A Ghoul Versus Alexandre Aja's Horns

"I'm not making a 'horny' joke because the film already did that for me."

I'm back! After a pretty brutal start to the new year, I decided to take a week off to recoup and get my zombie brain back into order. How was your new year? Uh huh... oh really? Right into the punch bowl, eh? Yikes! Well, let's watch a movie to get our minds off things, that ALWAYS makes things better. Today's film is the just released on blu-ray Horns, directed by Alexandre Aja. Aja exploded onto the film scene with his 2003 tour de force High Tension, a film that TRULY earned the title of “visceral”. There's a lot to say about that film but it'll have to wait for another day, main because I've had a hell of a time finding a copy of it.

Aja's career since High Tension has been disappointing to say the least, as he has almost exclusively done underwhelming remakes of much better films such as the Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors. Even High Tension itself wasn't an original idea, as it does appear a fair amount of it was “inspired” by a novel written by Dean Koonz called Intensity. And by inspired, I pretty much mean ripped off. This time Aja has the actual rights to Joe Hill's novel Horns, ensuring everything will be on the up and up from a legal aspect. With a fantastically unique premise and a talented actor in the form of Daniel Radcliffe, was Aja able to recapture some of his old magic? Time to find out with A Ghoul Versus Alexandre Aja's Horns!

A Ghoul Versus World War Z

Click here for the a look into the troubled production of this movie!

We open with a black screen that says “Plan B”. I take this to mean “Plan A” has failed and we'll start off the movie knee deep in zomb- oh, turns out that was just a studio logo. They got me good!  The film opens with a montage of worldwide news reports. They start off innocent enough, but more and more start mentioning a virus. A virus? Oh boy, here we go again... another movie where the zombies aren't actually zombies but just INFECTED. Credits play to the side of the screen, Matthew Bellamy of Muse getting a music credit. Well, if this film turns out to be bad at least it'll have some good music.

We start with a house in Philadelphia, where Brad Pitt and his wife Karin get ambushed in bed by their two daughters who wake them up for breakfast. As they go about the day, we learn the older daughter (Rachel) has asthma.  You ever notice kids in these movies ALWAYS have to have a physical ailment that'll flare up at the most inopportune, but also most dramatic, moment?

A Ghoul Versus The History Of World War Z

World War Z is based on a book of the same name by Max Brooks, and when I based on I mean “they share the same title”. This is one of the most baffling and frustrating things Hollywood does, they spend millions of dollars to buy the rights to an established franchise and then use virtually NOTHING from said franchise.

This accomplishes in only alienating fans of the established franchise, who admittedly are NEVER the intended audience of the movie. So why go the trouble of jumping through all the legal hoops and spending tons of money that could have been better used elsewhere when you could have just as easily called your movie Nightgirl instead of Catwoman? Robot Uprising instead of I, Robot? Cyborg Avenger instead of the remake of Robocop? Gentleman Freedom Fighter instead of V For Vendetta? Yeah, we'll get to this one someday when I'm brave enough to take on the Wachowski body of work.

As said best by the author of the first two drafts of World War Z's screenplay, “If all you wanted to do was an empty-headed Rambo-versus-the-zombies action film, why option this really elegant, smart book?” In-freaking-deed.