This Weekend’s Film Festival - Suburban Nightmares

With Sam Raimi's fabulous horror/comedy DRAG ME TO HELL now on DVD and Blu-ray, this week's lineup gets into some early Halloween scares. These chillers take place where people live. A witch curses a bank worker who fails to extend her loan. A woman hits a homeless man who becomes stuck in her windshield. Two wayward souls become obsessed with bugs under their skin. A vengeful cop torments his new neighbors. And we end with a classic real world battle between good and evil.

"At its core, [DRAG ME TO HELL] is about how the pressure of success can curse us and make us do things we never thought we’d ever be capable of doing," to quote my original review. Christine, played wonderfully by Alison Lohman, is a farm girl trying to make her way in the big city. Her boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) is from a rich family, so she wants to move up at her bank job to impress them. Enter the gypsy Mrs. Ganush, in a classic villain performance from Lorna Raver. She is behind on her mortgage and Christine makes the tough decision to decline another extension. The old woman curses Christine, who is then plagued by demons who in three days time will drag her to hell. Christine tries everything to rid herself of her demons, both literally and figuratively. Raimi crafts a story that is driven by its character's desires and our desire for their wellbeing. He perfectly balances between pathos, humor and real tension. Throughout, the film Christine is pushed to the edge and she must learn what kind of person she wants to become.

STUCK takes a real-life horror story and transforms it into a darkly satirical horror flick. Brandi Boski (Mena Suvari) is a nurse's assistant who likes to party hard on her days off with her tough-talking, drug-dealing boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby). Tom Bardo, played compassionately by Stephen Rea, is a man whose luck has run out. He's out of work and out on the street. When Brandi and Tom meet, he ends up stuck in her windshield, bleeding to death. She panics and drives home, hiding her car in her garage, hoping that Tom will just die. Director Stuart Gordon, the creator of the cult classic RE-ANIMATOR, fills the film with as much irony as he does blood. As I said in my original review, "The ending doesn’t stick to the true story at all, but finds a poignantly ironic note that has something to say about the humanity of those whom have and those that do not." In this story, Stuart finds the perfect horrific tale to critique the selfishness of society. This is a gruesome, funny and tense thriller that will provoke discussion when it's over.

William Friedkin's BUG is a psychological horror film that simply watches two people descend into madness. Agnes White, in a dedicated performance by Ashley Judd, is a woman who has had a tough life. She doesn't trust people easily, but when she meets the polite Peter Evans, played brilliantly by Michael Shannon, she lets her defenses down. Both characters come at each other with skepticism at first, but they fill a need for each other. Peter is schizophrenic, believing the government has planted bugs in his bloodstream, while Agnes is lonely and naïve. Friedkin scares us with the rawness and reality of the characters' mental states. Peter's "theories" make complete logical sense from their point of view — they're just connecting the dots that no one else sees. Both Shannon and Judd give themselves up to their roles, creating unique and frighteningly compelling characters. As I said in my original review, "There is a madness that is captured on the screen that feels very real. That realism is what makes BUG so scary."

LAKEVIEW TERRACE combines a cop from hell and a neighbor from hell tale into a thriller that deals compellingly with modern race relations. Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson) is a white man who recently married Lisa (Kerry Washington), a black woman. She came from money and her father has purchased them a beautiful house in the Lakeview Terrace section of Los Angeles. Their next-door neighbor Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) is a black LAPD officer who is known to be tough on his kids and even tougher on criminals. He doesn't take kindly to a black woman married to a white man and doesn't pass up an opportunity to intimidate Chris. Director Neil LaBute creates a nuanced look at race that also deals with class as well. Turner has had to go through hell to get what he's got, so he resents those like the Mattsons and their yuppie friends who take what they have for granted. Little annoyances turn into an all-out psychological war between Chris and Abel until it is pushed too far. Jackson does a remarkable job keeping Turner grounded in reality — he's not your typical neighborhood movie psycho, but a bitter man who lets his anger twist his judgment. As I said in my original review, "The film addresses the source of prejudices, which today are often more personal than we may want to admit. The color of a person’s skin is just an easy excuse." And when those prejudices are combined with the power of the badge, it's frightening to be on the cop's bad side.

J. Lee Thompson's CAPE FEAR is a classic battle between good and evil rooted in the real world. Attorney Sam Bowden, played by Gregory Peck with his signature dignity, did the right thing and testified in an assault case against Max Cady, played menacingly by Robert Mitchum. After eight years in prison, Cady moves into Bowden's town and begins a reign of psychological terror on the lawyer and his family that drives the honest man to the edge. As I said in my original review, "CAPE FEAR challenges audiences with the age-old question of how far would you go to protect the ones you love? For Cady, he has an even older question to answer — how far would you go for revenge? Cady has the frightening patience to wait for the answer." Cady is a cunning intelligent man who has slowly wages his war against Bowden without ever getting caught. Thompson films the movie with a dark Hitchcockian flare that oozes with sexual menace. What Cady is threatening to do might be worse than death. Cady's final siege on the houseboat is one of cinema's most frightening sequences. The end literally leaves the hero and villain wallowing in the mud.

For these pre-Halloween thrills just head to the videostore, update the Netflix queue, check out HelloMovies.com for streaming sites, visit Zap2It.com for TV listings, or support the site by purchasing the films on Blu-ray or DVD at the links below.