Hypnagogic State

(Via Flour Power, h/t Adam)

Amazon has The Nightmare on Elm Street Collection box set of DVDs on sale for $20.48 (down from $61). The box set includes the first seven movies (everything except Freddy Vs. Jason), a disc of bonus footage that has extra fun stuff for the computer, a commemorative booklet, and two pairs of 3D glasses.

The family members who have been asking what I want for Christmas will now have an answer. Freddy Krueger wears green and red. He’s a festive guy. And stabby. Festively stabby.

Is the Twilight thing over yet? I lived in a blissfull state of unawareness that such a thing even existed until the first movie was about to come out. I did a small bit of research into what the books were about and every time I found out a new plot element, I honestly thought the person saying it was messing with me. “Sparkling vampires? Hahahahaha…oh, you’re serious. Wtf?” But since one of my pet peeves is people criticizing something they’ve never read/seen/etc., I gave it a shot at reading the first book. I made it a few chapters in and just had to stop.

I’ve completely backed away from vampires since the Twilight craze started. But my phase was mostly over before that, having reached its peak in my mid-teenage years when I devoured the Anne Rice books.

As for vampire movies, my top two favorites are Shadow of the Vampire and The Lost Boys. The vampires in The Lost Boys were teenagers with overly styled hair. But they were still scary and threatening and dangerous. Not sparkling emos.

If you’re a fan of the film- or live with someone that is collecting Twilight action figures that you need to counteract- this action figure of David (as portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland) is available for a bargain $9.99 at Amazon.

Oh No They Didn’t posted this image of a promotional toy for the reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s the closest look horror fans have gotten at what Jackie Earle Haley will look like as Freddy Krueger.

There’s only one reason I’m not protesting in the streets over this reboot: Haley made all of my Rorschach dreams come true in Watchmen. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt not the movie.

But there is and always will be only one true Freddy. Robert Englund’s performance is what got me into horror movies (after I recovered from the years of trauma that resulted from seeing The Dream Warriors when I was six). And the first film in the Nightmare franchise was so perfect there’s no possible way the reboot can improve upon it.  If they were proposing a reboot from The Dream Master on, it would make more sense. The latter part of the series had buckets of wasted potential.

I’m not a purist who’s against all remakes. Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead is one of my favorite movies of all time. The recent remake of My Bloody Valentine was, save the rushed ending, a solid film. The Friday the 13th remake was enjoyable up until the halfway mark, where the writers seemed to have called it a day.

The trouble is in rebooting a classic without either a) staying very true to the original material or b) adding a completely unique spin to it. Rob Zombie tried to combine the two methods in Halloween and it felt awkward. The Black Christmas remake was an abomination of epic proportions. It stripped away everything compelling about the original and substituted in cliches and squick. Someone should publicly apologize for that film.

The industrial design documentary Objectified premieres tonight on PBS. A part of the excellent Independent Lens series, Objectified is a project of filmmaker Gary Hustwit- who also created Helvetica, one of my favorite documentaries of all time.

Check here for local listings and rerun dates.

Helvetica is available for instant streaming through Netflix.

This review is less than timely for a reason: the more I sat and thought about Paranormal Activity, the less I liked the film. Oh, it is still worth seeing (especially if you’ve managed to stay mostly spoiler free). But I am feeling confident about comments I made to Adam when the film was released: “I am predicting that Paranormal Activity will go the way of the The Blair Witch Project . Big, strong showing in the theater that is likely to usher in a short period of more indie horror movies getting greenlit. Maybe strong initial DVD sales but then very few people will ever watch it again.”

Paranormal Activity follows Micah and Katie, a young couple who are being bothered by something that goes bump in the night. Micah purchases a video camera to document what has been happening and it is through that camera that the film is shot. A large portion of the film consists of watching the couple asleep at night with the camera on a nearby tripod. These scenes contain the few genuinely creepy moments that drive the suspense and feeling of dread.

But will those moments still be creepy once you know what they are? It’s doubtful even if ghosts/demons rank number one on your fears list. The same can be said about the ending, which was changed from the film festival version at the suggestion of Steven Spielberg.

The characters of Micah and Katie (using the real first names of the actors) were compelling and believable to me during my first viewing. But this is where it really fell apart for me during retrospection. It seems as though the couple has an urgency switch reset during their nightly slumber. The paranormal activity keeps becoming more intense but their reactions largely plateau by the middle of the film.

But, as I said in the opening paragraph, I do think the movie is worth a viewing for fans of horror movies. It will obviously not be the scariest movie you’ve ever seen. It is suspenseful and chilling and interesting enough to keep me,  a nonbeliever of both demons and ghosts, intrigued for its duration… on the first view, at least.

AMC’s remake of The Prisoner premieres on Sunday, November 15th at 8 pm (EST). Until then, you can watch the complete original series at the AMC website.

(h/t: SF Signal)