.jpg)
Spiral centers around Mason (Moore) a reclusive telemarketer with a knack for painting. Every day life for him is depressing. He's an outcast at work who is prone to bursting into panic attacks that end with 4 a.m. phone calls to his only friend Berkeley (Zachary Levi). When he meets Amber (Amber Tamblyn), a cute, quirky coworker, Mason slowly starts to open up about his past. But as Amber digs deeper and deeper into her new friend's history she realizes just how disturbed Mason is.
I will do my best NOT to give away any plot points of this film as discovering them while watching is kind of like a journey you have to make on your own. Kind of like a right of passage. Miss them and you won't know what's going on. Know them ahead of time and it spoils the whole story. What I can tell you is that writers Jeremy Danial Boreing and Moore have created a film that can easily be compared to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski. The tension in Spiral starts from the opening scene and continues throughout the entire story. No matter how much you THINK you've seen this story before, think again. No element of this story overstays it's welcome. It is unusual, creative and provocative.
The biggest surprise for me was the performance by Moore. His character is developed with such love and empathy that by the end, you're torn between loving him or being horrified by his actions and Moore pulls it off with perfection. In fact, every one of the main characters does a terrific job. Tamblyn is great as the vivacious, bi-polar love interest. Some viewers may not like that her character wasn't explored deeper but I think in terms of story progression it had to be done that way. Levi portrays Berkeley who in some ways is the big brother type to Mason and in other ways he's more of an enabler. His motives for keeping such a closed off person as a friend are never quite clear. Is he using Mason to keep himself from being alone or does he really care about what happens to him?
The cinematography is great as well with the back drop of rainy Portland, Oregon enhancing the dark mood of the film. While some might find Spiral a little slow going, I personally enjoyed everything about it and would definitely recommend it to others. If you're looking for tons of gore or an in your face horror, I'd suggest a viewing of Hatchet instead. This is more of an 80 minute mind fuck. Is what your seeing real or fake? Did he or didn't he? Spiral is a new spin on an old twist. ENJOY!!
Four months after losing her husband in a violent car crash, Sarah (Alysson Paradis) is due to give birth on Christmas day. As she settles in for the night, a strange woman (Beatrice Dalle) knocks at her door asking for help. After Sarah refuses to help, the woman continuously bangs on the door and we soon find out that she doesn't want help at all, she wants Sarah's child. Freaked out (rightly so) Sarah calls the police and a search of the grounds and house reveal the woman has gone. Yeah right. They assure her, someone will come around again to check on her during the night then leave. 
I was told by my horror buddy @johnnyhorror30 that this was one of the goriest films he'd watched in a while... He was right! The gore quotient was definitely high and I'll give Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury props for making even MY stomach turn a little. BUT, can the film hold up on gore alone? That's the real question and I'm sure most of my "friends" won't too much care for my answer. RUH ROH! Hmm, would they want the good news or the bad news first? Let's go with the good news.
Now the bad news: What irritates me are directors and writers who suck you in with a story that has such great potential and then they throw something in that's so off the beaten path that all you can do is go "What the fuck just happened?!?" Don't get me wrong, a WTF ending can be great... if it's done right. I like unanswered questions and forming my own conclusions but it was just downright depressing what they did to this film. It was like just as you're getting pulled in by the action, you're suddenly ripped out by something that draws attention to the implausibility of it all.
Character after character kept showing up and the audience knew nothing about them. They were pretty much just fodder to connect one gory scene to another. I wanted this movie to be great. And it was, up to a certain point and then came the ending. I didn't get it. If I'm promised an in your face psychological horror, that's what I want. Don't fuck it up by throwing in something so pointless and off story that it ruins the whole film. 
Robert Carlyle stars in the second part of this epic zombie/virus flick as Don. He did what I'm sure most men probably dream of doing every night of the week... leaving their helpless wife in a house full of zombies to save his own ass. Then when she's found alive he does everything but strut in with an "It's all good" hoping she'd forget he abandoned her. Once he becomes infected he goes after his son and daughter like they'd taken the car out for a joyride and wrecked it.
Bill Paxton takes on what I think is his darkest role to date. His idea of outdoor games is a little different than that of the ordinary Dad. Teaching his kids to catch involves sinning strangers and an axe. Let's just hope he's nowhere near the next time I go to the grocery store. Eek!
Is there anything scarier than a Dad who goes bonkers for no apparent reason? James Brolin plays George Lutz, a man who gladly becomes the head of a blended family then gets possessed by a house dwelling demon. Kinda reminds me of my stepdad but without the demon.
Talk about demon possession, Jack Nicholson stars as Jack Torrance, a struggling writer who drags his family off to a mountain resort and ends up kissing corpses, drinking with dead people and trying to murder his family. And they considered that a vacation?
Unlike the Dad's on our list whose sole mission is to mame and murder their children, Ken Kirzinger only wants to protect and feed his. Yes, he's gotta kill normal people to do it but wouldn't we all do that for our kids if we had to?
Probably one of the most sadistic Fathers on the list Terry O'Quinn scared the pants off us all as he searched for the perfect family leaving a trail of bodies along the way.
Last but not least on our list for this year is Everett McGill who portrays an abusive father in this stylish Wes Craven flick. Mean to the bone for no other reason than he can be, no list would be complete without him.
Samantha Goodman (Kate Greenhouse) is a doctor who works with psychologically disturbed and criminally insane patients in a mental institution. When she discovers that she has a rare form of brain cancer and maybe a year to live she decides to surprise her writer husband David (Gordon Currie) and sister Melody (Iris Graham) at their isolated winter cabin to break the news about the tumor. Things are going just as she'd planned until an unexpected guest arrives. Harlan Pyne (Aidan Devine) is a violent sex offender who is convinced that Samantha conducted unethical experiments on him while she was his doctor. Accompanied by his eager to please protege Adrian (Dov Tiefenbach), they force Samantha and her family to participate in sadistic but revealing games. 
Director Paul Fox does an incredible job at creating an intense claustrophobic atmosphere and writer Wil Zmack offers up a true psychological thriller. The content of the movie reminded me a bit of Funny Games with a touch of Hide and Seek mixed in. But don't expect the same end result. At first I thought, "Oh yeah, I got this figured out" but after I let it marinate for a bit, I realized I didn't know anything. The whole film is basically left up to the viewers interpretation. If you turn it off because you think you know what's gonna happen, you will miss everything good about it.
The performance by Aidan Devine is just that... Divine and carries the movie into darker and darker territory. In fact, the whole cast brought so much to the table that it's hard to imagine any other crew being able to pull it off. The characters are well defined which makes it easy for you to care what happens to them. 
Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) are two rebellious scientists/lovers who are put in charge of developing a protein by splicing together genes from several different species. When their project goes horribly wrong, they are given an ultimatum, get it done or get out. They decide to ignore all moral, ethical and legal ramifications and secretly add human DNA to the sequence. What they end up with is a creature that rapidly transforms from a nasty little slug type thing into a beautiful winged chimera. Aside from the wide set eyes, she basically looks human from the waist up whereas the bottom half of her looks like something straight out of David Twohy's "The Arrival".
Elsa does her best at being a "protective mother" to the creature she's named Dren (Nerd spelled backwards) but Clive is not as enthusiastic about keeping this dirty little secret. The mother/daughter bond between Elsa and Dren (Delphine Chaneac) progresses nicely until she becomes too much to handle and when the threat of being discovered becomes too great, they move her to an old farm house once owned by Elsa's abusive and now dead mother. Poor Dren is locked away in the barn and left to play with her Barbies and costume jewelry but eventually, this is not enough and she becomes restless, flying into fits of rage, breaking things and running away.
Elsa soon becomes fed up with motherhood and switches back into scientist mode, proving that the psychopathy of the parent can in fact be transmitted to the child. BUT, never fear! The protective parent role is now being played by Clive, well sort of, and he comes to Dren's rescue... sort of. As the bond between parents and child switch, the danger level rises and it becomes clear that the experiment is over. One way or another.
The effects were brilliant, as was the direction and the idea itself was refreshing in this current world of remakes and 3D. The story line didn't seem contrived at all. Everything that happened served a purpose in that it moved the story forward. 
I absolutely hated the fact that Natali gave in to the predictable ending syndrome that affects so many films today. In my opinion, the last five minutes were a complete waste of film but of course, we have to be left wondering "Hmm, will there be a sequel?" Well hell yeah... isn't there a sequel to everything nowadays?