Movies: Eighties night.

Visionary filmmakers don't just come up with a clever pitch or a few kooky shots. Any boob can figure out a way to "show you something you haven't seen before." After all, cinema is just over a century old. If considerably older media can still retain some shock of the new - we still have novel novels, for example - then we shouldn't be surprised that cinema's creative storehouse is far from exhausted. No, to be a visionary requires more. Visionaries find some new way to explore a genuine human experience and then thoroughly immerse themselves and their viewers in the lived reality of that experience. The bring us the real and familiar at an angle that forces us to revaluate what we believed we knew. At some point in the writing stage of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, Ti West said to himself, "Ti."

Well, actually, because he's him, he'd be speaking in first person. But I think it's important to keep the awareness of the artifice of the idea that I somehow know what Ti West was thinking in the forefront of your mind because the illusion of seamlessness is a tool for social control. It's part of my commitment to politically switched on criticism and the reason why ANTSS is the blog that believes there's no school like the old Frankfurt school.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. "Ti," Ti said. "People sometimes piss blood. It's true. They have to pee and blood comes out instead of piss. Sure, sometimes it's blood mixed with piss. Or, you know, it's some STD maybe and it's all squishy. But people get sick or they get punched in the kidneys or something and, whammo, blood out your dick. But you never see that. In Lethal Weapon, when Riggs gets worked over, he doesn't have some scene where he's pissing blood. But it's a real thing. There's a whole unexplored country of human reality begging for examination. And it's something Hollywood, with its airbrushed Disney attitudes, has ignored. I'm going to put pissing blood in my next movie."

And right there, if Ti West had stopped, he'd be simply a clever filmmaker. Bloggers would clap. When some blogger made the inevitable "Top Ten Pissing Blood in a Horror Movie Scenes" list to fulfill their weekly list obligations (though, honestly, every time a horror posts a list, an angel loses its wings - don't do it!) West would rank in the top quartile.

But West didn't stop there.

He thought, "And I'm not just going to throw in some half-assed scene of pissing blood as some random day's martini shot. No siree Bob, I'm going to commit to the program of pissing blood in cinema. I'm going to show multiple consistencies of urethra-centric desanguination. And the most important varieties of weenierated bloodletting are going to be hightlighted with a stable, long take, medium close up. You know, so people really feel like they're that penis and smegma is really passing through them."

Ti West set out to be for blood coming out your third leg what Robert Burton was to melancholy. And that fateful decision is why Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever is about 7 billion times better than Ti West's other experiment in 1980's archeo-filmmaking, the abortive House of the Devil.

Ti West has always been a filmmaker who pulls inspiration from the history of horror cinema. The Roost was a veritable taster's menu of 20th Century horror, from the radio show and the 1960's TV horror host to Blair Witch style indie minimalism and the zombie renaissance. The Trigger Man fused naturalistic indie aesthetics with survival dramas (like Deliverance) and slasher tropes to create a surprisingly effective hybrid. So it's no surprise that his last two flicks borrow heavily from previous eras of film. But West has always been a master of sampling; he's never let sampling be the master. And there's the rub. Despite, or perhaps because, Spring Fever lost its central guiding vision and became a hurried collaboration, it is never in thrall to its diverse sources. It's bitter sarcasm - as little more than a "fuck you" to the studio system that spawned it - gave West the distance he needed from the project to not get lost in it. The producers who then reworked the flick after he wrapped admit that they approached less as a work of art and more as a dare. The result is something bracingly anarchic. House of the Devil, on the other hand, wears its source material like a straightjacket. The project of recreating, rather than exploring, a justly neglected Reagan era mutation of the Satanic cult trope robs West of his own creative impulses and traps him in a joylessly reverent mode that the source material hardly merits.

Energetic, bitter, fast, and sloppy, Spring Fever plays like punk band who has decided to give a double bird to the label signing the checks. It isn't just the most punk flick made in the last decade, it's a specific punk song: the Pistol's EMI. Consequently, it's a hot mess. But it's a driven hot mess. The flick picks up from a scene of the original Cabin in which the original's lead falls into what appears to be dammed area, tangling with a diseased corpse, and catching the flesh eating super-disease that is the franchise's chief baddie. From there we find out that the tainted water is collected and shilled by bottled water company. The shipment heads to a local high school. The water is used for to mix up a prom punch (and, to seal the deal, the filmmakers have an infected dude piss into the punch bowl - which goes ultra-pear-shaped and becomes our first pissing blood scene) and makes what had, until then, been a cheese ten prom comedy become something like Masque of the Red Death on crystal meth.

Spring Fever knows it's '80s horror. West et al hit the obvious allusions. Leaving Carrie out of a blood-soaked prom-center teen scream pick would have made the allusion naggingly conspicuous by its absence. But West and Co. look past the straight horror canon to dig up resonant images from flicks as diverse as One Wild and Crazy Crazy Summer, Donnie Darko, and (an ANTSS fave) Class of 1984. The filmmakers crib some visual style from the period as well, bathing selected scenes in candy-colored lighting. Even the synth heavy soundtrack of original songs made to sound like intrusive pop needle drops evokes the commerically-minded sonic clumsiness of early John Hughes.

Despite the flurry of allusions, CF2SF is saved from becoming a paint-by-numbers experiment in recreating '80s teensploitation by a bitingly satiric Mad Magazine sensibility that helped the filmmakers keep the source material dancing to their tune. In contrast, House of the Devil is in hock to the sources it borrowed from, a debt that's all the more deadening for being utterly unnecessary.

Intended as a homage to "satanic panic" flicks of the 1980s, House of the Devil is gets the worst of both worlds: It is neither a particularly accurate recreation of the flicks its meant to emulate nor a creative and innovative film in its own right. House tells the story of a cash-strapped college student hired to provide in home care for an elderly woman on the night of an eclipse. It all turns out to be a trap and, before the flick is over, our heroine is tapped as breeder for one of His Satanic Majesty's demonic servants.

West paints himself into a corner with House. Because of his sure filmmaking instincts, House is far superior to the vast majority of flicks in the subgenre it pays homage to. West, for example, is not bush league enough to think that a scene filmed in front of a religious symbol is inherently more meaningful than one that isn't. Nor does he fill his soundtrack with bad "gothic" compositions and hokey boy choir pieces. In fact, despite the 80s trappings, the film is recognizably a piece of his larger oeuvre: It has a slow burn structure, uses minimal dialogue, and avoids backstory and explanation. (So much so that at least one normally astute reviewer wondered in his review where the baddies left to in the flick; in fact, the flick implies that they never left the area around the house.) Much has been made of how exacting a forgery House is, but I find it hard to believe people who have made that claim have any knowledge of flicks from the subgenre. None of the post-Exorcist/Rosemary flicks were ever this competent.

Unfortunately, West's ill-considered commitment to following in the steps of crap hamstrings the film. West's normal slow burn strategy works because his films are building towards a novel experience the viewer isn't ready for. Furthermore, West is a master of details (I suspect he cranked out the period detail in this piece without even breaking a sweat), though those details are never simply window dressing. In Trigger Man, for example, the long intro contrasts with the sudden and inexplicable appearance of the sniper and the use of a sniper, instead of a more traditional slasher figure, radically transforms the movie. In House, the fine details are irrelevant because the viewer is aware that West is recreating a familiar plot. The '80s details are there because, you know, its the '80s.

If horror has an Achilles heel, it is the genre's tendency to mistake nostalgic pandering for depth of context. With House, the genre's best hope made that error.

Movies: Re-[REC]-ed.

I have not actually seen [REC], the 2004 Spanish outbreak horror that provided the blueprint for 2008's Quarantine; but the idea of remaking a highly improvisational "you-are-there" subjective camera flick brings up an interesting conceptual problem. Namely, do you reshoot what ended up on the screen or do you try to recreate the conditions that produced the final film?

To clarify things, let's abstract this problem from the films at hand and look at a hypothetical situation. Pretend, for a moment, that you've been tapped for a remake of The Blair Witch Project that is "faithful" to the original. For now, ignore the question of whether or not the film should be remade and ignore the fact that, even in context of Hollywood's chronic novelty-drought, it's still too soon to be disinterring that particular flick. Instead, think about what it means to remake that original flick.

Famously, The Blair Witch Project was created by giving a trio of actors a couple of handheld cameras, giving them a character design rather than a script, dropping them off in the middle of the woods, and then messing around with them until the produced enough raw footage to make a movie in editing. As I see it, you've got two distinct and somewhat mutually exclusive choices before you.

Option 1: Reverse Engineer the Final Product
Your first option would be to take what ended up on the screen – which was a combination of improv and cutting room choices – and work backward to produce a script and storyboard that would lead, if followed, to a recreation of the finished original. This would, in essence, plan for the accidents and randomness that formed the first one. Unlike the original flick, your film would actually have minimal improv. The words the original actors made up on the spot would, in your version, be carefully scripted. Mercifully, you can also avoid hanging out in the woods and being miserable for several days: you won't have to just shoot the crap out of everything and dig a movie out of it all in post. This would give you finished product that was indisputably faithful to the final film; but, be honest, it seems kinda to miss the point, doesn't it? It is less a faithful remake than a sort of po-mo simulation: a perfect copy of an imperfect original that wipes out its imperfections. Arguably, there's nothing for viewers inside the original film itself to suggest its origin story. On a pragmatic level, our awareness that BWP is a sort of experimental, open-process flick is really a product of the marketing surrounding the film – making of docs, interviews, content from other reviews, etc, - rather than result of the content of the film itself. The original BWP could have just as easily been a cheapo indie horror with a tight script and deftly handled shakey-cam work, and the whole origin story could have just been another level of the film's Byzantine publicity machine that was, at the time, as famous and popular as the actual film was. Still, on a more emotive level, its hard not to say that this remake would be somehow both extremely accurate and completely wrong-headed.

Option 2: Recreate the Conditions that Produced the Original
This option involves finding three actors that are willing to be abused, loading them up with camera equipment and power bars, and the getting them lost in the words. You hassle them semi-randomly for a number of days, gather up their footage at the end, and then see what you can do with all that coverage in editing. On a literal level, this would pretty much ensure profound levels of "infidelity" on the big screen. Unless your actors were conspiring, of their own accord, to recreate scenes from the original film, then it is unlikely that you get much of the same dialogue, few of the same shots, and little of the improved "plot" that occurs in the first film. You could very well end up without, say, the famous hyper-close-up of the repentant and horrified Heather apologizing to viewer. That said, there is something about this approach that feels more true to the spirit of the original, regardless of the fact that it guarantees the lowest possible level of "accuracy."

Of course, you could try to fuse the two approaches. I think you'd find that the combo didn't work. I assume that the more you genuinely allowed for the second option, the harder you would find it to believably apply scripted segments to the flick. That's my guess anyway.

I bring all this up because I found this question the most involving thing about the well made, but very thin Quarantine.

For those who have seen neither version of this flick, the film involves a local news reporter, Angela, and her cameraman, Scott, on a gig profiling the firemen at a local station house. Angela is gamely played by Jennifer Carpenter – a.k.a. Dexter's sister – whose playful tomboyish looks work well throughout light-hearted set up of the flick, but work against her when the fit hits the shan. The two fireman leads are played by Johnathon Schaech, sporting a truly impressive 1970s-porn-star-worthy moustache, and Jay Hernandez, the dreamboat hero of the picture.

The firehouse tomfoolerly that gives the film an up opener comes to a screeching halt when the firemen and crew are called to respond to a medical emergency at a slightly decaying apartment building. Turns out an old lady in the apartment building has turned nutso. She attacks her rescuers, killing one of the cops who responded to the 911 and putting Mr. Moustache the Fireman on death's door. Seems that she's got a hyper-virulent form of rabies that makes you go all rage-virusy within minutes of contracting it (unless, apparently, it would be more dramatically powerful for you to inexplicably hang about with the sniffles for a little bit before becoming all nom-nom-nom on people flesh – the virus, oddly, has a real flair for building tension).

To make sure that the residents of the apartment complex are truly and thoroughly screwed, the CDC and slew of military types put the building under quarantine – truth in advertising! – with standing orders to meet any effort at escape with extreme prejudice. The CDC/military industrial complex also cuts their television cable, their power, and cell phone reception. You see, being trapped in a building full of rabid psychopaths isn't panic-inducing enough. The CDC really prefers its subject to be crawling-up-the-walls, brain-each-other-with-hammers crazy.

Once we've handled all the grunt work of establishing the cast and unleashing the virus, the flick kicks into overdrive. About two-thirds of the way in, Quarantine becomes a ruthless and minimalist plot engine. This relentless narrative drive is both a blessing and a curse for the movie. It's hard to deny that the film is compelling on a gut level. The seasickness of the camera work, the score-less soundtrack of breaking tings and people, the crying and vomiting – it all has a numbing, gripping power. The scares hit when they should and the occasionally successful human counter-attacks get the blood racing. The creature design is also properly creepy. Plus, we've got a rabid monster child – evil children are horror gold.

Unfortunately, what it isn't is involving. The moment director John Erick Dowdle takes the breaks off, we lose almost everything that pulls us into a movie: Characterization evaporates, most of the visuals become a frenzied blur of action, dialogue increasingly tends towards a wall of incomprehensible shouting the general volume of which becomes the chief method communicating the mental state of the characters. In fact, with its rigorously delineated field of play, concern with keys and weapons, literal use of higher and higher floors/levels, and the sense of an over-the-shoulder floating camera, the whole thing resembles a super-high rez survival horror video game.

Quarantine is like one of those angular, minimalist pop dance singles from the late 1990s. Dance-floor oddities like Missy Elliott's remake of "I Can't Stand the Rain." On one hand, the aggressive inorganic feel suggested some experimental post-rock work, but the ethos driving the thing was pure disposable pop. The same odd dynamic is at work in Quarantine. The meticulous simulation of subjective camera work (this film is more like Cloverfield in that it is a very carefully staged simulation of what BWP made its method) requires an almost absurdly fanatical attention to craft. In it methods – the lack of a score, the sequential shooting, the reliance on elaborate and subtle lighting schemes – the film flirts again and again with something truly weird. But all this curious flirtation with experimentalism doesn't distract it from its main goal, which is to act as a thrill ride. That it ends up a dance single and not a noise rock jam is, I suspect, a boon or a bust depending on each viewer's inclination and mood at the time. It's nothing game changing, but it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.