Horror, Not Horror (again), pt. 2: Let's do the time warp again

"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.

Coherence - 2013, d.  James Ward Byrkit - amazonprime    

Time Trap - 2018, d. Mark Dennis, Ben Foster - netflix

In The Shadow of the Moon - 2020, d. Jim Mickle  - netflix

Coherence is one of those whispered-about movies that gets brought up any time there's a conversation about little heard-of, indie sci-fi.  I've been hearing the name mentioned for years but people are always hesitant to really tell you what it's about, just to say that the less you know the more you get to experience the way the film unfolds.  And this film truly unfolds, unfolds like a map.  I mean I thought I caught on to what was happening early on, but even then the film still had a few wrinkles I needed it to iron out for me.

It's a low budget mostly closed-room picture, starring a few sort-of recognizable faces (Nicholas Brandon from Buffy The Vampire Slayer probably the most immediately recognizable).  A dinner party is taking place the night a comet is passing by Earth, but passing the closest a comet has ever passed on record. The guest slowly arrive, giving us time to establish some of the dynamics of the group, though a little more focus is put on Em (Emily Badaloni) as kind of our central figure of observance in all of this.  Her boyfriend has been given an opportunity to work in Thailand for a few months and he wants her to go with him, but she's uncertain. To double down, his ex-girlfriend is now dating another guy in their friend circle and they're both attending the party.

Once everyone arrives and the awkward tension is addressed, awkwardly, dinner is started, but then the power goes out, and strange things start to happen.  Again, could say more, but I won't.

I often got this film confused for It's A Disaster, another dinner-party-set sci-fi movie from around the same time, but that one was dealing with the end of the world, and starring a few more familiar faces and working largely as a comedy (while still taking its premise seriously).  Here, things are a lot more intense, at times terrifying.  This actually skirts the line of horror, as there seems to be someone/something outside, or some force that they cannot see influencing what's happening.  It's wildly engaging though, even though I don't think I really liked or cared for any of the characters, the plot and its execution are immensely well done up to the final minutes of the film.  It then makes a play that seems out of step with the film we've seen until now, and it keeps fumbling forward as if it can't help itself.  It's kind of brilliant, then gets a little too clever for it's own good, but don't let a slightly sour ending spoil everything that's good before it. 

Is it horror? Not really no, but it has a couple good startles in it.

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Time Trap came recommended from Toasty (directly, but also from his review) because, as he mentioned there, we both love time travel movies, and he thought this was a good one.  Let me start by saying this is a really fun movie, the way the discovery of information unfolds, the little quirks it introduces, and then some really crazy go-for-broke ideas slapped hard on top of it all, but it's not a "good" movie.  The acting is, at its best, descent and the dialogue is (maybe intentionally) super clunky.  Were it not for the really quite good special effects, and some semblance of a logic map to the proceedings, this would be Mystery Science Theatre 3000-grade fodder.

But the story, and the storytelling are well enough done to avoid that fate.  I puzzle at some of the editing decisions made, especially in the first 20 minutes, but once everyone reaches their destination (the cave) it starts moving at a pretty insane clip of revelations and weirdness.  There is definitely a 50's/60's sci-fi adventure throwback vibe, as a trio of college-age kids and a pair of tweens go exploring a cave where people keep disappearing into, doing a lot of expositing along the way. 

If anything I think what would have made this film much better had it been more Goonies like (a film referenced within the film) and had been about a late-teen taking a bunch of younger kids into the cave.  I was really just a couple notches away from being a family friendly adventure...as it already kind of is, but just not quite.

Is it horror? Well, there's a situation there, involving Furby early on that's skirts the boundary of horror, but otherwise, not at all.

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I'm going to start off talking about In The Shadow Of The Moon asking whether it's horror before talking about anything else, because, yes, it is, marginally, and certainly right in the beginning.  It's also a detective thriller, a science fiction drama, and another half dozen stories rolled together. 

The central conceit is in 1988, someone has killed three different people by injecting them with an isotope that melts their brain.  Patrol cop Locke has dreams of being a detective and starts inserting himself on the case (his brother in law is the lead detective so grants him some leeway).  In the process of the manhunt, Locke comes across the perpetrator and accidentally knocks her in front of a train (in the Toronto subway system attempting to pass for Philly).  Case closed right, except that she said things to him that make no sense, some very personal things.  And then his wife dies in labor.

The case picks up 9 years later, more victims appear with the same distinct  (and unreplicateable) modus operandi.  Another fracas with the perpetrator leaves his partner dead, and him even more confused... the perp is still alive.

Another 9 years and Locke is pretty much a bum, distant from his daughter who is living with his brother in law, but starting to put some of the pieces together, still he doesn't believe it.

Another 9 years and he's ready to close the loop he's figured out about the time traveling perp, but things are much more complicated than they seem.

It's a lot of time to span with one actor in the same role and Boyd Holbrooke does of good job of showing Locke's descent over these time frames, even if the makeup and hair get a little sketchy.  The film with a modern awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement tries to make it a thread in the 1997 sequence but it comes off as a little tone deaf (especially in the face of the more recent defund the police phase of the movement).  It's also using white supremacy terrorism but not really addressing it in anything but a pie-in-the-sky, oversimplified manner on how to solve it.  The film has lofty aspirations but way overreaches, breaking a wrist in the process.

The more the film gets away from its thriller/murder mystery and into the science fiction, the more it starts to come apart.  It never fully falls apart, but by the end it's tattered and barely holding together.  It's certainly not unwatchable but it's a rare case where I think it would have been preferable had the film been a bit more conventional.

Someone on letterboxed said it's like if Looper and Se7en had a baby with a learning disorder.  That pretty much covers it.

[Toast's take on In The Shadow Of The Moon]