The Burbs - 2/31 Days of Halloween

Woohoo!  Here we are in day two!  Another horror comedy for you here, though this one comes straight from the '80s.

So, so eighties.  Really though, this movie is comedy gold.  I'm shocked I'd never seen it.  The movie starts with Ray & Carol (Tom Hanks & Carrie Fisher) as a delightfully stereotypical arguing suburban couple.   They're fighting about how to use their vacation, with Ray insisting he'll do great if he just rests at home.  Quickly we're introduced to the rest of the neighbors on their cul-du-sac.  The angry veteran and his wife (who enjoys showing off her ass to the raunchy teen next door), the overly chummy guy next door, and the old man who lets his dog poop everywhere.  They're the weirdest "normal" people you'll ever see.

The talk of the neighborhood quickly becomes the new neighbors, who've moved into a decrepit lot next door to our main character.  Their house is the epitome of a spooky horror movie house, situated smack in the middle of their green little suburb.  All the neighbors are wondering if the new folks will finally clean the place up.  Instead, strange lights & sounds come from the house (especially the basement) all through the night.

The people who live inside are generically foreign (probably Eastern European) and everyone on the block is frightened of them and their weird, quiet ways.  So of course all the bored white men in the neighborhood start stalking the new neighbors.  The new neighbors are quickly accused of being satanists, body snatchers, vampires, and all sorts of unsavory supernatural creatures.

While the wives encourage the men to stop harassing the neighbors, we get the bulk of the movie: a wacky bad-ideas teen comedy... except with grown men.  I didn't say the messaging of this movie was good, I said it was funny.  It's typical in every possible way, but so much so that it quickly becomes an intentional caricature of itself.

It's a classic cold-war paranoia film about the way we perceive difference as threatening to our way of life.  This makes looking at the movie from a moral point of view sticky in a way I can't really get into without spoiling things.  But from a pure what-the-hell eighties-camp point of view, it really is hilarious.

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Entertaining 5/5        Intelligent 2/5        Unsettling 1/5
 
Scary 1/5        Gory 0/5        Funny 5/5         Artistic 2/5
  

Representation of Minorities 0.5/5        Representation of Women 2/5
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Burying the Ex - 1/31 Days of Halloween

Hello again!  I am participating in the 31 Days of Halloween Challenge, except I'm making it extra hard on myself by abiding by two additional rules.

#1 I'm only watching horror films I have never seen before
#2 I'm reviewing all of them here.

I'm aware this is absolutely nuts.  But last night I kicked it off by watching the camp horror-comedy Burying the Ex!

The movie has a simple but ridiculous premise: a dude's controlling girlfriend dies before he has a chance to break up with her, and when he finally starts to move on she zombies back into his life.  I have a few issues with the way they chose to portray the controlling girlfriend.  She's a yuppie vegan who works for a Green Life Blog and bullies him into making his life more sustainable.  Not all of her claims are unreasonable (ex: stop letting your brother use your living room for weird sex parties when I'm staying over at your place... it makes me really uncomfortable). but the way she communicates is vicious, manipulative and ultimately abusive.

After a horrifying display of jealous outrage from his girlfriend, our main character decides to break up with her.  Except she dies first.  This leads to a lot of feelings of guilt from our main character.  This is the film at it's most poignant.  How do you react to your abusive partner, who you did love, dying?

Eventually, he starts to move on, with a more laid-back girl who shares all of his interests.  She's a little on the manic pixie dream girl side, but I also kind of love her.  Also, wherever it is in Hollywood these characters live, I want to go there.  Because it their community supports not only a year-round horror store, but a horror-themed ice creamery.  Best neighborhood ever!

Right as our main character starts to move on, his never-quite-became-ex comes back from the dead, rotting and zombified and ready to be together FOREVER.  This is a great allegory.  What do you do when you escape a bad relationship and then your abuser suddenly shows back up at your house?  When time and space have made them repulsive to you, but you're still too terrified to resist their advances?  When (due to size or strength or crazy zombie powers) you know they could kill you if you don't do exactly what they want?

What I love most about this film is that becoming a zombie isn't what makes our antagonist horrifying.  She was horrifying before.  Now she just has super strength and has become physically repulsive to the hero (which is a common feeling for some survivors).  I really wasn't expecting this movie to mirror abuse in relationships as much as it did, and the more I think about it the more I really respect that about the film.

So what does our lead do?  How does he deal with the abuser who used to be so enticing now that the spell is broken (or cast, in this case)?  What do you do when "letting someone down easy" is both impossible and a genuine risk to your physical safety?  When you are finally aware that there's better relationships out there but getting involved with someone involves risking both of your lives because your ex is murderously jealous?

Well, in real life it works a little differently than in the movies.  But this one is worth seeing.  It's campy, has some fanservice bra scenes, and relies on a cast of lily-white California hotties, so it's not super exciting in that way.  But look a little deeper and for a camp horror comedy there's surprising depth. 

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Entertaining 4/5        Intelligent 2.5/5        Unsettling 1/5
 
Scary 2/5        Gory 2/5        Funny 4/5         Artistic 2/5
  

Representation of Minorities 0/5        Representation of Women 2/5
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Housebound

I feel like I've been waiting for this movie a long time.  Not only in the sense that I missed it when it came (very briefly) through my local movie theater, but also in the sense that it's a horror film which manages to be genuinely scary and genuinely funny.

The main character, Kylie, starts off the movie with a botched attempt to rob an ATM.  It's the kind of everything-goes-wrong crime that'd get you put in prison in the United States for 5-10 years, but thankfully this movie is from New Zealand, so Kylie gets put under house arrest instead.  She's a total brat, and acts just like a teenage girl who hates her parents and has been literally locked in with them.  Which is to say she's not a terribly likeable character initially.

Kylie's mum thinks the house is haunted, something the young criminal initially scoffs at.  However, she quickly changes her tune when creepy things start happening around the house.  This, of course, leads to shenanigans involving the security guy who is assigned to Kylie's ankle bracelet.

I don't want to spoil the film, so I won't go too much further into it, but you'll scream, you'll laugh, you'll cower behind the covers.  It's that sort of movie.  It's full of unexpected plot twists and has about an equal number of surprise laughs as surprise screams.

It's important to note that none of these laughs are unintentional, or the result of plotholes or poor movie making.  A lot of the humor surrounds the tensions between mother & daughter, and through the film both of them grow on you.

The film passes the betchel test with flying colors, with two of the three main characters being women.  We have one main character who is a person of color (and is in many ways more a main character than the mother) which is nice.  There are no romantic plotlines of any nature, which I appreciated.  And best of all it's just a genuinely good horror-comedy.

5/5

I love this film.