The Hangover Part Three

About a third of the way through The Hangover Part Three, the Wolf Pack are sat in a bar in Tijuana, Mexico. It's karaoke night. Ken Jeong's Mr. Chow is at the mic, belting out a monotone rendition of Nine Inch Nail's 'Hurt'. Bradley Cooper's Phil sits at the table with a bewildered look on his face. "What the fuck am I watching?" he asks. Yeah, pretty much. The Hangover Part Three isn't funny. That's not a matter of opinion; I'm not saying that the jokes are bad, I'm saying that there aren't any. The supposedly final flick of the franchise plays out like a straight-faced action thriller with some comic relief sprinkled here and there. And if, like me, you didn't watch The Hangover and The Hangover Part Two for the action and suspense, you might, like me, be left wondering just what the fuck you're supposed to get from this.

Though the title doesn't break tradition, the premise certainly does. There's no morning after in the main plot of this instalment. Taking place a couple of years after Bangkok, Zach Galifianakis's Alan is off his medication. After he inadvertently kills his father just from the stress of having him as a forty-two year old son, the Wolf Pack stage an intervention to get him out of arrested development and into a rehab clinic in Arizona. Of course, they never get there. Along the way, they're intercepted by a van of men wearing pig masks, who run them off the road. Once they're rounded up, John Goodman's crime lord Marshall appears to inform them that Chow has stolen $21,000,000 from him and the only person who could possibly know his whereabouts is the only person he's been in contact with in the last few months: Alan. Taking Justin Bartha's Doug as collateral (of course), he gives them three days to find and deliver Chow or Doug dies. Woohoo, what a fun-filled romp this is going to be.

I'm one of the few people who thinks that The Hangover Part Two was better than the first. Though it was a carbon copy of its predecessor, I was really impressed by its pitch black humour and that at many times it seemed to be daring the audience to laugh at what was happening. In The Hangover Part Three, it's demanding that you don't. I laughed twice in this movie. The first was at an amazing dry-retching noise Stu produced, the second was a remark from Alan as the Wolf Pack were walking through a hotel lobby ("Wow, did you know this place is made out of marbles?"). Solid gold. There are multiple lengthy scenes that don't feature a single joke, existing just for exposition. Characters are killed, and it's not played for dark humour, but to raise the stakes for the protagonists. "I've never seen a person die before," Ed Helms' Stu remarks, and that's it. No follow-up, no punchline, just a group of people staggered by the cold-blooded act of violence they just witnessed. Also, though I'm not the kind of person to immediately object to animals being harmed in movies, this flick really seems to hate them. If you've seen the trailer, you know that there's an accident on the freeway involving a giraffe and an underpass. What you don't see in the trailer is the giraffe's severed head cartwheeling through the air and embedding itself in a family's windshield. That got a few nervous laughs from the audience I saw it with. Later, Alan accidentally releases some roosters Chow was feeding cocaine to for cock-fighting. After shooting one off of Stu's back, he sneaks up on another and smothers it with a pillow in a very, very lengthy shot. The audience was silent. I think I heard someone whisper, "What the fuck..." Later, when Chow kills two guard dogs even though they'd already successfully knocked them out with sedatives, the tone of the film is well established and the audience is just waiting for it to be over.

So it's obvious that this film's trying to do something tonally different. Does it succeed as a dark action thriller that's attempting to close the book on these characters? Honestly, I have no fucking clue. I spent so much of the movie's runtime just trying to reconcile what it was that I never really got a chance to sit back and take it all in. From a technical perspective at least, it's well done. The chase scene through the desert with the pig men features some brilliant cinematography, combining Extreme Wide Shots and Reverse Point of View Shots to really get as much out of the landscape as possible. There are also some compelling action set-pieces, examples being a tense descent of about twenty feet from a roof to a balcony using bed sheets and the subsequent cat and mouse game played in a hotel room with a flashing white strobe light. Here's the thing, though: I don't want to presume what the audience wants, I can only speak for myself, but I feel alienated by this movie. There's a scene in which Alan is reunited with baby Carlos from the first movie, who is actually named Tyler, and is now four. "Are you my real dad?" Tyler asks. "...Yes," Alan replies. It's kind of sweet, but once again it's not played for laughs, but to highlight just how damaged Alan is and how a significant change to his lifestyle and personality is needed if he's ever to finally become an adult. One might be inclined to say it belongs in another movie, if the rest of the movie wasn't too so out of left field. It all...works, but it's just so fundamentally removed from what came before it that one mightn't be able to help but look upon it as a failure.

I have a theory about The Hangover Part Three. Note that it's just a theory, just an opinion, but I think one of two things happened with the production of this flick. The first is that Todd Phillips genuinely took on board the criticism that The Hangover Part Two stuck too rigidly to the formula of the first and made a film that went in an entirely new direction in hopes that it would deliver a fresh encounter with these characters that also concluded our time with them in a meaningful way. The premise is far darker and straight-faced, but there are certainly still some decent moments of clever dialogue between Alan, Phil and Stu, and the soundtrack once again brings back the Danzig, Kanye West and obscure classics that we all love and expect to hear. The whole thing doesn't really work in the end, but at least he gave it a shot. Here's the second theory: Todd Phillips didn't want to make this movie. He was potentially bitter about the criticism received for Part Two, or potentially just sick of the franchise, but he was under pressure (read: compensated significantly) from Warner Brothers to bring in another box office hit. So he made a movie that would ensure he'd never be asked to do another. If that's the case, perhaps the movie should have been advertised a little differently. I did up a concept.

Evil Dead

Let's get something out of the way right now: I love The Evil Dead. Note I said The Evil Dead, not Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness. Though I'm very fond of the series as a whole, the first entry remains the pinnacle for me. Unlike the sequels, its humour was largely unintentional; it was so violent, so horrific, so unrelenting, that it was kind of funny. Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell set out to make a horror flick that removed all the quiet moments and replaced them with more horror, without realising that those quiet moments exist to offset and intensify the scary stuff. Though it wasn't their intention, their film was so batshit crazy that the audience became desensitised to the terror, and were able to focus instead on Raimi's goofy charm and staggering technical proficiency. The audience jumped, and they cringed, and they dry retched, but it was always followed by a laugh. Or, for those more interested in the film-making process, a "Holy shit, how did he pull that off?" But I'll leave The Evil Dead there. Honestly, I could write a gigantic amount about how good that film is (and I intend to), but believe it or not, this is a review of the remake and that's probably what I should be discussing. I did approach this film with hesitation. The questions on everyone's mind when they see a remake or a reboot should always be, "Is the existence of this legitimised? Has a unique spin been put on it to make it a worthwhile experience?" In the case of Evil Dead, the answer is yes. See you next time.

Right off the bat, Evil Dead is aware of its audience. Though newcomers are possible, and likely, writer and director Fede Alvarez was smart enough to assume that the majority of his viewers are the fans. Oh, those fans. Desperate for more of their favourite stuff, but "FUCK YOU" if it's not 100% perfect: removed but respectful, original but referential, the same but totally different. Alvarez approached this the way a smart person should: he did it the way he wanted to. If you're on board, cool. If not, you can hate him and keep your original. From the get go, he makes it clear this is a different approach. Where the original and most of its peers feature a group of horny teens looking for a getaway that'll afford them a weekend of drinking, smoking and fucking, Evil Dead's cast are heading to the cabin to get one of their friends off heroin. We're introduced to them and their personalities in a few slightly lengthy "Horror Movie Exposition Time" scenes, which are thankfully offset with a bunch of subtle nods to the original and hints at what electrical devices will be misused later on. Mia, the recovering addict, complains of a sick smell inside the house. It's only when the dog (why does there have to be a dog?) scratches at the rug covering the basement hatch that the Scooby Gang decide to investigate. Downstairs, there hangs a truly ridiculous amount of skinned cats (perhaps the pound thought they were going to a good home?), a burnt post covered in dried blood and a book made of human skin, bound shut by barbed wire. In spite of the warnings that literally say "Don't fucking read this fucking book, you fucking moron", one of the Scooby Gang reads the book ("Uhh, he's an English teacher", is the movie's excuse), the spiritual power of something from Hell (there's one word in the book that not so subtly hints at what) is unleashed and possesses the group one by one to set in motion a series of violent rituals that will initiate its material manifestation.

I'm going to get the bad out of the way first. If it sounds like I'm being facetious, I am. Kind of. The movie seems consistently unsure of what it wants to be, thematically speaking. Though the initial premise is certainly an approach largely unseen in movies of this nature, Alvarez seems reluctant to do anything worthwhile with it. Mia's claims that something supernatural is with them is dismissed early on as side effects of her withdrawals, and you do start to entertain the notion that her struggle against the evil will be offset with her struggle against heroin, but eventually, everyone just behaves like horror movie characters and her addiction is all but forgotten. Though their incompetence is occasionally the set-up for a punchline from the film's comic relief ("Everything's gonna be fine? Nothing's fine. I don't know if you noticed this, but everything's been getting worse every second"), it's very by the numbers. Which is fine, it's intentionally operating within the vein of the horror films that came before it, but it begs the question why bother spending so much time establishing that original premise if it's just going to be abandoned?

Having said that, here's the other thing: Mia's story makes us care about her. Even though it's superficially delivered, with barely serviceable acting, her struggle with addiction coupled with the estrangement she shares with her brother regarding their recently passed mother deals with themes we can identify and cannot help but sympathise with. Which can make for some gut-wrenchingly effective horror, if the overall goal of your horror movie isn't to deliver over-the-top, sensationalist violence to characters you're not really supposed to care about; if the overall goal of your horror movie isn't to be Evil Dead. So hot on the heels of a scene in which a possessed, one-armed woman with a face full of nails has her other arm blown up by a sawn-off shotgun in an explosion of red goop is a scene in which a brother can't set his possessed sister on fire because she starts reciting the lullaby their mother sang to them before she died. It's just cruel, and it tarnishes the fun of the rest of the movie.

But holy shit, is the rest of the movie fun. And violent. Holy shit, is this movie violent. I mentioned earlier how impressive The Evil Dead was technically speaking. For a movie so obviously made by a bunch of twenty-something amateurs fresh out of college, it's got some fuck off good camera work and special effects. It makes you feel like you could do this yourself. While Evil Dead is obviously miles ahead of its predecessor visually speaking, and Alvarez is a more competent director than Raimi was at that time, he's approached the overall production with a similar attitude, namely by making the movie without the use of CGI. Everything you see in this movie was achieved through prosthetics, props and simple movie magic (they're called illusions, Michael). I can't stress the importance and impressiveness of that enough. Having effects that are achieved practically leads to camera shots that force you to look at them; a stark contrast to cutting away or shaking the camera as a cheap diversion tactic. Combine that with a director that knows how to frame a shot, and you've got a winning formula. Where other movies would cut away and squirt some red goop an animator threw together in five minutes once a character has revved up the chainsaw, Alvarez frames a beautiful wide shot and forces you to watch one character push the chainsaw through their victim face first while the rest of their body flails in the wind. I can think of only one occasion where the audience doesn't witness an act of violence, and even then, it's supplemented with another gorgeously framed shot. This is without a doubt the most violent movie I've seen in recent years, and definitely one of the most violent movies I've seen ever. If nothing else, Evil Dead can stand proudly beside Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. 70,000 gallons of fake blood was used in Evil Dead. 50,000 gallons of fake blood was used in the final act. It literally rains blood.

Watching this film, I was reminded a lot of Dario Argento's Deep Red. Stick with me, here. In Deep Red, Argento set up a series of murder set-pieces all based around pain that the audience could identify with. A character is killed by being thrown head-first onto various surface corners. Another is boiled alive. These are injuries we have experienced ourselves, magnified to extreme levels. Evil Dead employs a similar approach. Though the violence is extremely over-the-top, and characters withstand way more than any normal human being could, the tools with which the violence is inflicted hits quite close to home. Needles, electric knives, box cutters, glass, nails, teeth; all and more are used to devastating effect. Believe it or not, this makes it more fun to watch. We're faced with pain we know, jacked up to a psychotic level, so that we may laugh at it. A character cuts through her arm with an electric knife to stop the infection spreading through her hand. "I feel better now..." she says softly as the tendon she missed snaps, her arm falls to the floor with a wet slap and we laugh nervously with our friends and curl out of the foetal position.

Here's where Evil Dead truly succeeds though: it doesn't really care if you're a fan or not. Sure, the references to its predecessors are there: the "force" camera, the Oldsmobile, the tool shed, the boom stick, even a pictorial reference to our favourite pissed off hand is there if your eyes are sharp enough. But at its core, this is Fede Alvarez's film and he's out to subvert your expectations as much as possible. The Deadites return, but rather than chant "We're gonna get you, not another peep" in between bouts of maniacal laughter, they slice their tongue open with a box cutter and stick the two halves down a hapless victim's throat. The tree rape returns, but in a way that feels more, dare I say, personal. It carries a significant weight with it, and unlike the original, the victim doesn't magically forget what happened to her ("There was something in the woods, David, and I think it's in here...with us...now"). Perhaps the best example comes in the film's final act, that reminded me a lot of The Cabin in the Woods, but I'm not going to spoil it. I saw an interview with Fede Alvarez recently and he talked about David Cronenberg's approach to remaking The Fly. "I decided not to give a fuck about the original. That was the only way to honour it." Well said, and well done.