October is among us once again! You know what that means? Christmas movies all month long where we’ll be starting with…oh wait! I thought it was nearly Christmas time considering some of the strange ads I’ve seen and things I’ve heard. I’ll have to keep focus by looking at some new and old horror movies this month. We’ll be starting with a recent film, which stars someone you wouldn’t expect, Christopher Lloyd.
What can be said that hasn’t already been said about the great Christopher Lloyd? He’s played one of the most iconic characters ever, the eccentric Doc Brown, and he’s even had some villainous roles, like Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He’s always had this enthusiasm for acting and hasn’t lost it even in his older age, as displayed by this film. He’s always fun to watch on film and he’s always able to light up a scene when he walks in.
While the man has been slowing down and starting to take some lesser roles, this isn’t a bad thing considering the man is 74 years old. However being a major character in “The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure” and “Mickey Mastson and the Copperhead Conspiracy” isn’t really a great thing. It seems that he wants to stay out of the limelight for a while due to his climbing age. Again, this isn’t a bad thing but you have to wonder if he even looks over the scripts at this point.
“Dead Before Dawn” is about a commuting college student, Casper Galloway (played by Devon Bostick), and his attempt to grow up and enter adulthood. His Grandfather Horus (played by Christopher Lloyd) suggests that he should watch the Occult shop that he owns. However, Casper’s father died in the shop and he’s afraid to but he summons the courage to watch the shop. While there, the girl of his dreams, Lucy (played by Brittany Allen), walks in with her ditzy friend, Charlotte (played by Martha MacIsaac), and the jock football player, Patrick (played by Kyle Schmid). We are introduced to the energetic Dazzling Darlington (played by Brandon Jay McLaren), the stoner arty kid Seth (played by Tim Doiron), and his gothic friend Becky (played by April Mullen) as they stop in his shop.
They focus on a single evil urn with a skull and red eyes and decide to play with it. When the urn is smashed, a curse that the kids make up comes true and a sinister race soon arises. A mix between zombies and demons (“zemons”, as they’re called) soon arise and new ones appear whenever the main characters look at anyone and they kill themselves. The main characters now must reverse the curse before the sunrises; otherwise they’ll be stuck with the curse forever.
Horror comedies are a very shaky genre to get right because you get one of two possible results. Either you get something great like “Shaun of the Dead” or “Dale and Tucker Vs. Evil”, which mix horror, emotion and comedy into a winning formula, or two, you could also get something more like “A Haunted House” or the “Scary Movie” series which are completely ridiculous and seem to hate horror (especially when it parodies “Black Swan” and “Inception”). It is really difficult to effectively mix horror and comedy, considering both sides need time to shine.
While this movie isn’t as bad as the “Scary Movie” series, it’s still nothing spectacular. It doesn’t go far enough in terms of horror and the first ten minutes are really dull. The characters don’t have the best introduction, as the movie doesn’t really make them seem interesting at all. It tries to set up quirks and stereotypes to pick on but once the movie gets going the plot doesn’t really go anywhere. For example, Charlotte is portrayed as someone who loves sex and not someone who is in any way bright, however she only has two scenes that highlight this and one weird moment near the end.
This also gets irritating when we are introduced to the pot artsy character, Seth, who is almost unbearable to watch. He’s such a stock character who says some of the dumbest one-liners in comedy. He’s also part of the weird moment with Charlotte near the end. I should probably talk about that; skip down a few paragraphs if you want to avoid spoilers.
Near the end, Charlotte dies when she snaps her own neck (this makes sense in context), turning herself into a zemon. One of the rules about zemons is if one of the main characters French kisses a zemon, they turn into a loyal slave. Seth had been falling in love Charlotte and vice versa, and her death leaves Seth devastated. Heartbroken, he decides to French kiss her so that they don’t have to kill her; and of course he makes a joke about his new girlfriend.
However Dazzle quickly becomes a zemon when he kills himself by swallowing bees (again, makes sense in context). Seth thinks he can bring him back but everyone urges him not to and he even admits it would be socially wrong. I became pissed off when I watched film considering it seemed really hateful and just plain stupid. If he said, “I probably shouldn’t kiss him considering he has a mouthful of bees”, I would have been more lenient but he didn’t, breaking all kinds of social rules.
One of the most interesting movies released recently is “Paranorman”, where at the end it’s revealed that the football player is actually gay and enjoys staying home and watching movies. They didn’t make it a joke; they stated it as fact and he’s the only children’s film character to do this. Maybe it’s too much expecting a bit more from a more mature film, but then again the “Scary Movie” films are also considered “mature”.
This movie only really receives a very reluctant recommendation since there was a sense of effort but it ultimately failed. However the actors who played zemons really get into their roles and were fun to watch, and Christopher was in top form and even had the chance to spend some time as a zemon himself. However the main characters are really average, the ending sucked, and there’s that one moment that really didn’t work. There are better movies to watch during October in the spirit of Halloween, as you’ll soon see.