It’s been sixteen years since director Robert Harmon last ventured into horror territory, how does his return stack up?
They
Release date: November 27th, 2002
It’s been sixteen years since director Robert Harmon last ventured into horror territory, whose vastly-underrated 1986 film The Hitcher gave Rutger Hauer his best-ever role as nutty hiker John Ryder. They is a long-overdue return to the more straightforward bump-in-the-night flicks that have been more or less absent from multiplexes over the last decade, and my hopes were high going in that the stylistically-gifted Harmon would be able to make something of this exhumed genre.
The simply, meandering plot follows grad student Julia (My Little Eye’s Laura Regan) as she sets out on the worst week of her life. Meeting up with border-line schizophrenic childhood pal Billy (Jon Abrahams) gets things off to a bad start; after babbling about the return of the night terrors that plagued him as an infant, Billy casually blows his brains out, leaving Julia more than a little unnerved. Things go further downhill as Julia’s own bad dreams return, and when Billy’s creepy friends Terry (Dagmara Dominczyk) and Sam (Ethan Embry) reveal that they too are experiencing sleepless nights, the race is on to solve the mystery, before they all fall victim to the nasty things lurking in the closet...
...and that’s about the whole shebang. By the film’s conclusion, you’re left with more questions than answers, and not in a good way; the final resolution is as weak as Jeepers Creepers’, and the script never really allows the ideas it creates to develop. The "night terror" creatures themselves are mightily similar to those found in Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic, and constantly remain in shadow (neatly explained in the film as darkness being the only time they can cross into our world), never revealing what exactly is stalking our eponymous heroine. Played right and used in conjunction with a satisfactory ending, this "less-is-more" approach would be a great low-key suspense tool; without that big payoff, however, the movie just comes across as weak-willed. The script, although refreshingly straight-faced, is a total abortion; Regan and Dominczyk stumble over crappy exposition with the usual ham-fisted approach of a no-name cast, and Buffy’s Marc Blucas-as Julia’s straight-arrow boyfriend-looks faintly amused at some of the po-faced angst he is expected to portray. Only Embry impresses in the staple horror role of sarcastic loser, handling his one-dimensional character with the contempt it deserves and coming off better for it.
Thank God, then, that Harmon is at the helm. Giving the dumb plot short shrift, he instead concentrates in building fear and tension through inventive camera work, a creeping soundtrack and some well-thought-out scare sequences. The opening scene, depicting a small boy coming face-to-face with his quasi-insect tormentors, is a very effective prologue, and in between the (admittedly numerous) portions of mind-numbing dialogue he manages to craft at least two or three more enjoyable segments. Julia’s roadside spooks, the slow-burning swimming pool encounter and the subway rumble are all deftly handled, managing to wring some decent chills from the otherwise-limp endeavour. These few moments are not quite enough to redeem the film, but they certainly do punctuate the boredom with some astute cinematic thrills.
The 411: Although a solid cinematic throwback to horrors gone by, They fails to capitalise on an intriguing premise and leaves the audience cold to the unsympathetic characters. Harmon conjures up a few gripping set-pieces, but it’s not enough to push the film past watchable. Avoid.
