Rajeev Singh

The Italian milieu is beautifully shot for sure, but that's not all that puts this film a cut above the rest of the horror genre. I've had my taste of the Cthulu mythos, both in books and cinema, the latest one being the Kristen Stewart flick, Underwater. Spring doesn't shove a tentacled monster in your face expecting to elicit revulsion or fear. It's more of a romance between a human and a person who has been alive for thousands of years without ever really knowing love. Her immortality is anatomically explained here, in a way that sounds pretty logical, but you slowly get to know her as a person who never met anyone who could point out the machine-like nature of her existence; and when she meets that special someone, it's hard to let go. The ending is wise too, letting the viewer deduce for himself what transpires.

John Travolta has been a cop-and-goon-by-turns in ''Face Off,'' a formidable nuke-loving fighter pilot with world-destruction on his mind in ''Broken Arrow,'' a suave terrorist digitally looting the US Treasury in ''Swordfish'' and worn so many hats that it's very hard to list them here. But this must be the first time I've seen him as an out-and-out common man in an insignificant little town with nothing to aspire to except the love of a mother of two who doesn't look twice at him. There is no cigar for him to smoke in style, no butterfly knife to swing, but he does the role with aplomb and in an unpretentious, disarming manner. But there has to be intrigue in a story, right? It's the selling point. So we have a sudden rise of uncanny mental abilities in him that may or may not have come from a falling star or UFO. What's key here isn't his ability to read three books a night or master the Portuguese language while reading a how-to book in 20 minutes, or even his accurate prediction of an earthquake without any equipment. This movie shows how a common man turning into a prodigy overnight attracts attention of all the negative kind. From nothing to something and yet he can't be happy because his power is looked upon with suspicion. He is a pariah, an odd man out, someone touched by evil. This film shows the downside of humanity using a man who never wanted anything except a simple life with a woman he loved and who spurned him all the time. John Travolta has never disappointed me (except as the under-used villain in ''Punisher,'' not his fault though) but here he has really tugged at my heart.

Waste of time. I wonder what the filmmakers were thinking. At one point, this sounded like a crime thriller with a sexual angle to it, but then the protagonist's affair with the colleague was totally left behind and the director served us with Chinese heroine smugglers and a silver-haired cop chasing them and the hero getting into the mix. And then, guess what, there was a sinister hostess (not 'The Host') who wanted to torture and kill her guests the way they do in B grade slasher flicks. Girl child with daddy issues, a crappy childhood, you know the drill. Never mind that she was good-looking, as were most women in the film, this was too much of a hodge-podge that could never decide what it was about.

I was almost tempted to give this one three or more stars. After all, Jaime Murray as the arch-vampire is hot as hell, as she proved in Spartacus too, having a threesome involving another siren, Lucy Lawless. But the atmosphere of dangerous seduction set by the first half very quickly slid down a path of self-destruction, ending in a cesspool of cliches and an over-stretched climactic sequence which harked back to the original Fright Night 2 of 1988. Death by sunburn? Not after all the rigmarole of blood-bathing and topless women being throat-slit and hung up like mutton. Jaime Murray's Elisabeth Bathory had come so tantalizingly close to the femme fatale Regine Dandrige (Julie Carmen) of the '88 film. She deserved a much better end.

My second movie from the Soska Sisters, after American Mary. This one reminded me of two novels: Voracious, by Wrath James White, and Coldheart Canyon, by Clive Barker. I liked how Rose's condition panned out as a creepy, slow-burning transformation, before it finally got into the epidemic territory that is well-trodden now. Along with the heavy dose of body horror it brings to the sick man's table, Rabid dissects the psyche of a self-conscious woman mocked and hurt to the point of utter emotional collapse. The loss of face (literally here) makes her desperate enough to go for reconstructive surgery because her looks are the last straw she has been holding on to. In the midst of all the mayhem is the loneliness of a person who can do anything to mingle into society as someone successful and likable.

I really wanted to see Cthulu in flesh and this movie did it for me. Like Kristen Stewart says towards the end that there are things which make you feel insignificant, I felt a horrified awe at the sight of the majestic underwater thing. It was blood-curdling from the other side of the screen and even imagining being in Kristen's shoes (or suit) made me feel violated, my sanity robbed. H P Lovecraft would have been proud to see his Mythos brought to life in modern times, and in such convincing fashion. I did have some issues though. The creatures were able to survive the immense water pressure at such a depth because they had probably adapted to it, but in that case, when the first small creature was brought inside the rig where the pressure was kept normal (as on sea level), it shouldn't have been able to stay in one piece, just like humans wouldn't be able to live outside without their suits.

What is special about this movie is an unapologetic lack of plot and platters full of splatter. There is no stupid college-buddies trip where one of them would mask themselves as a killer clown. It's just the Art Clown with a black smile and his love for endless gore. My favourite scene was where Dawn, hanging upside down, was sawn off from groin to head while Tara was made to watch. This used to be a method of execution in Medieval Europe, as I read. I did wonder if someone so skinny as the clown could pull it off, though. I liked Tara's black figure-hugging dress too. Skeleton motif in the centre and garter belts. Sexy, like the rest of her.

Fast-paced, pulpy and fun. Quite a change from the CGI-fuelled cinema of modern times. Guns, drug dealers, good and bad cops, department politics and a couple of aliens in the fray. Swedish hunk Dolph Lundgren reminded me here of Sylvester Stallone's Lt Cobretti with his maverick cop act. I didn't know that he could deliver some fancy kicks too, not as elegant as Van Damme's but not bad either. My best memories of him will however remain as the cult villain Sergeant Andrew Scott of Universal Soldier (1992) and the muscular ice-blonde He Man in Masters of the Universe (1987).

I would have enjoyed it more if I had seen it when it first came out, when I was brimming with teenage angst myself. Post Twilight-and-its-spiritual-siblings, which have turned Werewolves into quick-healing, super-powerful, uber-cool X-men, a throwback to the olden days should have been refreshingly welcome. But Ginger Snaps is less about Lycanthropy and more about two sisters - 16 and 15 years old - in the thick of their efforts to ward off the hazards of the high school world and their dawning sexuality. Ginger and Brigitte aren't normal and they don't strive for normalcy, enjoying their morbid death-simulation projects and even their pariah status because they mean so much to each other that the lack of friends is almost a boon. And then comes the Werewolf bite, complicating matters, driving a wedge between their mutual freakishness and sisterhood, turning one of them into a creature beyond control and the other into the loyal sister desperately trying to set things right, even if it means hushing up a murder. Even the climax isn't about a Werewolf being dealt a body blow, as would happen in an out-and-out Werewolf movie. It is about a sister losing a sister, no matter if she were a monster.

Great twist on the story of Griffin, as written by the late and great H G Wells. The makers chose to refrain from serving a sci-fi action flick like Hollow Man and roped in a leading lady who could carry the film on her shoulders, bringing out a horror that was much bigger than anything the Invisible Man could do to her: the horror of other people's disbelief in what was happening to her. Indeed, the scene where Elizabeth Moss impulsively throws paint over apparent nothingness below her perch in the attic shook me to the core, dispelling all the negativity that I had been notching up about the film being a slow burn. This was a splendid watch, with a great life-comes-full-circle ending.