David F. Sandberg
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The Conjuring (2013)
Directed by James Wan
influenced Annabelle: Creation (2017), Lights Out (2016)
Plot
Annabelle: Creation is an origin story for The Conjuring franchise.
With franchise mania creeping across genres into James Wan’s The Conjuring universe, we were subjected to a mediocre first spin off with Annabelle (2014).
An idiotic, incoherent, cynical cash-in that treated horror fans like fools, it was clearly a lazy and hurried money spinner after the success of James Wan's The Conjuring .
Annabelle was first introduced in The Conjuring, directed by Wan and based in the real-life lore of ghostbusters and demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren.
And for those of you who are curious, Creation does tie into the original Annabelle and we also get nods to The Conjuring as well as the real-life haunted doll, too.
Lights Out proved that Sandberg loves the horror genre so it didn’t surprise me when Warner Brothers announced that he would direct Annabelle: Creation, the next film in what can now be described as The Conjuring Cinematic Universe.
David F Sandberg’s feature debut is not in the same class as recent hits such as It Follows or The Babadook (a film Lights Out superficially resembles), but this is a very economic piece of work that gets just enough mileage out of its key high concept.
The mother-son set-up might recall “The Babadook,” a recent exercise in horror.
It’s a concept that has been brought to the screen before - in films that range from Forbidden Planet to The Babadook - and it’s going to remain a potent one for many years to come.
Much like The Babadook or It Folllows, Diana represents a lot more than what is on screen, but those films established those themes more gracefully.
“Lights Out” reminds me of two other even better horror movies from the last year or so: “The Babadook” and “It Follows.”
In a similar style to Jennifer Kent's The Babadook , Heisserer turns the monster into a metaphor for mental health issues.
There’s a pointed difference in tone between the no-frills, ingenuity-driven scares that make expert use of light (and lack thereof) to give a fright and some flashier scenes reminiscent of producer James Wan’s cheesier Saw, Annabelle and Insidious movies.
Now, courtesy of producer James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring), Sandberg and his screenwriter, Eric Heisserer, have the difficult task of extending three minutes into 81 without exhausting a smart concept or losing the snap of a compact “Boo!”
If nothing else, Lights Out is a fairy tale Hollywood success story for Swedish director David F. Sandberg, whose unnerving, online shorts caught the attention of contemporary horror mogul James Wan (the Saw movies, the Insidious movies, the Conjuring movies, all future horror movies, and – most horrific of all – the upcoming Aquaman movie).
Horror auteur James Wan, who launched a horror resurgence in the mid '00s with the low-budget "Saw," and tells his own ghost stories with "The Conjuring" films, lends his stamp of approval to the film as a producer.
It’s telling that one of the movie’s producers is the prolific genre maestro James Wan, who, since making his own twisted directing debut with the original “Saw” (2004), has become a reliable studio franchise player with a certain specialty in haunted-house movies.
Sandberg had experienced Hollywood horror producers including James Wan (director of Saw from his own low-budget prototype) to help, as he set foot on a set for the first time.
David F Sandberg’s feature debut is not in the same class as recent hits such as It Follows or The Babadook (a film Lights Out superficially resembles), but this is a very economic piece of work that gets just enough mileage out of its key high concept.
“Lights Out” reminds me of two other even better horror movies from the last year or so: “The Babadook” and “It Follows.”
“Lights Out” deserves to be considered in the company of such recent horror standouts as “It Follows,” “The Babadook,” “Goodnight Mommy” and “The Witch.”
None strike out for new genre territory, as poetic outliers such as It Follows and The Witch have.
The quality of the acting and writing puts the film on a level with last year’s It Follows where it feels there’s a strong vision at work behind the camera.
Como el acecho de un desconocido ser tras un encuentro sexual en Está detrás de ti (It Follows, 2015) .
Insidious (2011)
Directed by James Wan
influenced Annabelle: Creation (2017), Lights Out (2016)
Visuals
The list includes two Conjuring and three Insidious films, plus the Conjuring spinoff Annabelle – which now has a prequel co-produced by Wan and directed by Sweden's David F. Sandberg, who made his Hollywood debut with last year's moderately stylish Lights Out .
Sandberg unabashedly wears his influences on his sleeve, and tucked inside are very obvious references to Wan’s “Insidious,” “Silence of the Lambs,” and, perhaps most surprisingly, 1973’s “Messiah of Evil.”
Whatever it is, it’s on the way to being a lynchpin of one of the most successful horror franchises ever, a nearly $900 million part of director-producer James Wan’s creepshow empire, which includes Saw (six movies and counting), Insidious and now the ever-widening world of Annabelle.
There is a sense of déjà vu with many of the overall looks of the film, including the demon’s design (very Insidious -like) as well as the old 1950s house.
While its sequels indulged in comparable squalor, Wan’s heart was really in a quainter, comparatively gore-free form of horror, which expressed itself in the quite amusing ventriloquist-dummy freak-out Dead Silence (2007) (source of probably the funniest, sickest EC Comics–style twist ending in years) and blossomed in Insidious (2010) and The Conjuring (2013), scare machines that harked back to Amityville -style high jinks.
As for Annabelle herself, Sandberg seems to have taken a cue from The Conjuring and Insidious, especially when it comes to shot composition and the score, and it winds up serving the title villain very well.
Adventures of Captain Marvel fue un serial encantador de 12 episodios que se proyectó en cines en 1941, 1953 y, luego, como una película de cuatro horas, en 1966.
For this filmic reboot (Captain Marvel was the first comic book superhero to be adapted for film in a 1941 Republic Pictures serial titled Adventures of Captain Marvel ), we get a take on the New 52 version relaunched with Flashpoint .
That honor goes to the serials which ran in 1941 featuring Frank Coghlan, Jr. as Billy and Tom Tyler as his alter-ego Captain Marvel in Adventures of Captain Marvel .
Therefore, this revival of a hero whose last cinema outing was Adventures Of Captain Marvel in 1941 (before lawyers took away his name) is as much an entry in the kid-in-a-grown-up-body genre ( Freaky Friday , Vice Versa , Big ) as it is yet another addition to the currently crowded roster of superheroic spectacle.
The references to Batman , Superman , and Aquaman along with allusions to Big and Monster’s Inc, all help to create a playful atmosphere.
Director David F. Sandberg’s new entry into the DC Comics universe, though, takes an approach to family and superherodom that feels remarkably old-school, more in line with the Power Rangers than Superman , although this movie puts its characters in the same universe as the dark and broody A-list caped crusaders.
You can go down the list with the tongue and cheek “Deadpool” or Tony Stark’s sarcastic “Iron Man,” or even the screwballish “Superman” and “Flash Gordon” (all of which seem to provide some type of inspiration to Graydon’s script).
Shazam! has the sense of wonder you want (but don't always get) out of a superhero movie, channelling Christopher Reeve's Superman movies through a modern-day lens.
“Shazam!” founders because of an inconsistent attitude that can’t decide whether it wants to be a comedic superhero version of “Big” or a straight action-adventure feature with a no-nonsense villain who appears not to be in the film’s jokey premise.
…arguably looks like Tom Hanks’ Big mashed up with “The Greatest American Hero,” but the real arc is about finding your tribe; family don’t end with blood (shoutout #SPNfamily).
The latest superhero movie may borrow heavily from Big, but ends up telling a sweet story about finding one’s family and themselves.
La cinta es una genial mezcla entre filmes como Big, Gremlins, Deadpool, Goonies y Superman.
…reminded me of Big, Kick-Ass, Hell Boy, Ghostbusters and, yes, a few of the best Spider-Man movies.
This gives Levi the chance to do a Tom Hanks-in-Big kind of shtick, and he’s good at it.
With this 2019 feature, one tiny corner of the DC Extended Universe has finally embraced the concept of “humor,” pushing aside the darkness that has extended all the way back to Tim Burton’s Batman and taking a page from the likes of Deadpool and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
The references to Batman , Superman , and Aquaman along with allusions to Big and Monster’s Inc, all help to create a playful atmosphere.
Invariably, ‘Shazam!’ is good-natured in its looseness as it takes silly-minded shots, particularly at its own expense as well as poking fun at Shazam’s biggest DC stablemates, Batman and Superman.
The Sins, for example, are like the red-eyed Gozer dominions from Ghostbusters, and their nightmarish takedown of a company board meeting in the film's opening stages isn't without a heady dose of horror.
…reminded me of Big, Kick-Ass, Hell Boy, Ghostbusters and, yes, a few of the best Spider-Man movies.
Thaddeus está acompañado de siete demonios (no me pidan que les explique) y todos gozan de un diseño grotesco, similar en textura a los memorables perros infernales de Ghostbusters y otras criaturas del cine gringo de los 80 (no es casualidad que John Glover, uno de los malos principales de Gremlins 2, sea el padre de Thaddeus).
…puede permitirse crear trajes ridículos; puede hacer montajes y recordar a Rocky en Filadelfia; puede mostrar al viejo mago milenario (Djimon Hounsou) de la forma más caricaturesca; puede representar a los siete pecados capitales como unos engendros de los perros de Gozer en Ghostbusters (1984); y puede mofarse de la solemnidad de los villanos sin tener que pasarse al bando metarreferencial nihilista de Deadpool .
All Billy’s gotta do is say “Shazam,” and he becomes a mega-powerful adult charged with protecting the world against the Seven Deadly Sins — here envisioned as the gargoyles from “Ghostbusters.”
It also has to be, well, “a superhero movie,” with a stock villain, some random wizard, a glowing whatzit MacGuffin, and a menagerie of CGI monsters that look like they weren’t good enough to make the cut in the original Ghostbusters .
If you substitute "radioactive spider" for "lonely wizard in purple bathrobe", then Shazam! isn't too far away from the Spider-Man origin blueprint.
Sandberg borrows plenty from ’80s blockbusters — particularly those from Steven Spielberg — and also takes some tonal cues from 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” (Like “Spider-Man,” “Shazam!” ends with a Ramones song playing over the credits, which is either a winking homage or a blatant rip-off.)
It might not be terribly original – cribbing from a wide swath of feel good movies from Spider-man to Big and everything in-between – but it’s hard work making a piece of honest entertainment within the confines of the micromanaged and megabudgeted studio system.
Yet even that movie had the flaw of not being able to really savor the superhero's origin; Peter Parker (Tom Holland) had already been given his superpowers by the time we met him (thanks to the MCU not wanting to repeat the story already told twice, in "Spider-Man" and "The Amazing Spider-Man," over the previous 15 years), and had already appeared as Spider-Man in "Captain America: Civil War."
And unlike Raimi’s first Spider-Man, Shazam! doesn’t have to deal with being set in New York right after 9/11.
However, he has plenty of fun ramping up the humor when it comes to exploring Shazam’s abilities with Freddy’s help in a manner that calls to mind Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films.
…plays a lot like Michael Ritchie's The Golden Child: another fantasy film with a charismatic lead pitched at children but packed with stuff just over the line of appropriate.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Directed by Robert Aldrich
influenced Annabelle: Creation (2017)
Visuals
But Sandberg knows how to ratchet up suspense, composing shots filled with beautiful shadows, in whose corners there always seems to be lurking something scary: a ghostly little girl; a doll that looks like the spawn of Howdy Doody and Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”; and something far more sinister.
“Flash Gordon,” in 1980, presented its space-jock hero as a delicious beefcake joke (the fact that you could scarcely tell whether Sam J. Jones was an actor or a high-school gym teacher was part of it).
The humor can hedge on the side of being a touch immature but that’s to be expected with the 13 Going on 30 conceit of a teenager suddenly embodying a grown man.
A now-adult Billy (Zachary Levi) and new friend/foster brother Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) at first delight just as much in his abilities to buy beer and visit a gentlemen's club as they do the amazing superpowers he now possesses, but their adolescent fun and games come to an end when Billy's archenemy is revealed: Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong), a once-jilted candidate for Billy's otherworldly gifts who is willing to do anythingeven unleash monstrous representations of the seven deadly sins on the worldto attain them.A teenage kid suddenly made bigger has been covered in everything from 1988's wonderful "Big" (amusingly referenced here in one brief scene) to 2004's charming " 13 Going on 30 ."
It's the superhero equivalent of 13 Going On 30 where a teenager suddenly turns into a superhuman adult and enjoys his newfound superpowers and freedom—before the supervillain catches up to him, that is.
Sandberg borrows plenty from ’80s blockbusters — particularly those from Steven Spielberg — and also takes some tonal cues from 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” (Like “Spider-Man,” “Shazam!” ends with a Ramones song playing over the credits, which is either a winking homage or a blatant rip-off.)
Shazam! doesn’t necessarily do a ton that recent works like Spider-Man: Homecoming and the Guardians of the Galaxy films haven’t already.
The only recent superhero movie that is anything like it was "Spider-Man: Homecoming," which also revolved around the wonder a child would feel if given the opportunity to be a superhero.
With so much responsibility being thrown around it’s no surprise that Shazam! has a lot in common with Spider-Man: Homecoming ; both feature a song from The Ramones, the patron saints of teen superheros, fraternal figures are everywhere, and parents are a letdown.
But when you pitch it up against similar superior comic book films like Spider-Man: Homecoming , Ant-Man and the first Deadpool , it pales in comparison.
For comparison, consider Spider-Man: Homecoming .
“Lights Out” has been made with a certain degree of style—enough to make you want to see what Sandberg might be capable of with a better screenplay—and it does contain one great moment that pays sly homage to the most famous moment from the classic thriller “ Wait Until Dark .”
Cribbing heavily from both The Ring and Cronenberg’s The Brood, Lights Out’s set-up focuses on a mentally disturbed mother (Maria Bello) with a distressing habit of carrying on extended conversations with a dead childhood friend.
El argumento es absolutamente ridículo, como también lo es el de Junior (1994) o Twins (1988) o Last Action Hero (1993) —por sólo citar tres Schwarzeneggers—.
After the critical disaster that was Justice League , there have been some attempts at course correction, with both Wonder Woman and Aquama n bringing a lighter touch, even if both are still worlds away from the Marvel movies in that regard.
Situada un año luego de los eventos del filme Justice League, Shazam! es dirigida por David F. Sandberg y protagonizada por Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel y Jack Dylan Grazer.
While the movie doesn’t always work due to some abrupt tonal shifts and subpar CGI, it’s refreshing to see DC go a comedic, shiny superhero route after the gloomy blunders that were Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Justice League and the goofy bombast of Aquaman.
Sure, it has the benefit of being able to fly under the radar a bit – it doesn’t have to carry the weight of expectations that Wonder Woman did, and it doesn’t have to handle the over-stuffed story mechanics of Justice League.