HORROR FILMS - Through the Looking Glass - Part 2- THE KINGDOM
Hey folks, welcome back to the ol’ column of forgotten films. As many of you may remember, last week was Part One of a Two Part series on films du horror, a subject that I hold near and dear to my hatchet-pierced heart. For all those of you who didn’t read last weeks column, I offer you a brief summation of all of my thoughts and ideas that pertain to this, the article you’re reading now. And just for kicks, I’ll do it in limerick form…
The state of modern horror is bad The film CHERRY FALLS made me glad I bashed VALENTINE Which suited me fine Then I babbled ‘till my word limit was had
Okay, so a master limerick writer, I ain’t. You try it. It’s hard and requires actual thought. Not what I got into the column-writing business for, let me tell you. But you get the idea. I think horror films on the whole suck right now, but a few bright spots keep shining through, proving for the nine millionth time that there is an exception to every rule. I also promised that this week’s movie would be on the more psychological end of the terror spectrum. That is to say, in this weeks movie, there are no maniacs running around swinging scythes at young virgins, which is a shame really, because that makes any movie just that much better. Seriously, a mad-slasher in THE ENGLISH PATIENT would have greatly improved it’s watchability, upgrading it from coma-inducing to just mildly narcoleptic.
But I digress. The movie this week comes to us from the most popular group of people named after a pastry… the Danish! Yes, amidst staging Hamlet for the umpteenth time and trying to stay warm by roasting blubber, the Danes, specifically Lars Von Trier and Morten Arnfred, brought us this way long morsel of tasty horror goodness known as THE KINGDOM (or “RIGET” in that funky moon-man language they speak). For the record, this isn’t a movie at all. No, it’s actually a TV series up there in merry old Denmark, but we Americans, using the creative intuition that makes us so darn loveable, have packaged the first four episodes as one really long movie. Although, we didn’t even do that right because the credits before and after each episode are still intact on the videos. Oh well, not a whole lot we can do, save for making snotty comments about it in our video-review columns. The breaks are really not distracting and as an added bonus, you get a little re-cap of the previous hour at the beginning of each new episode (Hello, Hollywood? This is a good idea. Would have made BELOVED a lot easier to follow, that’s for sure).
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