A Serbian Film / no star rating (2011)

There exists a hard, bitter audience for the likes of “A Serbian Film,” one of the most graphic depictions of human suffering I have ever seen committed to the screen. I am not among them. Perhaps that is because I was trained in the more tempered observations of film directors who found horror in the ability to make you jump without expectation, or shrink into your seat while the notes of the screenplay played your emotions through equal measures of silence and dread. Shocking brutality in itself was never enough – it was only the final outlet of the terror, a reason we were so terrified by the idea of evil villains capturing those who were running and screaming in the opposite direction. But for those who will look at Srdjan Spasojevic’s nihilistic plea against the pornography trade and find it engaging outside of the nightmarish cruelty, I salute them: not only do they have the stomachs to stare back at the frames with deadpan focus, they also have the distinction of being the byproduct of irreversible damage to the senses. For that, those individuals earn both my astonished bewilderment and my sincerest condolences.

Madman / *1/2 (1981)

The unpleasant, dreary and humorless “Madman” is frequently cited among a handful of early 80s slashers as a genre standard, but it operates on one level that seems lost among its most loyal admirers: as a workshop for Darwinian selection. It was the great naturalist who first suggested the human race was the byproduct of centuries of inherent culling – that over time, a species was destined to conform to the environment it lived in while the inferior genetics would simply be forced to die out. One can argue a horror movie buried in the framework of the dead teenager standard always plays right into this theory, but rarely has it been so obvious, or indeed as unfortunate, as what filmmakers freely put on display here. The characters that populate the foreground of Joe Giannone’s film are suspiciously stupid, even by the measuring stick of his own premise. They barely function as humans, seeming lost in a haze of thoughts that are mechanical and uninformed. Their faces are frozen in confusion. They engage one another like they have no sense of individualism. Their dialogue is forced beyond comprehension, as if assembled by frequent trips down the greeting cards aisle of the Hallmark store. And that of course means they will be ill-prepared when they are required to react during a confrontation with a local legend, a deceased farmer who has returned to form to do away, I guess, with anyone that wanders into the woods he used to live in. Is he a maniac at all, or merely a soldier for evolution?

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2003)

The rhetoric of commoners would have you believe that animals only occupy the personalities we attach to them, but more perceptive minds know better: they can sense the gears of attitude lurking underneath a trajectory of common instincts and silent routines. Part of what attracts us to such creatures – be they pets or otherwise – is that they know how to hold their own in a world of conventional disinterest, often catching our notice by acting in such a way that is indicative of some kind of internal spark. Sometimes that comes in the form of relentless affections, other times strength or defiance. The constant is that there is a necessity in them to be noticed, especially if it relates to their very survival or comfort. How perceptive they must be to have so thoroughly sharpened their associations with human beings over the centuries, especially as it has been instrumental to their endurance in a world that continues to offer new dangers at every given moment.

The Evil Dead / *** (1983)

A good horror film is not necessarily dependent on a marriage of specific qualities, but can be simply so because the enthusiasm of its creators fill the screen with almost perverse allure. “The Evil Dead,” one of the most celebrated of the classic canon, falls distinctly into the latter category. When it was first unleashed onto unsuspecting audiences well over 30 years ago, few could regard it with serious conviction; it was one of the first films of its respective genre to earn the dreaded “X” rating, and the consensus was – even among those who were completely sold on the content – that it was one of the more visually reprehensible exercises of its time. Yet it endured across the gulf of evolving artistic standards, eventually gaining prestige among a slew of genre fanboys that elevated it to cult-like importance in the subsequent years. Their reasoning: within its macabre and grotesque images are the foundations for some of the most spirited personalities of the horror pantheon, two of whom would not only go on to work together on equally popular sequels but would also lead rather fastidious careers in the Hollywood limelight. To them, the movie plays like an entry point into the infectious minds of their favorite overachievers, who did exactly what they wanted and offered no apologies.