2026, Jordan Downey (The Head Hunter) -- download
Don't read any further, don't even glance down, if you don't want a spoiler
Meg (Deborah Ann Woll, Escape Room) works as a forensic anthropologist at a "body farm" where they train crime fighters investigators on the various means and manners of body decomposition. She is not phased, like at all, by all the gross stuff. But she is entirely phased by the body the cops bring her to see, in a small coastal town in Oregon. It's not the shredded bodies of a mother and young daughter they want Meg to see, but the gray desiccated body of a man, found by a railroad track near the murder scene. That body is her estranged father, someone who ran out on her 36 years prior. Why the fuck was his body dumped there? What does he have to do with the murders? Can Meg deal with the emotions this dredges up?
I have said before that I like horror movies that set up our characters with a semblance of normality, of "real life"... well, real to the setting of the movie. Going on vacation in Thailand, drinking and dancing, is not a high mark in "real life", but the grimy, cramped places this movie is shot just smacks of the authenticity I like in these movies. I also enjoy that so many can be as much a murder investigation plot, as it is horror. This movie establishes its supporting cast really well: the young police chief Ian Marks (Will Hochman, Boston Blue) and his father, which the movie just calls "Marks" (Jeffrey Donovan, Law & Order), and the coroner Ratterman (Jeb Berrier, Sometimes I Think About Dying) who is appalled the cops want her consulting on the body of her own father.
The study of her dad's body doesn't lead far, but shows signs of regular and repeated bone breaks and healing, and the idea that the body died about 30 days prior. And finally, that he hanged himself. And then, and Chief Ian Marks, while seeking an update from coroner Ratterman, at the funeral home where the body is stored, and we guess Ratterman does his work, is attacked. We see the body crawling on the floor and then... blood spray and screaming. The Chief bumps into a switch on the cremation ovens and ... the next day all they find are the smouldering ruins and Ian's body. Somehow the dead body of her father is barely touched?
The overlay came up, "21 days later," but they were just having the funeral, the investigation still on hold and, for some reason, Meg's dad's body still... in storage? It should have been a greater hint as to what we were dealing with, but it just felt like a sloppy script, and TBH, it still does. Why would the dead man's body sit so long? If the death of the Chief was considered an accident, why wait almost a month to have his funeral?
But the investigation has continued, and turned up a similar attack 30 years ago. A man was torn apart by an unknown animal, but was found before it killed him, and 911 called. When Meg hears the 911 call, she hears her father's voice, and her own -- it was the night he ran away. The victim survived the horrific mauling, but had to have a massive blood transfusion. He survived decades of reconstructive surgery but was left incapacitated. While they are investigating, there is another attack, another brutally torn apart body and ... the corpse of her father, but with fresh blood on its mouth and hands. So, we know there is a monster within that corpse, but we are not sure ... what. The corpse is once again brought back to the station.
And that's where the reveal happens. The dead body of her father transforms, as the full moon rises. The "spirit" of the werewolf survives, even if the "host" has died. The curse is immortal, unless the body is fully destroyed, we must assume, or there could be a lot of werewolfs out there. The horribly disfigured, half-dead looking (practical effects!!) werewolf kills pretty much everyone in the station before Marks, the chief's father, drives it off with a shotgun. Meg has traced it back to an off-grid house, ascertaining that is where her father was hiding for the past 30 years. They go to investigate, hoping to ... destroy it?
They find a lair, equipment, technology meant to keep something in, cages and video tapes. And an explanation. While working an oil rig, Meg's father Peter Stump was scratched by something they found in a sinking lifeboat. Not long after, he knew what he was becoming, especially when he woke up next to the aforementioned mauled man. His final act, before disappearing, was to call 911. The victim was saved from becoming a werewolf himself by the full blood transfusion. And Stump went into hiding, hoping to drive the curse from his body through experimentation. Everything failed and his own final act was suicide -- which didn't work. Marks and Meg fight the creature off, as the sun is rising, hoping only to keep alive until it changes back to a (not rotting) corpse. The final scenes of the movie are Meg and Marks monitoring their own "cage" with the creature/corpse within, trying to find anything to defeat it.
As a tight plot, this movie didn't fully have it, but.... it definitely had something. Commitment and intention, in buckets. Most Shudder channel originals are buckets of gore, for its own sake, but this wanted a story and also, it wanted practical effects to be highlighted. They were mostly successful in the last bit, and can be applauded for at the very least, actually choosing practical magic. But what I liked was its production value --- Downey knows how to build a scene, populate it with a limited cast, and set it in a very real, lived-in location. I think back to the visceral, tangible nature of Fincher's Seven or the True Detective series. Downey also accomplished this, but in a grimdark fantasy setting, in The Head Hunter. I look forward to what he does next.
No comments:
Post a Comment