry hillbilly daddy in tow.
His daddy is pretty "hey man whatever" about the fact that his satanic offspring has offed a woman until he realizes who she is. And then he goes a bit apeshit because she's a fellow carnie. If she'd just been a local girl then, you know, who cares. But since she's part of the carnival THIS IS WAY BAD LIKE WHOA.
Ritchie, being the fine specimen of humanity that he is, of course, manages to give the chillun's location away. Because he's awesome, and so, of course Hillbilly and son know that the only way to handle this situation is to eliminate all witnesses. Which, of course, leads to our intrepid heroes flailing around the freakish insides of the ride whilst being chased, and picked off by some of the most bizarre characters to grace the slasher genre.
But here's where The Funhouse deviates from the general slasher film. Because Amy manages to not be our general slasher film heroine.
Generally speaking, the Final Girl of any horror film's general arc is that she makes the progression from the victim to the empowered hero. Notice I used the term hero and not heroine. That is because, as nearly any text book on horror will tell you, the Final Girl's genesis has a tendency to stem from her taking on more masculine traits and leaving behind being a scared little girl. That is not the case in what happens with Amy. And that is a big part of why I don't consider Amy in the usual class of Final Girl.
If you will recall, at the very beginning of this entry I said that I viewed The Funhouse as "essentially a Brother's Grimm-esque coming of age tale". This is largely because Amy is more of a Grimm's Fairytale Heroine then a Final Girl.
For my money, Amy is an almost perfect parallel to Snow White.
She is essentially innocent, and despite the frequent opportunities that arise to sully her innocence, she escapes the tale with it intact. And like Snow White, the temptations to corrupt Amy's innocence are also potential threats to her life just as much as to her vulnerability.
In the original tale of Snow White, the Queen tempts her with more than just the apple. First there is a corset - meant to give her an adult womanly figure- or suffocate her, as it turns out. Then the poisoned comb to make her look pretty an appealing to the opposite sex. Things that are supposed to make Snow White appear as an adult woman, further more, Snow White is being pressured to appear as such. These trials we can almost think of as being embodied by Liz and Ritchie, Amy's pressures to lose her innocence.
Whereas, the poison apple can be the analogy for Amy's pressure to lose her virginity to Buzz - and in a more biblical sense, to the apple of knowledge that Eve ate - to gain the knowledge of adulthood.
Also, like Snow White, Amy must deal with the abandonment of her parents in the face of grave danger. After Snow White's mother dies, for the rest of the tale her father pretty much checks out, and no point even tries to help his daughter. Likewise in one scene in The Funhouse, Amy's parents actually arrive at the Carnival to collect her younger brother. Amy sees them through a fan vent in the side of the funhouse and calls out to her parents. While her little brother appears to see her, the adults don't even glance in her direction. Like Snow White, Amy is on her own, no adult is going to help her.
Like is the case in most Grimm fairy tales, Snow White is not self rescuing. She does not take up a sword, march on the castle, and have a showdown with her Wicked Stepmother to reclaim her rightful thrown. In turn, Amy does not have the usual Final Girl moment of heroism, where she finds a large blunt object and stamps determinedly towards the villain to bash his brains in and save the day.
In this respect, Amy is not only like Snow White, but, honestly, like many of us would really act thrown into this situation. Your first instinct is not always to go into "Badass" mode. Most of use would behave just like Amy. We would run into the night, screaming like a banshee. Furthermore Amy doesn't, really defeat the villain, it's more dumb luck than anything else that saves Amy. Which, really, is more relate-able. That's normal, that's human
And while further delving into the symbolism that we can link to Snow White, Amy's suitor, Buzz, can almost be cast as the role of the Huntsmen. Buzz is, initially, a danger to Amy, he is older and more mature than her. Further linking the theme of sex and death, The Huntsmen initial role is to kill Snow White, and initially Buzz's role is to defile Amy.
Neither of these men perform their initial function. The Huntsmen cannot kill Snow White, and Buzz does not taint Amy's innocence. Both, however, essentially put their necks on the chopping block so that the innocent girl is given a chance to escape her would-be killer. Buzz takes on the Hillbilly brigade single-handedly so that Amy can make a break for it, in a scene that is almost direct remake of the forest scene in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The biggest difference, for Amy, is that at the end of this tale there is no prince to rescue her. There is no glass casket, or seven dwarfs. However, whereas in Snow White, her death-like sleep and awakening is the symbolism of her coming into herself as an adult, Amy's voyage through the funhouse can be scene as such.
Also unlike Snow White, there is no Happily Ever After storybook ending for Amy. Nor riding off on a white horse into the sunset. Amy's "happy ending" is that she gets to limp out into harsh light of the morning after, clothes torn, and on the verge of nervous collapse.
But not everybody can get that Disney ending right?
Right.
So, fairy tale allegories aside, The Funhouse is not perfect, though enjoyable. The special effects makeup is a little wanting, our lead villain is ... interesting looking, but by no means something realistic. Also on the subject of the villain, you don't really understand enough about him to feel anything towards him, empathy or otherwise, and to have a truly good villain, you have to actually like them a little bit.
There are points in which the characters actions make less than no sense, but that's a common trait in slasher. As is the fact that they really are not all that fleshed out. But still, I like to care a little bit about someone, you know, so I can be at least a little disappointed when they kick the bucket. I like to root for people even when I know that they're going to drop like flies.
On the other hand, Tobe Hooper artistically outdid himself in this one. It's beautiful to look at. The colors are rich, and there are some scenes that are shot so well it is almost jaw-dropping. So, really Mister Hooper, good job there. I may be alone in this, but I feel like The Funhouse kicks Texas Chainsaw Massacre's ass and takes its lunch money.
So that's what I got babies, even if you don't want to sit down and look at the film in an academic sense, it's good to just look at. Basically, it's a decent night in.
