Brain Dead (1990)

“Brain Dead” is a trippy horror film that keeps you guessing at what reality is the real one for the main character that’s played by Bill Pullman. It was written by a main contributor to the old “Twilight Zone” episodes, Charles Beaumont. Bill Pullman does a great job as a man who is experiencing a never ending nightmare while Bill Paxton gives a very held back performance when compared to some of the other films that he has worked on. The only distracting aspect of this movie that I had to force myself to get over is the poor lighting and film quality. This was a lower budget movie and it shows; both Paxton and Pullman had been in major movies where the quality is outstanding (“Aliens” and “Spaceballs” for example), but this film feels like it’s from the early from the early 1980’s and not 1990. The other, much lesser issue is the fact that a 15 second special effect is the prominent selling point, the picture of a disembodied face that is being manipulated by the doctors in a research lab. This thing had nothing to do with the movie!!

Dr. Rex Martin (Bill Pullman) is a neurosurgeon who is working on mapping out the brain and the various ailments that it can suffer such as paranoia and other mental illness. An old college friend and rival, who now works for a megacorporation shows up asking for help with an employee who has had a mental breakdown. Dr. Martin is coerced into helping and after he does what he’s asked, he begins to suffer the delusions that his patient had. His nightmarish decent shifts and changes constantly, always giving Dr. Martin a glimmer of hope before having it dashed away.

Favorite moment – Bud Cort plays Halsey, the original mental patient that Dr. Martin operates on. His presence in the films keeps the viewer easily entertained during some of the drier scenes in the film.

Halsey

The Bills

Is he real?

The Bills again

The Grudge (2004)

The American remake of “The Grudge” came out in 2004, a year after the original debuted in Japan. Both movies were directed by Takashi Shimizu, a young Japanese film maker who went on to create two sequels to “Ju-on) series as well as a handful of other Japanese horror movies. The American version stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Bill Pullman, and Ted Raimi and was the first official movie produced by Ghost House Pictures which was started by Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert. It’s a great movie with amazing effects and some pretty decent scares for a horror movie with a PG-13 rating. The film was part of the craze of remaking Japanese horror movies from the 1990’s and 2000’s but what I find unique about this remake though is the fact that it still takes place in Japan; It’s as though it could be the same exact movie but with American actors replacing a few of the Japanese ones. I’m not sure if this is true because I have not seen the original although it will be one of the films I review when I begin my ambitious themes for Japanese and other Asian produced horror movies.

The storyline for “The Grudge” crisscrosses between flashbacks and present day scenes that involve a few sub-plots that revolve around the curse of the Saeki family. One plot line is about the Saeki family and how the housewife Kayako fell in love with her teacher and was murdered by her jealous husband Takeo, who in turn killed his son Toshio before hanging himself. The second subplot is about the Williams family moving into the Saeki house several years later and becoming victims to the angry spirits of the Saeki family. The third subplot is about Karen, a student social worker who is sent over to the Saeki house to assist Emma Williams, an older woman who suffered a dementia related breakdown after moving into the house with her son and daughter-in-law. Karen survives her first encounter with the ghost of Kayako and eventually discovers that anyone who enters the house becomes cursed by the never ending rage of the Saeki family.

Favorite moment – I really liked the scene when Karen watches a ghost/flashback of Peter finding Kayako’s diary and then finding her. It ties up the mystery of the Saeki family effectively. My other favorite moment is the very beginning of the movie when Peter kills himself; it’s so sudden and without warning and sets a great feel for the rest of the movie.