Wes Craven Presents They

Rating:
Summary: Craven's still got the knack, but is showing wear
Review: 'Nightmare on Elm Street'--masterwork;'Last House on the Left'--okay; 'Shocker'--weak; 'Scream'--perfect, but 'They'--nice try. We know Craven has taken over the modern dark-horror film world, is know for his gratigious gore and sex, and maintaining a fairly well-made picture throughout all. With the exception of 'The People Under the Stairs,' "They" is among the most trite of his pictures to date.

Shifting the blame to poor performance on part of virtually the entire cast (besides perhaps Domincyzk) only worsens the flops this picture suffers. Lunds portrayl of the hapless, night-terror victim brought me to nausea before the first half-hour, and dozens will agree that once the creatures drag her into thier world forever, you'll be applauding the credits. Suprisingly, Blucas proved a weak actor as well. Could it be bad scripting? Who knows, but more importantly, who cares?!

If Craven's near-plajarism of 'IT,' in scenes such as Lund's getting spurted in the face by sink drain-scum, don't make you weary of deja-vu', you might as well turn off the VCR. Most of the entire plot was a recreation of various nightmare-themed films, many of which Craven himself crafted (Yes, I know it's pathetic). Lighting and sets were appropriately dreary, the music reminescent of "Scream"'s, and the CG used for the night-terrors is neatly composited, but even long-time fans of Craven's macabre mastery may be sadly disappointed. No offense, guys, but this one belonged on the cutting-room floor from reel one.

Saw it, fell asleep, rented Darkness Falls instead,
GIGI

Rating:
Summary: Do you have the Mark?
Review: If you're thinking about giving "They" a look-see, I have one question for you:

Do you want something nasty, stylish, and chilling which is not about ghosties, not about ghoulies, but definitely about long-legged Beasties that go bump in the night?

Long-legged Beasties that hide underneath your bed and *really* want you, in the middle of the night, to go for a glass of water, so they can reach out a leathery, brittle-black hand and grab your ankle?

Long-legged Beasties that really *are* hiding in the closet?

If you answered "yes" to even one of these questions, then "They" is for you. But quick, let's talk about "They" director Robert Harmon, just for a minute.

Nearly two decades ago, director Robert Harmon helmed a shivery, beautifully filmed little shocker called "The Hitcher", in which Rutger Hauer freakishly brought to life the very image Jim Morrison must have had in mind when he penned "Riders on the Storm". "The Hitcher" worked in spades, was extra heavy on the red sauce, was very moody, and managed to give some heft to that age-old advice for the road traveler: don't pick up hitchhikers, especially crazy-eyed ones in wet trenchcoats who look just like Rutger Hauer. And honestly, how can you go wrong with a flick that features drawing-and-quartering via semi-truck?

I have waited nearly 17 years for a thrilling follow-up from Harmon that rivals the unmitigated terror of "The Hitcher"---and alas, I'm still waiting. But that said, Harmon's latest little effort "They" is a stylish little slice of ghoulish grue that creeps and crawls like a Crawling King Snake, thank you.

Sancta simplicitas! The plot to "They" is admirably clean and simple: a bunch of twenty-somethings are once again suffering the savage little night terrors they suffered as children, with one little hitch: the creatures in the darkness---They!---snatched the kiddies from their beds and marked them, and now They want to take them into their own horrible midnight world. Forever.

Our cast of characters here starts out small and quickly gets smaller: Julia Lund, the fetching beanpole heroine (played to goose-pimply lithe perfection by Laura Regan, now my latest cinematic crush); her bumptious slacker boyfriend, Paul (the annoying, simpering Mark Blucas, who, sadly, doesn't die in "They"); her old friend Sam (a sketchy, twitchy role by Ethan Embry); and his friends, Terry (played by the breathtakingly yummy Dagamara Dominczyk, a Polish actress who played the role of Mercedes in "Count of Monte Cristo". Wow. Did I mention 'wow'?) and Billy.

Alas, Sam isn't long for this world. He tells his old friend Julia that he is marked, stalked by the Things that lived in his closet as a child, and he believes that They are coming back to take him. After a moody, paranoid, whispered conversation during a dreamily lit and creepy-crawly sequence in a diner, Sam kills himself, leaving Julia to puzzle through Sam's morbid fears, to meet his friends Terry and Billy (who themselves confess to having been marked and feel stalked), and, ultimately, to suspect that the Things that terrified Sam have declared open season on her, as well.

"They" is not a perfect film: it's over too quickly, so you don't have time to really form any kind of bond with the pencil-thin characters here. And unlike the sanguine "The Hitcher", Harmon doesn't lay on the red sauce, and a little gore is always welcome in spooky proceedings of this sort. "They", as a result, is a little like spaghetti carbonara without the carbonara sauce.

But that said, "They" is a stylish little chiller: the set design, dreamy cinematography (particularly all those aerial and swooping shots, and especially the subway sequence)come together to create a mounting sense of impending, merciless doom. The scene with Regan standing before a bathroom mirror examining her hand gave me the crawls. And given the identity of the movie's eponymous They, that's about right: the things that stalk our heroes do so in the shadows, in closets, under beds, in darkened subway tunnels, and they do so without an ounce of pity. And we see just enough of them to tease our imagination: they are leathery, blackened, sinuous horrors, calling to mind David Twohy's beasties in "Pitch Black."

"They" reminds me of a waking nightmare, and the scene in which Julia discovers what's buried beneath her own 'Mark' feels like something from a bad dream. Better still, there are no safety zones in "They": the heroes are constantly hunted. Add to that the stylish swimming pool and subway sequences, the lovely Regan and Dominczyk, and the creepy cinematography, and "They" is a perfect, moody little film for a crisp, dark October night---but you might want to take a look in all your closets first.

Rating:
Summary: . . .
Review: This movie is a bore.I want to snore.I know,I know that was lame but so is this movie is to.

Rating:
Summary: Fun and Effective if Decidedly Minor Popcorn Horror Movie
Review: The simple premise is that when as children we lie awake in the dark afraid that some vague evil thing is going to creep up and get us, we are not as deluded as we comfortably suppose. The heroine is a graduate student of psychiatry Julia Lund (Laura Regan) whose friend Billy kills himself in a frenzy of terror that `they' are coming for him. Soon she is starting to feel similar worries on her own account.

This film, in spite of the way it was marketed, has in fact got more or less nothing to do with Wes Craven. And probably much the better for that. The core idea has a nice simplicity and much of the time its genuinely creepy. This is especially true of the first 50 minutes or so (a sizeable chunk of this very short film) where the suspense is all conveyed by shadows and flickering lights and any sense of what `they' are like is left to our imagination. This remains true up till a scene in a swimming pool (that brings to mind but is much less scary than the great pool scene in Tourneur's `Cat People') where we get our first proper look at the nasties. After that, the film is decidedly less scary as what the sfx people have cooked up here left me at least a lot less disturbed than when my imagination was doing the work. Vet simple and competently put together I thought this a pretty effective supernatural thriller with a few genuinely scary moments albeit perhaps ultimately a little lightweight and forgettable.


Rating:
Summary: Thrillfest with atmosphere
Review: I believe that Wes Craven presents They is one hell of a movie. The atmosphere is suffocating at times and at other times it is just plain creepy. I cannot believe that Darkness Falls, an utter piece of trash film succeeded more at the box office than this stylish, offputting little excercise in thrills. This film deserves a cult following from those who understand what real cinema is. One would hope in time, They will become a dvd hit and live on forever in cinema history.

Rating:
Summary: Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
Review: Wes Craven Presents: They (Rick Bota and Robert Harmon, 2002)

Robert Harmon's name appears at the end of They. Rick Bota's does not. I get the feeling Bota originally directed and Harmon was called in to save the resulting mess. If so, he did a surprisingly good job of it.

When this movie came out, it was universally trashed. Not surprising. Any movie whose name begins (director) Presents... is usually going to be horrific. (There are exceptions, however; Robert Zemeckis presented us with The Frighteners in 1996. Keep that in mind.) Wes Craven has an especially bad record, having "presented" us such gems as Mind Ripper, a film even the combined talents of Giovanni Ribisi AND Lance Henriksen couldn't save. Lurking under the surface of They, however, is actually a really good movie. And it comes out at times.

Explaining why this is would be a vague, but major, spoiler, so get ready for it. If you plan on seeing the film and haven't yet, stop reading now.

I am willing to give points, automatically, to any film that doesn't automatically embrace the Hollywood ending. So when I got to the final moments of They, and it ended exactly where I hoped it would, I was mightily impressed. (Note: I understand the UK release had an alternate, Hollywood-esque, ending. Sorry, you lot.) Yes, it does have an exceptional sense of deja vu attached to it (if you see the end of this movie and don't think of a certain John Carpenter film, you probably need to go back and watch said Carpenter film again; saying which one it is would be giving away too much), but Harmon handles it better than Carpenter did. And that, my friends, is one hell of a trick, when you think about it. Remember, this was a film Carpenter directed at the height of his powers.

The movie centers on Julia (Laura Regan, who had a two-minute part in Unbreakable, and recently played the title role in Saving Jessica Lynch), a grad psychology student whose best childhood friend, Billy (Boston Public's Jon Abrahams), has just committed suicide. Billy, like Julia, suffered from extreme night terrors as a child. At his funeral, Julia meets two of Billy's other close friends from long ago, Sam (Ethan Embry, looking almost unrecognizable) and Terry (Keeping the Faith temptress Dagmara Dominczyk). They, too, had night terrors as children. (One wonders how a kid kept two different sets of childhood friends.) Billy's night terrors had returned just before his death, and he was convinced the things in his dreams were coming back to get him. Thus, his death. All well and good (and providing some excellent black humor, wonderfully timed; a rarity in films like this), except now the others are starting to get the same idea...

There's a lot here, and some of it is unexplored. Normally, that drives me to distraction, but this time I found myself hoping they'd make a sequel focusing on Sarah (Kingdom Hospital's Jodelle Ferland), a young girl Julia meets while trying to uncover the mystery of the night terrors. Sarah is a patient in a hospital who also suffers from night terrors, and knows who They are. This led to all kinds of questions in my head. There's a hospital dedicated to studying night terrors? The staff have collected all these stories about They? Could the staff, too, know about They? (If so, the final scene takes on an added dimension of ominousness that many viewers might have missed; think about it.) Put together a sequel about Sarah, once she's Julia's age, but with more street-smarts than Julia (who is, to play devil's advocate, slightly smarter than your average monster lunch, but probably not up to the brain level of your typical psychology grad student-- at least, judging by her actions here), and you could have one serious barnburner on your hands. Get someone with real teeth to write the screenplay-- Alex Garland or William Goldman, maybe-- and put it in the hands of a top-notch director. Richard Donner hasn't done a horror movie in a while.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, They is not nearly as bad a movie as the critics made it out to be. Worth a rental. ***

Rating:
Summary: `They' wasn't what I expected
Review: I had huge expectations on this film, huge. But when it got right down to it, it just didn't cut it for me. Starts out pretty slow and once it picks up you are hooked. You're at the edge of your seat anxious about Julia's next moved wondering what's going to happen now that she knows about They then all of a sudden.....it... it.. Ends. What a disappointment that was for me to know that I just wasted my money on this movie. The suspense was pretty good I give it that but the ending not one of my favorites. Obviously these people didn't care to save their behinds because if they did they would have stocked up on a lifetime supply of flashlights and batteries or candles for that matter.