2024, Osgood Perkins (Gretel & Hansel) -- download
Starting in 2011 we (Marmy and I, as Kent is not much of a horror fan) began celebrating the Halloween season (all of October, of course) by watching too many horror / Halloween related movies, most of them bad. 2012 had a few flicks but not the full month. Un/Re-employment killed 2013. Apathy slayed 2014. But we returned in 2015 with a full run. 2016 had a good start, but stalled in the last few days, likely due to work life. 2017 almost started with a fizzle, but then I remembered, "It's October 1st !" It still fizzled. Life abounds. And in 2018, almost the entire year was Halloween *ahem* as in the year of posting was mostly October. 2019 did alright for itself, considering I went off to Las Vegas sometime in the month. 2020 was it's own horror fest, and I am not kidding or being pithy in the least; the horror movies we watched were almost a relief. 2021 was in full form, some good, most OK and some great/terrible. 2022 gave us a full run, counting in the TV we watched, which we did. Also, I absolutely love that Kent jumped in with some themed movies and even a We Agree(ish). Aaaand 2023 had a pretty good run, even if it was interrupted by Vegas Redux. I am not sure 2023 was a Good Year for horror, as we didn't have a whole lot lined up, not like this year. I have at least half a dozen movies in the hopper without even trying.
I think we like Osgood Perkins? We as in The Peanut Gallery / Marmy, my horror viewing companion (and life companion, so she gets the horror of me as well), not Kent. Kent did not like The Blackcoat's Daughter. We rather did, even thought it wasn't a 31 Days post. And again, Gretel & Hansel which we also did not watch during the season. We never completed the TV show, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House... dunno why.
Not gonna comment on how you started this post even before watching the movie, cuz you are THAT EXCITED to get into this year's 31 Days? Shaddup you.
Later. Watched it. Today I learned someone I knew died recently, rather horribly. Not sure if the knot in the pit of my stomach was the movie or the knowledge. Either way, this movie did as all horror movies are supposed to do --- left me in a 1 hour and 41 minutes state of anxiety.
Crass.
No, seriously, from the opening moments I knew I would like this. Just the way it was shot, the moodiness, the creepiness, the colour filters chosen for the cinematography. If so often, I watched movies solely from a "meh" as to the techniques of film making (not noticing or not giving a damn) this movie caught my attention from pretty much scene one. And kept it, and built upon it.
Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, It Follows) is a fledgling FBI agent assigned a partner and an objective -- knock on doors, show his picture and ask questions. That doesn't go well, or goes perfectly well, depending on your viewpoint and whether its your brains splattered all over the walkway. Instantly Harker knows the Bad Guy is in "that house" and immediately afterwards she is tossed into a room to determine if she is "half way psychic" -- which is better than none. They label her "highly intuitive".
She is assigned to the Longlegs case, a 20 year long run of murders that display as family annihilators, but the FBI believes are murders because of cryptic notes left behind. The father always murders his family and then himself, but they believe he was influenced to do so, but they know not by whom. Also, its the 90s so the amount of surveillance tech will be diminished. It must be the early 90s because nary a cellphone is to be seen.
Harker immediately sees a connection with these murders, followed quickly by someone leaving her a note in her house, with a threat, "reveal you got this note and your mother will die." The scenes include uncomfortable phone calls with her mother, because horror movies rarely have good family relations, especially if members of a police force. The scenes also introduce the framing technique that just leaves me uneasy for the rest of the movie, wherein Harker is shot left or right of centre, and there is something framing, like a window or doorway, over her shoulder, just waiting for something to be seen filling that void.
Of course, Harker's "intuition" comes into play and she leads them to a farm where the first murders took place. By now she has also decoded all Longlegs secret messages and connected them to satanic beliefs. At the farm they discover a lifelike doll that looks like the surviving daughter, a girl (Kiernan Shipka, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) who has been catatonic since the murder of her family, and in an asylum. Inside the doll is a humming orb with no easily defined purpose.
The more Harker investigates the more she feels tied to the events, which eventually leads her home to her mom (Alicia Witt, Christmas Tree Lane), to her own personal belongings, and a polaroid of a strange pale faced man in off-white. And that leads to his arrest (which is strangely a void in my memory, as to how a photo immediately led to an arrest.....) but that's not the end of it. Longlegs (Nicolas Cage, Mandy) kills himself in custody and a shaken Harker is driven home by a fellow agent, to reveal how directly tied to it all Harker and her mother are.
Perkins knew there would be a thousand blog articles with "Ending Explained" in their titles so he chooses to just fill in that blank himself, providing us an entire "tell and show" segment where we learn how Harker's mom has been Longlegs accomplice all along, delivering his creepy dolls that he makes for Satan. And yeah, Satan is behind it all, even providing some evil magic in the little metal orbs that control people, which, when Harker's own orb is destroyed, releases her into the final scenes emotionally unhinged, literally decades of being repressed. The movie may end the murders, but it does not end happily, nor cleanly nor entirely satisfactorily, which pisses off half the Internet.
Creepy, chilling, eerie, a thousand descriptive terms that are meant for well crafted horror movies. And Nick Cage being himself, but also reined in under a face full of makeup, allowing for an even more eerie villain bound to become a costume at the end of the month.
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