Finally, a movie that lives up to its title. All you need to know is there. We follow the exploits of an “Engineer Hunter” in the madcap and bloody world of the future, where the Tokyo Police are privatized and brutal, hunting mutants who grow weapons from damaged body parts. It’s as crazy as it sounds.
The Canal is a stylish Irish thriller, solid on all counts. It begins slowly and gradually builds to a profound confusion, blurring the line between reality and sanity as we dive deeply into the mind of David, whose wife goes missing one day after a tryst with her secret lover. As an archivist for the National Film Archives (can say I’ve never seen that one before), he stumbles upon some police footage from 1903 that documents a series of murders in his house, thus opening the door for a possible supernatural culprit.
This was the third film we featured on our podcast, episode #3, way back in 2015. Craig recommended this one, having seen it before.
About 10 minutes into the film, I realized: Oh boy, we’re in for another found footage flick – and I left the triple-f behind years ago, convinced that the last drop of novelty has been wrung out of that schtick. Besides, there’s only so much shaky-cam swish-panning a guy’s stomach can take.
About a decade after the original shocker, Tobe Hooper directed his sequel starring Dennis Hopper and a whole load of crazies.
We chose this film to finish up our month of notorious #2’s because Hooper and Co. decided to go a completely different direction with a wacky, gory comedy, instead of the shocking straight horror style of the original (which did, truth be told, have its own darkly comedic moments).
Who’d have thought I’d end up with another satanic cult movie?
2009’s The House of the Devil has some great poster art. It concerns a penniless college student (aren’t they all?) looking for money and finding it from a babysitting job for an eccentric family. Madness eventually ensues.
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