Horror, Not Horror (again), pt. 1 - Ketchup-as-blood

"Horror, Not Horror" are movies that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold.  I'm not a big horror fan, but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.

The Vast of Night - 2019, d. Andrew Patterson -amazonprime

Vivarium - 2019, d.  Lorcan Finnegan  - crave

Ready or Not - 2019, d  - crave

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Modern filmmaking tends to be about quick edits, so when a film consists primarily of tracking shots, it stands out if for no other reason than how it begs the viewer to follow along with it.  The Vast of Night opens with a long tracking shot through small town New Mexico in the 1950s, following along with Everett the local radio DJ who seems like the town's key problem solver as he walks through the high school gymnasium being readied for the big basketball game.  He runs into Fay who works as a telephone switch operator, and they have a walk and talk.  They have a playful dynamic but it's clear Fay is sweet on Everett but he only has eyes for getting out of town and implores Fay to do the same. 

He goes to his radio job (even though the whole town is at the basketball game and nobody is probably listening) while Fay goes to her operator job (even though the whole town is at the basketball game and nobody is probably calling).  There, she listens to Everett on the radio, but starts experiencing some weird noise, not exactly static.  Likewise, a phone call comes in about strange lights and gets cut off by a similar noise.  Fay calls Everett and asks about the interference, which he then reaches out to the listening audience and receives a call from a retired military man who explains about some very strange things, lights, sounds, materials, things he's seen.  The camera work throughout this lingers, rarely cutting, occasionally fading out as people talk as if to say "just listen".  It's strange, but effective, lulling you into this almost meditative experience of a possible UFO sighting in progress.

It's an atmospheric movie, with space to breathe, and it tells its story through telling stories.  It's such a unique experience maintaining its own sense of tranquility while simultaneously ratcheting up the tension as Everett and Kay explore these sights and sounds and calls on their own while the town is otherwise largely oblivious to what goes on.

Patterson's direction is confident and masterful, the editing equally purposeful and meaningful.  The attention to detail here, not just the era-specific sets and clothing, but the dialogue, the language of 50's radio, the little details like statements Everett employs in talking with others before putting them on air or how he feeds a reel-to-reel tape extremely quickly, adds a tangible and engrossing believability to procedure.  The stars, Sierra McCormick as Fay and Jake Horowitz as Everett, both unknown commodities to me, nail their roles perfectly, each conveying more in what they're not saying, even though they have so much dialogue.  Just a wonderfully realized movie, astonishingly so for a 700K budget.  Nothing terribly horrifying about it, though it employs "Raimi-cam" at least once during the picture which seemed an obvious homage to me.

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Vivarium has been on my radar for a while, despite my general aversion to Jesse Eisenberg (see my Art of Self Defense review), but the concept of a couple being trapped in isolation in an endless suburbia seemed too intriguing to me to care about who was starring in it.

Paired with Imogen Poots, he's playing an ex-pat groundskeeper in the UK, while Poots is a grade school teacher.  We don't get much of a glimpse of their life but the film gives subtle displays of their playful chemistry and even hints as their rougher nature underneath.  Jesse, your American is showing.

They decide to have a look at the suburb development of Yonder, an ugly, ugly community of nothing but the same stock green house and same size fenced back yard.  Their guide, Martin, is a disturbingly false-looking person, his mannerisms odd and his smile disingenuous, and he has a nervous habit of mimicking the pair.  He indicates that this is the perfect place for them, the perfect place for their family.  They look around the bland, stale home and when they return from the back yard, Martin is gone...but in leaving the house they find they're unable to leave the community.  There's no way out, they just keep passing house number 9 with the door left open.  After hours of driving, they wind up inside, opening the gift basket in the fridge, eating the tasteless strawberries and drinking champagne.

A box arrives containing all the essentials, but in Yonder labeled packaging.  Getting up on the roof, the skyline is nothing but Yonder as far as the eye can see and the same cloud repeating over and over again, as if they're in an unimaginative simulation.  Days later another package arrives (no one is seen dropping it off) and it's a baby, and the box label notes "raise the child and you may leave".

We step through this couple's life as they raise this child, who seems to grow an a much more rapid clip than they age, but there's definitely something wrong with that boy.  In fact, he looks (and acts) a little like Martin, but also mimicing the words and traits of each of them.  As a couple they start to get more and more distanced, the more she spends time with the child, and he digs a hole in the disturbing soil out front.  Their sanity is in question, but that isn't the test.

The film is absolutely a metaphor for expectations, expectations in getting married, settling down, raising a family, and it has the bleakest of outlooks on this experience...and yet it does intrinsically understand it.  It understands how horrifying it is to see yourself reflected in your child but in a way that feels alien.  It understands how domesticity can come between a couple even though they're in it together.  It understands the desire that men have to escape their situation and understands that while women may have the same desire, they tend to have stronger nurturing instincts prevent them from outright abandoning a child.  There's a commentary on nature versus nurture, and in this reality, nature wins out.

Vivarium's opening credits is basically a montage of the progression of the Cuckoo bird that lays its egg in another birds nest, hatches with its false siblings, and then forces them out of the nest before taking all it can get from the mother.  The child, despite any nurturing, has its nature, and it follows it.  It's a grimy, ugly, film, that serves up a horrifying allegory.  It's not exactly a horror movie, but it's definitely disturbing and weird... which I like more than straight up horror.

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When I think of "Horror, Not Horror" films, Ready or Not is exactly the kind of film I'm thinking of.  It's a film that takes the tropes of horror but says "not today" and doesn't take said tropes very seriously.  Instead its gruesome gags are more for humour than frights.

In Ready or Not a new bride Grace (Samara Weaving) is compelled by her new family to play a game at midnight on their wedding night, as is tradition, something this family is very big on.  They had made their money on the back of a successful board game empire so there's a sense of logic Grace can't object to.  She's also an orphan and so delighted to have a real family that she's working hard to be accepted.  Her husband, meanwhile, had tried to leave the family behind him, but returned at Grace's request.

The selection of the game first comes with a strange story, a family legend, and a mysterious box.  You place a blank playing card in the box, and it spits out the game to play.  Grace, unfortunately, selects hide and seek, and tensions raise in the room. Grace laughs and heads out in her wedding dress to find a hiding location while the family debate whether to proceed with their ritualistic hunting game.  But of course they have to, for they believe their family to be cursed if they don't follow tradition, and the game is part of tradition. Sacrifice the bride, or they will all die.

And so the hunt begins, and it's a bit like Clue with the help all getting murdered first in shockingly absurd situations.  And not everyone is as into the game as the others, but most are willing to play along.

Ready or Not could have very easily fallen into tedium but it's darkly comedic sensibility, and its faith in the intelligence of its characters provides for more than a few surprises, and definitely some exciting and even tense moments.  But more than anything this is a playful movie, which is perfect for its backdrop.

The cast is surprisingly stacked for what I first thought was just a small little horror movie.  Andie MacDowell is great as the family patriarch, while "that guy" Henry Czerny plays incompetent zealot very, very well.  Adam Brody and Mark O'Brien are believable as brothers, with an affectionate in-it-together attitude, while Melanie Scrofano (the lead of Wynonna Earp, but also Letterkenny's Mrs. McMurry) and Kristian Bruun (Orphan Black) provide the outright comic relief as the sister and her husband (respectively).  Not very horrifying, rather just kind of fun (and a little gross).

[Toast's spoiler-y Ready or Not review: we agree]