2024, Ishana Shyamalan (Servant) -- download
There are many movies we watch during this season that I enjoy during the act of viewing, but in thinking about them, so I can write about them, they leave me cold and disappointed. The premise of this movie, and thus the trailers, was pretty grand. A woman lost on a mysterious forest is brought into a room with a giant windowed wall, where she is to stand, to be viewed, watched, by whatever mysterious creatures are on the other side. Its a Twilight Zone style premise, and TBH, something probably best left to a sub-thirty minute episode, for the premise almost immediately breaks and becomes and entirely different movie.
The funny thing is that we have seen enough of the "entirely different" movies, and enjoyed them, that, as I mentioned, in the act of watching, I was enjoying myself. That different is hinged on the idea that this is an Irish movie, a movie set in a forest in the west of Ireland, a forest we have seen in a few other movies, and we know what is usually hidden in forests in Ireland? Yes... spoilers!
Mina (Dakota Fanning, The Runaways) is an American living in Galway, Ireland. She's a depressed girl working in a pet store who likes to spend her nights dressed up as other American women in Galway. The town cannot be that big; eventually someone should realize she plays that game. Its the anniversary of her mother's death, she is ignoring calls from her sister, and instead of dealing, she takes on the task of delivery an exotic parrot to a zoo in Belfast.
Unfortunately GPS takes her into The Forest where the UFO Thing happens -- her car breaks down, her cell phone dies and the radio goes all wonky before it cuts out. So her and the parrot go traipsing into the forest, for some unknown reason. She doesn't even make note that the GPS brought her into a wood on a road that is no longer a road, but before she can turn around there is no car, there is no road, there is nothing but trees and an older woman yelling for her to follow, to run!
They run to the bunker with the big window wall. Inside, just before dusk, she is instructed on the rules: always stand facing the window. They will come, they will watch. The humans inside don't have to do anything, just be... themselves. Inside are Mina, of course, and Madeline (Olwen Fouéré, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) the already creepy enough looking old lady, young Ciara (Georgina Campbell, Barbarian) and younger Danny (Oliver Finnegan, Creeped Out). From inside, the wall is just a mirror so they cannot see their watchers, just hear them doing the usual litany of monster chittering, scratching, growling and ... applauding?
The rest of the movie is Mina deciding she will get out, she will ignore the entreaties of the others to just follow The Rules, because she has Main Character Syndrome, which is helped by her being the main character. We know, by these movies, that she will eventually discover things, do things she shouldn't, and by such activities learn more about what is going on, and she will lead them away, but not without some danger & death.
Now, the major spoiler, the thing I hint at of the top. When I saw the trailers, before I knew this was a movie set in that forest in Ireland I thought, could it be aliens? Could it be creatures from another dimension? Humans from the future? The idea of not knowing was the juicy bit. But once I knew where this movie was, it was not hard to guess it would be The Fae. And I was OK with that, except the movie spins entirely out of control once it explains itself.
The idea that a mad professor, an expert with Irish mythology, obsessed with Shape Changers, Changelings or "halflings" would find a spot in the woods to build a bunker from which to study them, a place stolen from Lost, is... mildly interesting? But dude, the premise states that all things powered die once you enter this part of the forest. Even if you accept he got some sort of counter-magic generator to keep things going, it does not explain how all the construction equipment required to dig out and build a BUNKER underground could happen. Sure, they hand wave some things by stating he conned people into helping him doing it, that he would leave outside to be eaten by the monsters in the wood, it still stretchers believability.
And I won't even go into how as the movie comes to a conclusion, that the characters have escaped, that it still wants to go on. It wants to tell more, to do a Shyamalan Twist, which by this point, we were both rolling our eyes and looking at our phones.
Oh! I cannot leave without mentioning that the movie also has redirections, that wants to lead us to believe that Mina, and her twin sister Lucy (Dracula fan their mother was?), are something other than just Americans with a tragic history. But.... it never explores it, it just hints at it, and abandons.
Of note, the "other movies" were The Hole in the Ground which shared the exact same holes in said ground, and The Hallow.
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