Under discussion:

They Came Back  (2004)

They Came Back is, without a doubt, the most interesting zombie film since Dawn of the Dead. Much more innovative with its material than 28 Days Later, though its not really fair to compare the two. The dead have returned, but not as horrid, rotting corpses, and not to feast upon the flesh of the living. They've returned to claim their old lives, jobs, and relationships, to return to society, or so it seems.

Centered in a non-descript French town the film opens with the parade of idyllic dead lumbering down the central thoroughfare. They apppear clean, and neatly dressed, our ideal image of our lost loved ones. Their skin suffers from a slightly sick palor, and is strangely beatific. At first these 'returnees' seem only slightly slow in their reintegration, something most of the townspeople are eager to help them accomplish. It's hard to imagine your wife, child, mother, returning to pick up where they left off. Are they asking too much? Have they the right to their old lives? To its credit the city, in typical French fashion, sets up a refugee center where the 'returnees' are cataloged, and family contact initiated. Through the experiences of three of the 'returnees' and their respective families we see the emotional turmoil this situation is causing.

The primary focus is on Matthieu, a 30 something engineer whose relationship with Rachel was cut short by a car accident. At first reluctant, Rachel eventually welcomes Matthieu back into her life, and bed. Partially out of love, and partially out of guilt for the death she deems as her fault, she attempts restart their life together. This is not unlike the relationship of Kelvin to his own 'visitor', his dead wife, in the Tarkovsky film "Solaris". Like Kelvin, Rachel tries to block out the outside world, here embodied by the interest and concern of one of the 'returnee' center doctors. She just wants to get back to the life she had, or at least try to. Ultimately the nature of Matthieu makes it impossible to do so. As much as she would like to ignore the fact that he never sleeps, and seems to be always in a state of blankness, she cannot. The rest of the town begins to notice these differences too, and soon some nefarious doings are discovered.

Interesting things begin to be noticed by the local committee set up to help with the reintegration. For one, the 'returnees' seem to travel a distance of 9 miles every day. They also are noticed to congregate as if meeting, and thereby plotting with one another. What's more, they appear to be incapable of creating or relating to new experiences and memories. They appear to operate on vague remeberances of similar situations. This aspect of the film is laid out very well, and one would expect it to pay off with a consequence more befitting the genre. While we do get some nice scenes of a more sinister nature on the part of the psuedo-zombies, this serves to raise questions that the film never really answers. It's as if it can't decide where to go with itself and only half-develops this sub-plot. We are never told why they are meeting, or why they become more anti-social as time goes on. The film leaves us to draw our own conclusions on these matters. Perhaps they've remembered enough and now long for the grave. Maybe they understand where they truly belong.

In the end, it's more a meditation on grief, and mourning than a zombie movie. While the movie draws heavily from the genre expectations, it's core is much closer to Solaris, a film about what it means to be alive. We can then see They Came Back as a complimentary piece, a movie about what it means to be dead, not so much for the effect of death on the individual, but the effect of the death on the survivors.

I've seen this film described as a comedy, and I really don't get that. I think the tendency of some viewers who aren't used to the Gallic sensibilities, to read into it humor is misguided. The movie is very, very somber, with a beautiful score to match. It broaches its subject with a quiet eeriness that is anything but hilarious.

Under discussion:

High Tension  (2003)

A young French women, Alex, retreats, with her firend in tow, to her family's country house. In the middle of the night a homicidal maniac who enjoys skull-fucking corpses appears to reign death upon the entire household. Fortunately, he doesn't discover Alex's friend, Marie, who has been hiding out. As he loads Alex into his truck for future fun, Marie must decide whether to save her own skin or attempt a kind of rescue.

So let me get this right. High Tension is a French slasher film that forgoes the genre's cliche endings, and features a cute tomboyish French chick chasing a homicidal maniac with everything from a chainsaw to barbedwire wrapped around a wooden post? Sounds awesome to me.
 It is, for the most part. High Tension is the best horror film I've seen since Gore Verbinski's Ring remake. Don't let the past French attempts at a Hollywood style slickfest (Brotherhood of the Wolf) deter you from giving this film a chance.

Sometimes the best American genre films are made by non-Americans who have an affinity for all that has come before, but who bring a more distilled view of what makes the genre appealing tot heir work. In the wake of the teen scream movies, the glossy, and overly remakes of Ammityville Horror, and Texas Chainsaw Masacre, the dissapointing Asian horror craze, and the lacklustre attempts to return to real horror (House of 1000 Corpses), High Tension is a breath of fresh air. The filmmakers obviously get what makes the horror movies of the 70's so good. There is no self-referential look at the genre here, a sin Wes Craven's work. Gone too is the misplaced boring humor of the 80's schlock phase and more recently the Rob Zombie movies. High Tension is a classic, run, run run, kill, kill, kill, horror movie.

Homages abound in the film. Most notably a reference tot he vehicle the Creeper drives in Jeepers Creepers, as well as a new version of the famous end chase sequence from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Perhaps the most interesting reference though comes in the form of the car Marie appropriates to follow her prey. The yellow and black striped Ford, is a symbol of her transition from hunted to hunter. She is now seeking righteous revenge. The same type of revenge that both Bruce Lee and Beatrix Kiddo sought upon donning their yellow and blackstriped jumpsuits in Game of Death and Kill Bill respectively.The cat and mouse, hunted turned hunter aspect is the film's main contribution to the genre and the main theme which sets it apart from its lineage.

Many reviewers have talked about how the film's ending is hackneyed, or in some way diminishing of what came before. Without ruining the film, I'll say that I don't agree. This isn't Cabin Fever, or Wrong Turn (althogh Wrong Turn has been one of the better attempts at a horror movie in the classic vein), or the Texas Chainsaw remake. The latter featuring changes to the most memorable and scary set pieces, and the inclusion of a child subplot. Now that is hackneyed. Recently Identity attempted bring a new take on the slasher flick, and succeeded fairly well. I don't know if everyone will find High Tension succesful, but I was fine with where the film wound up.

For anyone who is tired of the recent glut of sub standard horror fare, and just wants an unpretentious horror film, this is it. Just be sure to watch the original French language versiona s the English dub is horrendous.

Under discussion:

Battle Royale  (2001)

Graveyard of Honor  (1975)

Street Mobster  (1972)

Kinji Fukusaku is best known to hipsters in the US as the director of “Battle Royale”, an instant classic about a decaying Japanese society and the government’s plan to fix it. In Japan however, Fukusaku is best known for his series of jitsuroka eiga (true story films) that slashed the yakuza genre to pieces like a Hattori Hanzo sword. Among these works, Gendai Yakuza – hitokiri yota (Modern Yakuza – Outlaw Killer, known in the US as Street Mobster), and Jingi no Hakaba (Graveyard of Honor) form the alpha and omega.

Kinji Fukusaku

            Before the jitsuroka eiga films came into fashion, yakuza films portrayed their protagonists as some sort of Robin Hood: existing in the criminal world only b/c it was their way of fulfilling a higher purpose. The yakuza of these films were glorified for their loyalty, and sanctified for their dependence on a code of honor and the prerequisite ceremonies that surrounded it. Fukusaku’s films entered into this world with one purpose, to destroy this mythos and show these gangsters in all their violent, hypocritical reality. Ok, maybe they had two purposes, because these films certainly packed theaters with their gallons of blood and extreme violence. In other words they were huge moneymakers.

            Street Mobster begins as most Yakuza films do: with the protagonist being released from jail after serving time for carrying out an honorable attack on a rival gang. The twist begins once he returns to his yakuza clan and begins to undermine their business, turning on them and eventually leading to their downfall. Told almost as a documentary, the story follows our ‘Street Mobster’ as he laughs off every outreach of help, and every chance to ingratiate himself with his Oyabun (Yakuza boss), eventually leading to his return to prison. The film ends with a slow pan to the words: “Thirty years of life, what a joke” scrawled across his cell wall.

            Where Street Mobster began to explore the anti-yakuza theme, Graveyard of Honor pulled out all the stops and went straight for the jugular. Following on the heels of the Yakuza Papers series, five films loosely based on the rise and fall of a real yakuza gang from Hiroshima, Graveyard of Honor is the pinnacle of jitsuroka eiga and Fukusaku’s coda on the genre.

            The story concerns real life gangster Rikio Ishikawa, and his path of self-destruction. Turning his back on his old gang, Ishikawa forms his own, only to butt heads with a much more powerful gang which is infiltrating the Tokyo territory from Osaka (a classic plot of the genre). Enter Noburo Ando, (a real life yakuza who turned his life experiences into a movie empire basically portraying himself) who offers to rescue Ishikawa from certain death because he sees himself in the unrelenting maniac. All of Ando’s efforts go for naught as time and time again Ishikawa foils the best efforts of his friend. In fact, the only friends Ishikawa does not turn against are his tuberculosis ridden girlfriend who is convinced she can save him from himself, even though they originally met as victim and rapist, and a junkie who is on the same path of self-destruction. These alliances each climax in their own special way.

            When Ishikawa inevitably looses his last remaining grip on reality, he appeals to his scorned Oyabun. With his back to the wall Ishikawa’s former boss aids him more out of fear of his psychopathic nature, than compassion. This launches the last quarter of the film into the most nihilistic bloodbath ever witnessed by Japanese audiences. In the end not even Ando can save Ishikawa from himself, not that he ever wanted to be saved in the first place.

            Graveyard of Honor and Street Mobster illuminate the meaningless, empty world of the yakuza in a way never seen before or since. Peeling the glossy finish from the romanticized view of gangsters, they succeed, through bloody exaggeration, in giving an accurate representation of just what type of person would do these things to begin with. It’s no wonder then, that Takashi Miike, a true descendent of Fukusaku, has recently remade Graveyard of Honor. Fukusaku, however, remains the master of the genre and his film is much more rewarding. That is, if you find nihilistic violence rewarding, but then who doesn’t?