31 Days of Halloween: The Pope's Exorcist

2023, Julius Avery (Samaritan) -- Netflix

"Catholic Horror" or at the very least, "Religious Horror" is a dominant sub-genre in the West. Its interesting, as it comes with its own built-in trappings, that require a pre-existing understanding of the inherent structural elements. I wonder what a new-comer to the west, even one with a strong exposure to our pop culture, makes of movies about demonic possession, Catholic exorcists and sin. No no, I get that religious fervour and rigid rulesets is common enough in almost all cultures, but the accoutrement of Catholic horror always rely on knowledge of it, to give it any assemblance of meaning. 

Father Gabriel Amorth, or Gabriele (Russel Crow, Kraven the Hunter) in his native Italian and Gabe to the American brained demon, is the top-tier exorcist working directly for The Pope, out of The Vatican. He's jovial, irreverent and loves to scoot around Rome on his little put-put scooter, possibly a Vespa. Its not an eBike as its the 80s so gasoline all the way. The preamble gives us his technique & personality, commenting on the challenges of dealing with most exorcism cases being an issue of mental health, vs the few that involves real demons. Gabe prefers to let mental health professionals deal with cases of their expertise, but sometimes, like in the preamble's case, he just uses subterfuge to deal with it himself. He is also dealing with significant guilt over the time he should have just intervened, for his punting of the case to doctors led to  the girl's suicide. Finally, the preamble shows how the "modern Church" doesn't care for his actual demon fighting, and wants his role dismissed, and is taking advantage of the Pope's infirm state to depose him.

He is drawn to Spain, where an American family has inherited an abbey and is in the midst of renovating it for re-sale. This is not your typical fixer-upper, but  an ancient medieval structure full of secrets. The family, as per usual, comes with trauma in tow -- the abbey had been in the father's family, and he had died tragically in a car accident, his death witnessed by his young son, who has been mute since. Tragedy opens one's soul up to demonic possession, Gabriele says. So, when one of the workers cracks up a hidden room in the alcoves of the basement, something sneaks out and inhabits the boy. Thus, Gabriele is called in.

All the familiar religious focused possession trappings are there. Experienced Gabriele has to explain things to the local padre Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto, Station Eleven), a man with his own sinful burdens. And soon after being introduced, Gabriele realizes this is no normal demon possessing the child. There is something going on here, related to the history of the abbey. While the Pope (Franco Nero, Django) himself researches the place's history back in The Vatican, Gabriele roots around in the basement, finding hidden chambers galore. 

The demon escalates things, pointing directly at Gabriele, hinting the demon is on a personal vendetta against the exorcist. All Gabriele feels he has to do is find out the demon's name, and he can end this all. But when he does so, he finds out this is Asmodeus, a general in Satan's army, but more so he finds out  the truth of the abbey, that it had been the seat of the Inquisition's start, and that beginning was due to the possession of a religious leader by Asmodeus. Combined Vatican forces had sealed the demon in the cellars, ending the Inquisition's sacrilegious rein. Asmodeus needs Gabriele's body so he can begin that corruption again.

The idea of this movie is more interesting to me, than the execution. Its feasible enough, more than capable of a production with good effects and settings. The placement of Russell Crowe as an Italian Exorcist was ... odd, and the man does have a lot of fun playing the character, which all makes more sense when its revealed at the end that Gabriele Amorth was a real man, and this movie was based on his published books. The movie is a mix of what we would expect from a "real" exorcist, as well as some of the commentary around the whole idea. The movie ends with a hint that this could be a franchise as Gabriele pusued 199 other major demons / fallen angels, in their locked away places around the world. Hello Hollywood, could you just not? Enough of the franchise ideal, your purple suited ideas are so 15 years ago.

31 Days of Halloween: Late Night with the Devil

2023, Cameron & Colin Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres) -- Shudder

This was added to The List earlier in the year, downloaded as soon as it came out, before I signed up for Shudder. This year, 2024, has been a bumper crop for horror movies and I was downloading more that caught my interest than in any other year before. That may have been because of some factor a few years ago that spawned bankable interest in horror, but unfortunately it doesn't mean an increase in quality films, just volume. All things pointed to this being a break-out movie: the unique setting (found footage from a 70s TV talk show), a face we know and like (David Dastmalchian) and a pair of directors with some horror cred under their name, albeit not ones we had seen before.

So, as said, found footage. Via a voice over, we learn we are about to watch the last ever episode of "Night Owls, with Jack Delroy", a late night talk show competing with Johnny Carson. We start with a positive background to Jack (Dastmalchian, Ant-Man), a likable scamp who experiences some tragedy, and who has some connection to some weird culty "men's club". When his ratings flag, he begins to court controversy to gain viewers. That all leads to a Halloween episode where he is going to interview a girl possessed by a demon, and her handler.

The setup is a lot of fun. We see actual TV show segments, but we also get to see documentary style or "b-roll" from when it cuts to commercials. It begins with Christou (Fayssal Bazzi, We're Not Here to Fuck Spiders), an obviously fake medium channeling the dead relatives but basically screwing it up, until he hits the pre-setup ringer. Joining him onstage is the renowned skeptic Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss, Kuu Kuu Harajuku) to refute and mock everything he is doing. Basically they are recreating The Amazing Randi vs Uri Geller animosity for an audience (us, not the TV show's audience) too young to remember these people. That is, until Christou has an unfortunate encounter with a real spirit who shouts "Minnie!" followed by him vomiting an unimaginable amount of black liquid and collapsing on stage. Cut to commercial and rush the unconscious Christou away on a stretcher, while the crew rushes to clean up the stage, and Haig, for the next act.

Said next act is psychologist and supernatural investigator June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon, Harrow) and Lily (Ingrid Torrelli, The End), a girl who survived a Satanic cult. Ross-Mitchell has found a way to "safely" communicate with the demonic entity that inhabits Lily, but.... well, we wouldn't have a movie if that didn't go wrong.

And it does, but the movie was all focused on the build up, and ... not the climax? There were so many elements to juggle: that Jack was part of one of those Hollywood occult club, that his wife had died of cancer and maybe as part of a club sacrifice (what a scamp!), the skeptic getting definitive proof of the supernatural, the psychologist getting come-uppance, and Lily being more than a willing supplicant to whatever demonic entity ("Mr. Wriggles") they were summoning. But the payout wasn't as... fun? Lots of lights, death and Jack looking shell-shocked, along with a brief otherworldly depiction as we see the movie switch from the TV format to widescreen, to show us we are not in the found-footage mode any longer. The movie was rather well polished in what it laid out but less than satisfying in how it concluded, but I am not sure what it should  have shown us, just that we were disappointed.

Still, nice to see Dastmalchian get a bit more scenery to chew on.

31 Days of Halloween: May the Devil Take You

2018, Timo Tjahjanto (Portals) -- Netflix

Or  Sebelum Iblis Menjemput.

OK, I don't care if someone is doing an enthusiastic homage to Sam Raimi; to me, if the movie ends up looking a patchwork of pieces lifted from other horror movies, and yes, many of those patches are Evil Dead ripoffs, then I am not impressed. So, if you are going to do such, at the very least you have to have a tightly done movie with consistent internal structure and a decent plot. Instead, here get an hour & half of screams from the antagonists and protagonists.

Way to just jump into the disgruntle !

Indonesian (horror) films, for us at least, have almost entirely been about tragic family situations in rural areas. So, when this movie started in the city, with Alfie (Chelsea Islan, Headshot) being called about her father in the hospital, I was thinking, "OK, something different." Bzzzzzzt, nope, because no sooner does Alfie have a nasty encounter with something clawed & terrible in the hospital (just a typical jump scare vision, followed by daddy blood fountain), then she returns to her father's house in the country. This is the house she knew as a child, before her mother committed suicide, before her father remarried and started another family she didn't fit into. There is literally a line, "We are her family, but she is his biological daughter."

Now, let me not forget the preamble where father dearest is shown making a pact with a evil priestess lady for... well, for cash. She shows up at his house, knocks on the door (evil shamans knock?!?!), and is shown to a pre-prepared ritual chamber in the basement, where she eats hair and fills up his briefcase with cold hard cash. Then we transition to opening credits where he is suddenly, unexpectedly rich, gets richer through real estate but soon after tragedy befalls him. Guess evil witch hair magic is temporary? Don't trust Satan based ponzi schemes? Who woulda known...

Not moments after Alfie arrives at the house, her not-family shows up. They want Alfie, who has the deed to the house, to liquidate it, partially to cover hospital bills, but mostly because failed actress New Wife needs to be kept in the lifestyle she has become accustomed to. Her husbands financial downfall and really nasty, obviously demonic disease is truly inconvenient.

Of note, there is a basement door, covered in those little rune printed prayer sheets, the kind you should never remove in anger or disgust. Its also nailed shut and padlocked. What does that mean? GOOD STUFF DOWN THERE ! In most movies they contrive a reason to go through the Scary Go Away Door, but not this family. Devil Gotten Gains must lead to ludicrous levels of greed. No sooner do they open the door then New Wife (mom!!) is dragged into the dark, only to return moments later Possessed By a Demon. After a bit of fighting, a nibble on one of her daughters and some more blood fountaining, Mommy Demon jumps through the window.

OK, what? That's it? She just wanted to leave? Well then, everything should be fine, right?

Alas no...

The movie continues, finding unending reasons to have the kids confront demons, spirits and anything else the director has seen in other horror movies, usually Japanese or American. For example, having someone trying to climb their way out of a muddy, water filling grave, but... why is it raining the basement? In the Sam Raimi spirit, some go mad and turn on the others, while Alfie remains true to saving the family that has rejected her. Eventually we have to actually go into the basement to have Visions of Exposition, and background visions of a Horny Goat Fellow -- I have mentioned before my dislike for having scary imagery in the background that is purely for our benefit; like, if the Devil is taking time to show up, why not reveal himself to people? Oh, the exposition? Dad came back to the house to sacrifice his family for more money but... changed his mind? He stabbed the witch and she cursed him with the blood fountain disease. So now Alfie has to unravel some blood hair paper magic to stop it all but not before pretty much everyone dies.

In much the way western horror movies often draw upon Christianity motifs, while this one is wrapped up in such to a degree, the meat of the movie is about family. Alfie just wants some, Dad is horrible for sacrificing his for money and mom (Old Wife) did not commit suicide, but was his first sacrifice. Sure, most American horror movies have a focus on family as well, but the direct focus of this movie is on them as a unit -- only Alfie is an individual. Much of the screen time, when not presenting us with low-budget monster makeup, is about the trials and tribulations of keeping a family together, especially ones that don't deserve it.

And again, if you are going to wear your Sam Raimi love on your sleeve at least do something interesting with it. 

31 Days of Halloween: Haunter

2013, Vincenzo Natali (Cube) - Netflix

We agree.

I recently listened to a podcast/audio drama called Evergreen that left me wholly unsatisfied, and more than a little pissed off. It is one of these scifi tales where pretty much every episode is unresolved ideas combined with non-stop tension, whether it be between characters or in the environment itself. The plot is that a small group of people are trapped inside a self-sustained compound, deep beneath the surface of the planet, when an asteroid destroys all life above. There are non-stop questions, and antagonistic situations, most of which never get resolved: did the asteroid actually hit or was it fabricated by the founder of the compound, what are they "betas" - the failed human clones living in the basement, what was "incomplete" as reported by the founder before he had a aneurism, will the AI take over and kill them all? Question after question after tense situation and every single character did something reprehensible. It annoyed me to no end. And none of the performances nor the ideas presented were enjoyable enough to make the frustrations seem worth it. I don't know why I even finished the podcast.

This movie, which starts as a mysterious time loop, and ends as a ghost story, was much the same. But, at least, I enjoyed the performances and the situation to a degree where I enjoyed the movie, if left entirely unsatisfied by all the unresolved ideas. And I like what it was trying to allude to, even if it didn't answer any of its own questions.

Lisa (Abigail Breslin, Signs) wakes up on the morning, the day before her 16th birthday. She is a typical cranky teen, but quickly we begin to see why. She has been waking up on this morning for a while now. So, loopty loo! But then she starts hearing noises, and she begins questioning why she is trapped. The movie traipses down the haunted house path, kept within the confines of an inescapable time loop story, until suddenly... "I'm dead!" Lisa realizes. Why does she realize that? Who knows, but the fun flip on the teen girl using Ouija to contact... the living girl who currently lives in her house seems to ... inspire her? Soon the loop is not as idyllic as it was, and her dad is acting upset, and everyone is upset and.... the plot kind of disassembles itself after that, introducing an antagonist who murdered women and burned their bodies in the basement, but ... died himself, and now possesses the new owner's father figure to ... kill again? And Dead Edgar (Stephen McHattie, Pontypool) keeps the dead girls from moving on because.... ? And Lisa the ghost summons other ghosts as well as living girl... at this point, I was just along for the ride, enjoying my familiar Canadian faces (Stephen McHattie is always a good Bad Guy) and chalking it up to being better than so much I watch during this season.

31 Days of Halloween: Evil Dead Rise

2023, Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground) -- download

My post about watching Cronin's last movie, The Hole in the Ground. 

Visually, tonally, and lore-ly, this movie had little to do with the franchise whose name it bears. It is not a sequel to the 2013 Fede Alvarez reboot, nor is it directly connected to the cancelled TV series Ash vs Evil Dead. Despite that, its not a baaaaad Halloween movie?

You don't sound convinced.

This movie opens the way I like horror movies opening: strongly establishing the characters involved. We have mom Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland, Vikings), a tattoo artist living with her kids in a run down artsy apartment complex scheduled for demolition. The kids, Bridget (Gabrielle Echols, Reminiscence), Danny (Morgan Davies, One Piece) and Kassie (Nell Fisher, My Life is Murder) are all artsy and weird and fun, especially Kassie who cuts off a doll head and crafts it into Staff-anie (snort). And there is mom's sister Beth (Lily Sullivan, Mental), not-a-roadie, who shows up unexpectedly after she discovers she is pregnant. Things are tense but this family loves each other, and are making the best of it, having to find a new home soon.

Earthquake. I guess we are on the west coast? But yeah, scary shaking while the kids are picking up pizza, and it opens a hole in the ground (snort) in which Danny finds a tomb. I mean, one should never crawl into a hole in the ground but it is a lost bank vault and the family does need money, so... But once he finds a fucking tomb surrounded by hundreds of crucifixes (crucifixi?) he should have probably left, but instead, he grabs the book wrapped in a dusty rag.

Stupid shit.

Its "a" Book of the Dead, but not the Book of the Dead from all the other movies. There is some toss away lore about it being one of three. And there are LP recordings of rituals from the 20s! Danny is a DJ and.... well, he plays one of the rituals, which initiates one of the standard visuals from the franchise: the rushing of something (technically, Deadite demonic entity) from afar to find its home inside mom Ellie.

And then everybody fucking dies. Well, pretty much everyone. Shockingly, including some of the kids, and neighbours, and the neighbour's kids. Yeah, its pretty distressing, but once the Deadite infection starts with Ellie, it just keeps on spreading and killing and spreading. Cronin does not shirk.

The movie is less humourous, and more dark and gruesome, more attuned to the reboot than the others in the franchise. The monsters / Deadites are decently depicted, especially the final Boss Monster, and I have to give it kudos for finding one of my personal triggers by using a cheese grater on someone. I also have to smile at Cronin for his nod to Rec 3 and the franchise, by having a blood spattered woman stand up to the monster with a chainsaw, before making use of the woodchipper, as broadcast loudly in the opening bits of the movie.

Speaking of opening bits, the movie actually opens with a "are we staring half way through the movie?" moment, before cutting to a "one day earlier" scene. It obviously wants to continue the franchisey moments.

I Saw This!! Bid Adieu to '22 (Movie Edition)

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(me) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Or, maybe not so bad.  Enh, whatever. It's what we do.

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Fire Island (2022, d. Andrew Anh - Disney+)

Gay romance is still a burgeoning force in mainstream media, and one that it seems Hollywood is still only backing with trepidation, as if they don't truly believe there's an audience for it.  Recent years have seen a few big moves, with Love, Simon, and Call Me By Your Name, and holiday romances like Dashing in December, Single All the Way and Happiest Season. But this year the torch has been lit for gay romcoms with the theatrical release of Billy Eichner's Bros and Fire Island being released on Disney+.  

Fire Island shot out like a signal flare announcing the arrival of comedian Joel Kim Booster as a force to be reckoned with.  Writing and starring in this wreckingly funny and fiercely gay romantic comedy that takes its inspiration from Pride and Prejudice, no less, Booster draws from his own emotional well for his portrayal of Noah, the super-hot underemployed late-20something himbo who is still figuring out his place in the world.  With his regular gang of multicultural friends, they take their annual trip to the Fire Island Pines only to discover that it may be their last trip as they know it.  Noah makes it his mission to get his best friend Howie (Bowen Yang) laid, and vows not to have sex until he does.  Meanwhile he keeps having heated run-ins with Will (Conrad Ricamora) who is a very successful individual with poor social skills, and while the personality clashes is what draws them to each other, the class differences keep coming between them.  

Booster commands this film from moment one, with voice-over narration, with his body, and everything in between.  He's in full control of Noah, attempting to act dumber and more vacuous than he is because it lessens the expectations others have for him, and by proxy what he expects for himself. Yang's Howie is riddled with self-consciousness made worse by his utterly shredded and confident BFF not understanding the differences between them.  That they're both Asian-American and gay has its own deeply rooted impact on their senses of selves and, despite being a commonality, they deal with the prejudice and the complex it manifests quite differently.  Fire Island is exceptionally smart and insightful, with richly drawn characters, and explosively funny situations that never get too unbelievably outlandish.  I quite loved it.

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The Conjuring (2013, d. James Wan - Tubi)

I knew James Wan from his incredibly proficient and joyously outlandish Aquaman and Furious 7, but I had kind of passed over his horror stuff (I think I watched Saw in bits and pieces once).  But after last year's very, very wild Malignant, I realized that maybe Wan's horror keyed more into a comic-book sensibility than a grue and gore one.  A friend had been trumpeting the greatness of the Conjuring series and I made a point to catch the first one once it hit a streaming service again (who knew that would be Tubi).  Long story short, I liked it immensely.  

Wan's incredibly smart set-up for the film builds a whole universe around paranormal investigator couple Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) and he wants you to be aware of it.  They have a past, they have a "treasure room", they have traumas, and they have a child which makes them vulnerable.  Lorraine has some form of clairvoyance which is more burden than superpower.  They are sought out by a family experiencing increasingly bizarre and threatening phenomena in their new farm home, including the seeming possession of their daughter. 

The film is as much a procedural as it is a horror film.  It follows the family and really leans into the intensity of the spooks and chills they experience, but it's the Warrens, their process, their crew, their affiliation with the police and their challenging of the evil that engaged me the most.  It taps into a more grandiose look at the supernatural that feels especially heightened, as if the Warrens were John Constantine's parents or something.  Even though I know a whole massive franchise of films had already been built out of this one film, one could sense that there were a whole franchise of films ready to be built out of what Wan constructed here.  Pretty great.

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RRR [aka Rise, Roar, Revolt] (2022, d. S.S. Rajamouli - Netflix)

One of the complaints levelled against Black Panther and its sequel is that for all its anti-colonialism stance, there's not really actually any fighting and/or killing of white oppressors.  RRR, the epic international smash hit action film from India, has no such qualms.

The most expensive Indian-made film yet, RRR is set in the 1920s during the British rule of the Indian subcontinent. A British administrator and his wife (Ray Stevenson and Alison Doody) abduct a young girl skilled at henna from a village for their own private amusement.  The village protector, Khomaram (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.), takes on the mission of retrieving the girl.  The admin is warned of a possible threat, and they task the ambitious officer Raju (Ram Charan) with quashing the threat.  Raju infiltrates some anti-colonialist groups and catches the attention of Khomaram.  The two forge an unlikely friendship, built on lies, but built all the same.

You would think that the film would be leading to Raju's betrayal of Khomaram, but it's really the middle of the second act with Raju's redemption arc rounding out the rest of the act, before leading into an all-out assault on the administrator in the third act, and there's no holding back.

RRR is a big, brassy, playful movie that deals almost exclusively in big swings and going over-the-top.  It is dealing with a particularly fraught time in India's history, and it's dealing with it in a fanstatical way, a way that is more than just revisionist history, it's superhero fan fiction.  The action goes huge, beyond insane a times, circling past ridiculousness and back into awesome territory.  But it's also a heart-swelling, chest-thumping good-guys-vs-bad-guys story that's really quite simple to get behind, and yes, the pink skins are without a doubt the bad guys that you actively are rooting against.  That the bromance is so loaded with homoerotic undertones is just kind of a bonus, with no painful machismo trying to disguise it.  These two men love each other, and will go to such extremes for one another.  It's a romp.  

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Fighting With My Family (2019, d. Stephen Merchant - Amazonprime)

Prior to being cast as the new Black Widow, I didn't really know Florence Pugh from a hole in the ground.  I hadn't really taken note of her in anything in particular and didn't really have much of an opinion on her replacing Scarlett Johansson (except to say that as thoroughly decent a job as ScarJo did as Black Widow, I still never quite felt she sold the "most dangerous woman on the planet" vibe).  Smash cut past a couple appearances as Yelena in Black Widow and Hawkeye and Midsommar, I can say I'm quickly a fan.  She is an incredibly compelling actress, always working on multiple different levels at the same time.  She's an incredibly physical performer, as well as one of the most expressive actors of her generation.

Even still, a WWE-produced wrestling biography?  Sure, it's got a pretty great cast (with Nick Frost and Lena Hedy as the British wrestling family patriarch and matriarch), and yeah, Stephen Merchant has proven himself over and over as a smart, funny writer (if not as known for his directing), but why? What makes this story any more compelling than any other wrestler trying to make it?

The answer is, it's got Stephen Merchant at the helm and it stars Florence Pugh.  It's not that this story couldn't have been made without them, but it'd be much less of a thing. It adeptly presents us with a close-knit wrestling family, the resentment that comes as a result of Saraya being picked for WWE training and not brother Zak, and the tribulations one so young has to face leaving home for an entirely new world.  It's a ridiculously cliche-filled tale, but one that has the truth to back it up, making it shockingly fresh.  Pugh just owns the screen every second she's on it, in full command.  It's the movie that made me realize I would watch her in pretty much anything.

(We agree)

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The Great Race (1965, d. Blake Edwards - Criterion Channel)

Until a few months ago, I wasn't even aware this movie existed.  It's a strange miracle of a production that is quite surely part of an era of cinematic excesses, but results in not another long, sandy Biblical/Historical epic or series of fanciful song-and-dance extravagances, but instead something particularly unique: a living cartoon.  

Many filmmakers have tried over the years to make live action cartoons, mostly by taking a cartoon property and trying to replicate it in live action.  The 90's were rife with these - The Flintstones, Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle, Yogi Bear - but none really all that successful, mainly because we have actual cartoons to compare them to.  They're not films that are innovating but rather emulating.

The Great Race was inspired by an actual New York to Paris race in 1908, as well as director Blake's love of slapstick comedy of Laurel and Hardy and the Mark Brothers.  But the result feels less like an homage to cinematic classic comedy than the live action embodiment of Jay Ward Productions cartoons (The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show).  Jack Lemmon plays, Professor Fate, a literal moustache-twirling mad scientist villain in the Snidely Whiplash mold, with Peter Falk playing the more sensible, yet dutiful sidekick, Max.  Everything Professor Fate and Max do is to get the better of his rival, The Great Leslie, which finds Tony Curtis at his most square-jawed, draped in the whitest of whites, the most manicured nails and primped hair, and a smile that literally gleams.  The Great Leslie is the epitome of the cosmopolitan hero, the flawless man, an adventurer so great at adventuring he never gets dirty.  It's clear why Professor Fate hates him so, but Fate's every effort to undermine Leslie backfires on him in spectacular fashion.  So rather than attack him directly yet again, he sets out to best him at his own game, by beating him in a race around the world.  I think worse for ware is Leslie barely even notices Fate, so all of Fate's actions tend to come across as a desperate cry for attention.

This battle of machismo is interrupted by Natalie Wood's Maggie DuBois, who could have just been the token damsel, but Blake and screenwriter Arthur C. Ross make Maggie a modern woman, a suffragette of the era, but also a 60's feminist, drawn in the mould of Nora Charles, a woman who can talk her way into (and out of) pretty much anything.  Maggie is an aspiring reporter who talks her way onto the newspaper staff, and just as quickly onto the assignment of covering The Great Race by entering herself into it, and then managing to still carry on when she quite reasonably shouldn't continue.  

The race takes the quartet of Leslie, Fate, Maggie and Max (as most of the other competitors do not last long) to curiously entertaining places, and, at one point, forces them to all come together to survive on an ice floe when crossing from Alaska to Russia.  The film is perhaps over-extended by its third act, making a detour in the small European kingdom of Carpania, where the perpetually soused crown prince (Jack Lemmon in a second, utterly delightful role) is plotted against, as his backstabbing consorts seek to use Fate's uncanny similarity to undermine the crown. It's at once an utterly unnecessary yet thoroughly entertaining diversion in this 2 1/2 hour film, one that culminates in a ludicrously epic technicolor pie fight (you might be thinking "you've seen one pie fight, you've seen them all"...trust me, if you haven't see this pie fight you just don't know how epic a pie fight can get).

I watched Star Wars about 100 times as a kid.  Had I known about The Great Race I probably would have watched it just as much.   It's a delight from moment one (perhaps the funniest credits sequence besides Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and features a delightful Henry Mancini score.

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He Laughed Last  (1956, d. Blake Edwards - Criterion Channel)

While I've never been much of a fan Edward's various Pink Panther movies, after the joy of The Great Race I thought I'd second visit into Blake Edwards territory.   He Laughed Last is one of his earliest films, and at 75 minutes, it feels interminably long, an elastic of an idea stretched as far as it can go, neither breaking nor returning to shape.

Who is this film's protagonist? The first 20 minutes are completely stolen by Big Dan (played by Fred Flintstone himself Alan Reed) who dies way too soon.  He bequeaths his criminal empire to Rosie (Lucy Marlow), who was just a showgirl at the club Big Dan took a liking to.  This puts her at odds with dopey wannabe mobster Max (Jesse White) who has aspirations of his own.   We spend far too much time with Max and his lame scheming to the detriment of making much of a character out of Rosie, the ostensible protagonist, 

That Rosie gets left all of Big Dan's estate makes thing difficult with her cop boyfriend Jimmy (Richard Long). But we don't really get much hijinks of out-of-her-depth Rosie trying to run the mob operation, most of her scenes deal with her toxic relationship with Jimmy...such a bad relationship.

Marlow is delightful as Rosemary in a turn-on-a-dime performance where she goes from ditsy to swooning to tough-talking in seconds. It would have been far better were the film more focused on Rosie and we could have gotten more Marlow. It's pretty hollow otherwise.  It feels every inch like a studio-demanded production: "We've got this girl Marlow that we want to make a star, but we don't trust her yet, so don't focus too much on her.  Build the picture around her, but let our stable boys like Reed and White do all the heavy lifting  We got this crooner, Frankie Laine signed up, but he's a crap actor, but the dames love his, so make sure he's in here, but mostly singing, not talking.  Bring it in over 70, but under 80, you got two weeks."

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Damn Yankees (1958, d. George Abbott and Stanley Donen - Tubi)

You know, Damn Yankees is one of those titles that has been circling around me my whole life, but I never really stopped to inquire about it. I kind of knew it was a movie that may or may not have been derived from a musical, or stage production of some kind.  I think I assumed it was about the Civil War, but I just didn't know.

I've gotten more appreciative of musicals in general and having explored Bob Fosse's repertoire this past year, I was curious to see Gwen Verdon in the flesh (as opposed to being portrayed by Michelle Williams), so I dove into Damn Yankees and was shocked to find it was a basesball musical about a deal with the devil.  I honestly didn't see that coming at all.

It's a trifle of a story, a flittering whimsy about wish fulfillment. An average middle-aged schlub, Joe Boyd (Robert Shafer) is tired of seeing his beloved Washington Generals lose and so he makes a deal with the devil (Ray Walston) to become the pro-slugger that he always wished he could be, and he's turned into the young, strapping, toe-headed Tab Hunter, under the guise of Joe Hardy. In doing so, he leaves his "old girl", his wife Meg (Shannon Bolin) behind.

He has immediate and massive impact on the success of the Generals, fame and glory are his, but he starts to miss his "old girl", and goes back to see how Meg is doing. Joe's pining for his "old girl", who he made an armchair widow neglecting her for basesball 6 months out of every year, threatens his deal with the devil, and so the devil sets his right hand temptress, Lola, on Joe.  Meg, meanwhile, seems to have no inner life.  Her husband just up and disappeared and she's just putting up a brave front.  Then when Joe Hardy, the new most famous person in town comes and rents a room from her, neighbours begin to talk (if only the story delved into actual conceits of infidelity, with Joe being tempted by Lola, or Meg being very attracted to young Joe....)

But Joe is a good old boy, and in the end, he doesn't want his dreams, just the comfort of the woman he loves, leading to a most bizarre final shot of Shafer and Bolin embracing while behind them Walston jumps up and down in a tantrum that is direly undignified.

The story doesn't really delve too deeply into any internal conflict.  It's not really a look at "settling down" or "lost dreams" or the "seven-year-itch" or any of that.  It doesn't really ever let Joe revel in his successes, and it never lets us even imagine that he's going to stick with his new life. Almost immediately he wants to return to his old one.  He's not even really tempted by Lola, and the production has to do a lot of summersaults in order to make you think the devil might actually win.

I didn't really care for any of the songs (though it was good to finally put classics like "(You Gotta Have) Heart" and "Whatever Lola Wants" in context) and the dancing (for someone who doesn't have much appreciation for it) was fine, sometimes really great (particularly during Two Lost Souls).  Yet, despite my griping, I did quite enjoy it.  Verdon, a handsome woman with a dynamic form and huge presence, is easily the stand-out performer of the piece.  I just think there's more possibility in the story than was actually executed.  

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Confess, Fletch (2022, d. Greg Mottola - rental)

It's been a long, long road to getting a new adaptation of Gregory Macdonald's "Fletch" series, with many, many false starts (I recall a Kevin Smith-helmed, Jason Lee-starring Flech being positioned back in the early 2000's).  Much of the old Chevy Chase Fletch has aged poorly, and Fletch Lives was always an abomination (like 20 novels to adapt and they went with an original story?)

But a new feature from Superbad and Adventureland's Greg Mottola starring Jon Hamm in the title role seems like a natural, sure-fire can't-lose starter to a new, better run of Fletch movies.  However, the studio behind it, Miramax (wait, that still exists?), via Paramount, did very, very little to promote the film.  I only heard about it from Jon Hamm appearing on a podcast.  And by all accounts it sounds like Paramount even buried the film on their Paramount+ streaming service.  It's baffling as to why there was so little confidence in the film.  Did nobody at Paramount watch it?  It's great!

Confess, Fletch is one of the most delightful movie experiences of 2022, with Jon Hamm playing the overconfident, utterly affable Irwin M. Fletcher, former investigative reporter-turned-golddigger/private investigator. He arrives at his rental home in Boston only to find a dead body in the place.  With all the casualness of ordering a pizza, he calls the police (not 9-11) and informs them that a crime has been committed, and he grabs a drink, takes his shoes off, and puts his feet up and waits.

Hamm is a devastatingly handsome man which is only made more potent by his lack of ego and unfailingly playful comedic personality (he's been very entrenched in the L.A. comedy scene for decades, despite not being a comedian, improviser or sketch performer himself).  He's had some incredible comedic turns playing vainglorious idiots and clueless buffoons in Bridesmaids, 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but no role has seemed so perfect for him to capitalize upon everything he brings to the table as Fletch.  Hamm's Fletch struts around the world not as if he owns it, but as if he's immune to it.  He's teflon, and nothing bad can ever stick to him.  He thinks himself clever, and he is, just not as clever as he thinks he is, to the point that for all his swirling machinations in Confess, Fletch none of it actually truly matters, and even his solving of the crime is more about his refusal to not interfere in things than it is his deductive ability.  Fletch skates through life as an only a super-handsome white guy can, on a cloud of unearned privilege that gives him the benefit of the doubt...or would have 30 years ago.  Today, Fletch is challenged about his privilege at every turn, though he barely clocks it.  He's not an offensive product of white privilege, as he does, for the most part, try to use it for good, yet Mottola is very savvy in how the lens captures the world's around Fletch's awareness of it.

 On top of being so, so good looking, Hamm is also aging without fear, and even that is brought into his performance of Fletch.  He's too old to relate to the youth, but not too old as to not try.  His position as a post-Boomer/pre-Gen Xer means he's not old enough to be given a free pass for his transgressions against a changing society, but he's also old enough to not be self conscious about it.  It's like he knows the world is still his oyster, he may never get the pearl, but it's always going to be in view.  

I loved Confess, Fletch.  It's not changing the face of cinema, nor attempting to, but it's just massively entertaining, and simply so, without big pyrotechnics or chase sequences or special effects.  It coasts entirely along based off great performances from Hamm, Marcia Gay Harden, Roy Wood Jr., Annie Mummalo and more, weaving a convoluted mystery that is not meant to be solved so much as unraveled.  We need at least another half dozen of these please.

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Alice, Sweet Alice [aka. Communion aka Holy Terror] (1976, d. Alfred Sole- Xumo)

This was a recommendation from the Roger Avery/Quentin Tarantino podcast Video Archives during their assessment of "American Giallo" (American films that best emulate the Italian hyper-violent murder-mysteries made famous by Dario Argento and Mario Bava)

Once you get past the awkward timing of nearly every scene, there's a rather gripping murder-mystery/suspense thriller here that starts with a child's murder for which another child is blamed. I knew going in that titular Alice wasn't the murderer, but I think if you went in cold, it would only be the first act, at most, that you would suspect Alice of the crime. There really wasn't a bigger plan here to deceive the audience. 

The actual murderer is revealed at the end of the second act, which then spends time with them, givings us some insight into who they are and why they're doing what they're doing. It's a little disjointed from act to act, as the focus shifts from one character to the next, and sadly Alice is pretty much gone from the film's second half, but somehow it all hangs together quite well. 

There are some surprising attacks and murders, and that great, soupy, bright red 70's blood is put to great effect (a great overhead shot of a body laying in the gutter as rain pours down, the blood pool expanding rapidly in the wetness. Director sole may not have been able to draw the most natural performances out of his actors, nor edit the film smoothly, but he knows where to put the camera.   This film revolves a lot around the church, and I don't quite grok the exact message  (except to say that religion creates murderous zealots) but it's obviously not one that thinks highly of Catholicism.

31 Days of Halloween: The Seventh Day

2021, Justin P Lange (The Dark) -- Netflix

Well, poo. We finished another season and I am not sure we ever really hit any stride. Next year we should do a month of Shudder and milk it for what it's worth. 

I was raised Catholic, and for a time actually subscribed to it. I was thoroughly frightened of an actual embodiment of Evil being out there. I was also mesmerized by the idea that there was a branch of the Church assigned to combating it. Twelve year old Toast ascribed them to being D&D Clerics, warriors of Holy nature who fought with spells and Holy Right. Alas, the exorcist as portrayed usually fights the demons via yelling repeated holy phrases over and over and over. Most of their power comes from knowing the enemy they are dealing with. And faith.

In The Seventh Day we are given Father Peter (Guy Pearce, The Rover), a seasoned exorcist who witnessed his mentor die at the hands (influence?) of a very powerful demon, who then burned alive the young boy it was inhabiting. Peter is portrayed as a very cynical, grizzled noir detective style priest wearing old sweaters and driving a run down Park Vic. He is handed the fresh out of exorcist school Father Daniel (Vadhir Derbez, Dulce Familia), one of many new priests rushed through the school of exorcism due an uptick of Evil in the world. Previously, the Church had been stepping away from exorcism as a tool due to all the bad press it had received, likely referring to all the failed exorcisms in 90s and 2000s movies.

After a brief intro where Daniel fails to recognize a demon inside an outreach worker, their first case is a young boy who has murdered his family. Peter keeps on tossing Daniel into the fray without an ounce of training, or any real advice. People have catch-phrased this "Training Day meets The Exorcist" but considering how little seasoned knowledge Peter passes onto Daniel, its not at all. Peter is more about Daniel experiencing everything first hand, unprepared, so he can say to the Church, "See! Your two week school of exorcism is a fucking sham!!"

But of course, Daniel perseveres. He recognizes that something has the boy, and despite the abuse he had heaped upon him by his family, he really is possessed. And the demon is just having fun hinting that something else is coming up. The world is ripe for the picking, Evil has been increasing and they are getting ready. This sounds more like the first episode of a pretty decent exorcism TV show.

In a end-of-second-act scene, there is a horrific amount of violence and death where I assumed Daniel was having a dream, seeing the demon emerge from the boy and slay a ton of cops and doctors. But no, it happens. They all do die, and Daniel & Peter escape, barely, with the blood covered kid in the backseat of the Park Vic. They take him to his house, and prepare for battle.

But really, they go where I didn't expect, but if I had given it just an ounce more of attention, it would have been obvious. Father Peter has not been so much as fighting demons as he has been playing the long game, himself having been long term possessed. Daniel recognizes it and does battle and does the Good Work. 

Still despite rather standard tropes and nothing truly scary, the movie was solid as a exorcist thriller. I just wish it had done something more with Father Peter as the the seasoned grizzled exorcist, perhaps even keeping on with the "he's already possessed" idea by having a war going on, and having the grizzled warrior work with Daniel to defeat what was within him.

Horror, not Horror: The Night House

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

2020, d. David Bruckner - rental

In his write-up for In The Earth, Toasty brought the term "elevated horror".  There's no single defining definition for this term, and it's one that causes a lot of frustration in both the horror fan and film critic community.  The way it is used, it's not a subgenre but a way of trying to single out a horror film from the piles and piles of other horror films that are made each year (I think next to Hallmark-style holiday romances, cheapo horror is the next most overproduced). 

"Elevated" means lifted or raised above, so it's a snobbish label to try and apply to a film, inferring that it is somehow better-than just by applying the label.  In the past few years it has come to imply some form of artist merit or that it's more palatable to a general audience, not just a genre fanbase .  At this stage the general critical opinion on "elevated" is that it's a bullshit term, but it's in the ether now, and will continue to be used.  If anything the term will likely wind up as a derogatory term for a horror movie where the creators are trying too hard to escape the genre, be too clever about their horror, or appeal to an audience at the exclusion of horror fans.

For me, I guess "Horror, Not Horror" is my toying with some of the same conversation around "Elevated Horror".  But "Horror, Not Horror" is broader than that.  I could easily put a TV mini-series like Dr. Death through the "Horror, Not Horror" ringer, as it is pretty damn horrifying and upsetting, but it falls under True Crime, Docu-drama labels because it's not employing standard horror tropes.  If there's no metaphysical, paranormal element, or if it's not using kill/maim/torture gags, can it still be called horror?  

The Night House I'm sure has been reviewed with the "elevated horror" label, if only because it's a sort of haunting story with some clever directing tricks and a recognizeable lead.  Rebecca Hall stars as a grieving widow, now alone in the semi-remote house-on-a-lake her husband built himself.  He committed suicide out on the water in a boat, with seemingly no warning signs, leaving behind a cryptic note.

As Hall is left to deal with her grief, she starts experiencing paranaormal phenomena in the house -- stereos turning on at random, creaks and noises that sound like more than just the house settling, wet footprints -- as well as dreams where it seems like her husband is trying to communicate with her.  It's all kinds of disturbing (the cel-phone bit early on got me pretty good).

Then she discovers pictures, pictures of women who look kinda-sorta like her, and strange designs in his book of architectural drafts of the house, and some books on the occult.  These threads start connecting back to her own history of having survived an accident, though being technically dead for a few minutes.

That's a lot of little details, some of them seeming quite disparate.  Is this a ghost story, or is it a past trauma returning story, or is it a discovering secrets of someone you love story?  Yes, the answer is yes to all of these, and it is quite intriguing, if sometimes hard to marry these all together (though the film believes it does this in a pretty pat fashion). Standing on their own there's three very different, very good stories to tell here.  Brought altogether, it's still good but, yeah, a lot.

One of the best elements of the film is the set design which, when viewed from certain angles, elements form the shape of a human body, and then the shape moves.  It's creepy as hell, but kind of underutilized, and very fleeting.

I've given a lot of the dots that are placed down in this film, but not all of them, and how they all connect together to form the whole picture may be just a little too much, but it's certainly not uninteresting.  Hall is really good, having to hold so much of the film to herself.  There's one point in the film that goes a little too far in its paranormal activity and what Hall is asked to do looks pretty goofy (the poster attached kind of spoils what I'm talking about).  It's supposed to be a powerful scene for her but, oof, it just doesn't translate (and the fact that they use it on the poster is kind of a double oof).  That short sequence alone drops the whole film down a whole notch.

Back to the idea of "elevating" horror, director Bruckner dances around really going full horror in the third act, and tries instead to settle in with the emotional impact all these revelations have on Hall.  But it would have been a much bigger standout had it leaned even more into the moving shapes and the paranormal, punching home these elements built up over the film.  It's a solid, solid watch but if it wasn't so concerned about "elevating" itself, it could have really been something special.

But, but, but...is it horror?
Yes, it most definitely is. But it should be even more so.

31 Days of Halloween: The Taking of Deborah Logan

2014, Adam Robitel (Escape Room) -- download

Found footage. Its now a standard horror trope, or more accurately, its now a very tired standard trope in horror movies. If your movie doesn't have a gimmick, you can always fall back on the FF. But we seem to like them. But even so, I still prefer the actual "found" footage, as opposed to just doing the fake documentary style, ala What We Do In the Shadows. At one point, I even said of this movie, "Found footage implies everyone died and they find the camera...."

Mia, Gavin and Luis are shooting a documentary on Alzheimer's Disease, and the subject of their film will be Deborah Logan (Jill Larson, All My Children). He daughter Sarah (Anne Ramsay, Mad About You) has arranged for it to happen, mainly for the promised money, and probably for a bit of human contact since she and her mom live alone, without anymore help in a somewhat isolated area. Deborah is a "proper old lady" and considering the aspects of her disease, she can be incredibly demanding of things being exactly as they should be. The idea of a documentary crew living in their house with them, filming for weeks as the disease progresses seems like a horror story of awkward encounters unto itself.

But of course, because of the sub-genre, things start being weird when the cameras capture not just strange behaviour, but downright eerie. The first thing they see is Deborah going from the kitchen floor to standing on the cabinets in a single "frame" -- she does not climb or use a chair, she just appears. Gavin the sound guy is creeped out.

The house they live in is large, old and mostly shut down. Rooms sit unused and there are many many storage spaces, eventually inspiring Luis's, "How many attics does this place have?!?" It made me wonder if this movie had some influence on the more recent dementia-as-supernatural-horror movie Relic. But in this one, the house is just eerie, not supernaturally influenced.

In one such attic sits the abandoned ancient phone switchboard system that mom used to run a business with. During one incredibly spooky encounter with the plot, they hear mom talking in an otherworldly voice, in French. Mom doesn't speak French. That leads to some research into her clients, where they learn of Evil Dr. Desjardins (pronounced day-har-deen for some confoundingly probably American reason) who had been caught performing weird rituals.

Eventually the movie ends up not being about what is captured on camera, but has to stick to the gimmick and they just chase Deborah and Sarah around with their cameras, even when she is hospitalized. Yeah, I am not sure any hospital would allow them to shoot inside, let alone mount ceiling cameras.

There is one cute scene where Gavin does the atypical horror movie reaction, and just packs up and leaves. He doesn't know what is going on, nor does he cares. He's just getting fuck out of Dodge.

There are some pretty decent scares, and while the whole supernatural "explanation" is muddy at best (but not as muddy as Relic was) it does provide some pretty fucking weird shit centered around snake focused rituals. I am sure unhinging your jaw like that must have hurt like a summabitch.

I hate when movies do things, solely for the sake of the gimmick, but have no point in being in the movie. The aforementioned hop-up-on-the-cabinets scene has no purpose. Sure, Evil Dr Bad French had possessed mom, but is he just fucking with the camera crew, or does standing on kitchen fixtures serve some purpose in his ancient rituals? 

But "not bad" is the mantra we say at the end of these movies, as we got a few scares out of it, and at least the acting from mom was pretty on point.

New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 3 - The Blackcoat's Daughter

 3
The Blackcoat's Daugher
2015, d. Osgood Perkins - amazonprime

The Story:

Kat and Rose are at a catholic boarding school together.  When their parents don't pick them up for the break in February, they're stuck together.  Kat has weird visions.  Rose thinks she might be pregnant. 

Meanwhile outside of town, Joan needs a ride and gets picked up by James Remar and his wife. Turns out their daughter died a few years earlier.  They're traumatized, but are they dangerous?  And what's the connection?

Why This?
Because The VVitch was unavailable, and I have these two kind of paired in my mind for some reason.

The Good:
It's effectively moody and atmospheric.  The leads (Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, Emma Roberts) are all really good.  Shot outside Ottawa?

Not so good:
This movie...it's not so good. This film starts to think itself clever, but it's not hard to catch onto the oh so obvious clues that Shipka and Roberts are (somehow) playing the same character in two different time periods.

The demonic possession doesn't seem well thought out, and I guess in general since I don't believe in that stuff I find it hard to invest in possession stories. 

It also takes almost an hour for the possession to really manifest itself. I liked the moodiness to that point but it just falls off the fucking wagon for the last 40 minutes.

This movie annoyed me.

James Remar, seriously starting to think this guy's not such a good actor.

The Bad Thing:
Some demon of some sort.  It's not specific and has no personality.  And are we to believe that Kat, years later, is trying to get the demon back in her? Or that it never left?  I dunno.  Don't really care either.

Franchise Potential?
Nope.  At least I hope not.

Did I Like Watching This?
To a point I was into it, but when I started to connect the threads, based off the too obvious clues it was dropping, I started getting very very annoyed. In the end, no, I really disliked this movie for it's attempt to be clever and manipulative (I would have been annoyed whether they succeeded or failed in their manipulation).

[Toasty's take - we disagree]

31 Days of Halloween: Some More TV...

We binged through The Haunting of Bly Manor, enjoying every moment of it, reminding me once again why I love Mike Flanagan. He is a man constantly re-working his craft, learning and expanding on what he is doing, not repeating but fine tuning. Like an artist who paints the same subject matter again and again, exploring more themes and techniques through familiar imagery, Flanagan delights me by re-visiting the same fear and sorrow and tragedy he does in many of his horror movies. Unlike Shyamalan, who failed (in audiences' viewpoint) when he didn't provide a satisfactory twist, Flanagan has a style of story telling that I gravitate towards.

So, we know well that Bly Manor is haunted, but we do not know exactly how much it is so thoroughly full of ghosts. Of course, like the first series, each and every ghost has its reasons for being there, but there is an anchor, a tie that binds them to the house. And that tie is the true heart of the horror in this show.

As the story moves on, we become very attached to the "living" characters. Gentle Owen, whose mother is dying with dementia. Distracted, but attentive housekeeper Hannah Grose. Sensitive Flora and Miles, who are more aware and more connected to the ghosts than anyone. And Jamie, who prefers plants to people, but Dani has caught her eye, if she can only get past Dani's personal tragedy. We even get to understand some of the ghosts, and despite their terrible terrible intentions, we at least understand them, if not sympathize. And Dani, of course, the central focus (as Nell was before her), who seems destined to doom. Or at least tragedy.

There is much world building here, as Flanagan likes pseudo-explanations for his supernatural. We spent much of the time putting together the puzzle pieces, bemoaning the things we anticipated and then being torn once they came to fulfillment. By the end I was very satisfied, and very sad. I don't binge often, but this was worth it.

And then there was some catchup on Lovecraft Country (which should be in a What I Have Been Watching post on its own) which is reworking the book in some surprising and even more enthralling ways. If the book was supposed to tell the tales of black folk in the 50s mixed up in the evil magics of white folk from the 50s, then the show is about how the main characters, and the culture they come from, has gained so much strength and power from their histories & stories (that the book barely touched on), that not even Cthulhu-ian monsters and evil magics can stop them from protecting those they love. 

If The Watchmen took some historical events that few white folk know about, and used them to educate, this show is making many an episode a time for education and reminders. And the thematic music pieces, poetry readings and almost monologuing historical recordings, speeches and such, makes me wonder if there is an Annotations webpage out there, that can further elucidate to the less than aware of us.

I also love how the show is expanding on the mythology of what is happening, adding more monsters, more magic and letting the ideas spread their wings. Some fly, some falter, but everything is fascinating. I hope, that they don't sputter and fall, as I found the book had.

Finally, we started watching Helstrom, a show that I cannot honestly understand how they pitched. But maybe its because I am not aware of more recent renditions of Marvel's Son of Satan. Yes, Marvel did a comic based around a man born of Satan himself, a demi-being with demonic powers, but a mortal's moral compass. And a superhero aesthetic. Did later Marvel stories go down the expected horror aspect of this background? Maybe, but I came into this green.

At the outset, this reminds me of the two shows from last year, Evil and Prodigal Son, which both failed soon our of the gate, for me. Damon Helstrom, the titular son of Satan, and his sister Ana are the children of a serial killer. And the children of a mother, possessed and long institutionalized. Damon plays pseudo-exorcist but cares little for the trappings of the Church, as he just has powers. Ana also has powers but seems to be using them for her own gain, monetarily, as well as punishment of evil men. The siblings do not get along.

But then something connected to the demon inside their mother escapes, or is released or... these shows like their mysteries, where people hide important details from each other, when just having a good sit down would help everyone. I don't care if you have epic level family drama, when there is Evil (capital E) involved, set it aside and just talk.

I rather liked the first few eps we have watched, and have not bothered caring whether they are going to connect to some expanded Marvel alternate universe. This could be a fun show unless it gets far too wrapped up in the stretching-out-the-mystery until the last episode bullshit most supernatural shows do. We shall see. It was released in a one full season on Hulu, so we have an opportunity to watch as the time goes by.

31 Days of Halloween: Luz

 2018, Tilman Singer (The Events at Mr. Yamamoto's Alpine Residence) -- download

Season of the WTF continues with this German flick that is pretty apparent it was the director's film school thesis as it is equal parts pretentious as Hell, and amateurish, but not always in a bad way. Of course, critics somewhat liked it, perhaps seeing more of his future potential or the sincerity the movie is done with, rather than its lack of polish.

Luz walks into a ... place. We are supposed to believe it is a police station, but there is nothing official about it, from the almost mute inattentive man at reception to the total lack of activity to the interview room that looks more like a school viewing room than something in a police station. But Luz walks in, confesses to something, and has to have a psychiatrist brought in to assist.

Said psychiatrist is sitting in a grotty little bar, with only one other patron, a randy disheveled woman who buys him drinks (what were they? cloudy drink has sugar added, is added to blue drink and POOF its now pink) and tells him a tale of a disturbed experience in a Chillean boarding school involving abusive priests and possible demonic possession. And then she drags him into the bathroom stall to ... possess him and leave behind the damaged body of the woman.

Later, in the interview auditorium, there is a novel act played out, given the movie's lack of budget, where the psychiatrist hypnotizes Luz, and sets up a play-taxi cab for her to sit in. Under his spell, she tells her tale of having picked up the woman from the bar, in her cab, and the two recognize each other from Chile, from the boarding school they attended.

Ahh, so the demon is following Luz for some reason, some connection from the past, some eerie thing that keeps the bond across years and distance. But what is it?

Should we expect explanation? Maybe. What we get instead is art house mania, that at times felt more like horror movie via grainy film and interpretive dance. There is requisite gore, and scary scenes, but in a movie that is just over an hour, there is no real story. I could see potential in what Singer may be trying to do, but really, I never bought into it. It was weird for weird's sake, that could have communicated more, but didn't really want to.

31 Days of Halloween: The Boy

 2016, William Brent Bell (Wer) -- Netflix

We rather enjoyed Wer, his (duh) werewolf movie, but I am rather partial to the hairy beast inside us all. But re-reading my post about another of his horror movies, The Devil Inside (insert guitar riff from INXS), I see he is just not that good at making his movies make sense. And this one followed suit.

So, a young American woman is invited to a remote house in the English countryside (outside Vancouver, actually) with nothing nearby, no cell reception. She's escaping a bad relationship, so running away to the UK to play nanny makes total sense. But seriously, it's Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead) who is British, so just fucking make her British. This time the purple suited Producers have been replaced by shiny suited Chinese Backers, who state, "But everyone only knows her with an American accent, so make her American." Fuck you Chinese Backers. But fine, whatever, English countryside, fancy house, weird rich people, nanny to a young.... doll? Yeah, weird rich people have a porcelain doll of their dead son, that they pretend is real, and have VERY explicit rules on how he is to be taken care of. OK, maybe a good reason to make her American, as it makes it more difficult for her to say, "Fuck dis crazy ass shit!" and leave.

Crazy rich couple are going away on a vacation, and leaving Lauren in charge. Almost immediately she begins experiencing the weird stuff we know she is going to experience, with childish laughter, things moving around, strange shadows. And instead of running screaming into the night, she once again reviews the rules and ... goes along with them. W... T... F... Why? Sure, accepting there might be a ghost possessing a doll is one thing, but then thinking, "Well, now that I know the real deal, might as well just give in," is another. Add to that a bunch of fake jump scares, and I was just bored/annoyed. I like jump scares that actually make me nervous for the person involved, fake jump scares (it was all a dream !!!) just pisses me off.

And then... Le Twist !!  Quit reading if you give a fuck.

We have been learning a bit more about weird little boy now doll Brahms. He was E(eeeee)vil, having probably bashed a playmate's head in before himself dying in a fire. His parents are afraid of him. So they went on vacation, and drowned themselves, leaving Lauren to take care of the brat. BUT Brahms never died in a fire, he in fact never died at all. There is no haunted doll, its all just fucking terrible misdirection, so we can be introduced to the real kid that haunts the house, a Jason/Michael style psychopath who Lives in the Walls. Oh, FFS. Lauren discovers this, when her abusive ex-BF shows up (in the UK ! from the US !) and tries to convince her (aka demand) to come home with him. He breaks said Porcelain Doll and incurs the wrath of the grown up psycho who Lives in the Walls. Stabby stabby, run run, escape by a narrow thread and .... insert sequel.

Bleah. Not meh, just fucking bleah.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: 2020 Edition: Pt A

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty(¡) attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But every time I try not to write, bad things happen, very bad things. Somewhere. To someone.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my character

The Dropped

Being someone who watches far too much TV, and there being far too much TV for me to consume, I sometimes drop a show that doesn't keep my attention. Its not that I find it terrible, it just doesn't keep me there. Really really bad is rarely the reason I stop watching, in fact, often a reason I just keep on watching.

Evil, 2019, CBS

David is a Man of God, not quite a priest, not quite an exorcist, but employed by the Vatican to deal with cases of miracle, or anti-miracle (possession) for that matter. Kristen is a forensic psychologist hired by the state as an expert witness. After being drawn together during one of her cases, where the criminal acts as if possessed, she ends up working with David and his team. And together, the fight crime.

The crux of a show like Evil is to supposed to be about exploring which is worse -- the evil that men do, or the evil that men are influenced to do, by otherworldly entities. Y'know, the oldest excuse in the book -- the Devil Made Me Do It. It would be so much easier if we could attach all the atrocities in the world to something other than the nature of mankind. Man kind. The show wants to have utterly objective Kristen fall prey to questioning, to doubt and to come to an understanding there is more than her science. It wants David, with his faith in the Evil his Foe is capable of, to be subjected to how much worse the (more than?) average person can be.

There are some very sweetly evil things about this show, such as Michael Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest) as Dr. Townsend, someone we know right away is A Devil, but who performs all his greatest evils through very earthly acts. Emerson is vile, scathingly so, slick and very serpentine. When I stopped watching, he had just seduced Kristen's mother, making the woman believe Kristen's fear of the man was a daughter thing. Kristen also has her very own Incubus, a demon that invades her dreams, but whose impact carries over into the real world. This is possibly the creepiest aspect of the show, and they really need to draw more upon this aspect and spread it around the rest of the show.

The problem I found was that the show just wasn't sure what direction it wanted to go. The tonal shifts were wrought with a lack of dedication. And I am just not sure whether the characters truly felt committed to their beliefs, which is likely intentional, but comes off as a lack of clarity in the underlining story.

Prodigal Son, 2019, Fox

Malcom is a profiler for the NYPD, a quirky, eccentric man like all profilers are. He's a mild shade of Will Graham (Red Dragon) with one distinct aspect -- he is the son of a notorious serial killer called The Surgeon (Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon; note: how the heck did they get him for mid-grade TV ?!?!). His dad has been locked up since he is a child, and Malcom refuses to interact with him, until he is faced with profiling a copy-cat serial killer.

Once the door is opened to Malcom working with his dad, the door never shuts. The Surgeon, who lives quite the luxurious lifestyle behind bars, feels a need to reconnect with his distraught family. It plays out as manipulative. Malcom is angry, confrontational and fragile. I got the idea they might try and flip the circumstances on us, with Malcom eventually ending up as the serial killer and The Surgeon assisting the police, but alas the show didn't seem that well thought out. It might be worth binging on Netflix, when it eventually ends up there, but not worth the effort of weekly DLing/watching.

Daybreak, 2019, Netflix

Post-Apocalyptic, Zombie drama comedy based on a graphic novel sounds right down my alley. It was diminished somewhat by the focus on teenagers, as in adults all went zombified and all that remains are the various cliques of kids, but I gave it a shot. It was actually better than I thought it would be, having a bit of heart, but only just a tiny bit. So, eventually it was just supplanted by the next shiny, likely more murderous thing -- I am currently on another Murder Show binge.

Josh was the New Kid in a Glendale, California school when the zombie plague hit. He was the nice kid, the Canadian kid, in love with the school dear, Sam, a British girl whom everyone loved. When we start off, Josh is holed up in  his well protected house, stocked full of survival goods, expositioning us everything we need to know, Zombieland style. We learn what we need about the zombies, about the survivors and about how all the high school cliques (jocks, goths, nerds, etc.) have become the survivor factions that control his area of Glendale. Sam is missing and Josh just needs to find her.

This is a bright and sunny apocalypse. Sure, all the adults are dead and/or flesh eating zombies, and sure the clique that once controlled how they went to high school now controls all of their world, but there is plenty of food to be found and chance to recreate themselves. There must have been plenty of prozac in the water, cuz nobody seems all that bent out of shape by the end of the world. Once the first few episodes went past the world building, introducing the gay kid (pacifist samurai), the little kid (genius pyromaniac), psycho kid(s), etc. it held little depth to keep me coming back. And it got cancelled so I doubt it will go far, as too many of these shows save too much for the later yet unknown seasons.

The I-Land, 2019, Netflix

The trailer for the show mocks the Fyre Festival debacle, but doesn't tell you much more. Luckily, Netflix does trailer-independent previews when you mouse-over, which revealed a Lost rip off with a bunch of pretty people waking up on a tropical island, not sure who they are nor how they got there. Insert instant conflict. Insert lazy channel-flicking fodder, or at least the new digital version of it, as Kent referenced. What the Hell, let's see what it's about. Its likely to have A Twist.

Episode Three revealed this somewhat expected twist, but not before pitting all these pretty, amnesiac people against each other. Yep, almost instantly they reacted to each other like it was an episode of the other popular island TV show, Survivor, which I assume is intentional but just ended up being batshit. It was supposed to be subtly hinting at he underlying people sans memories, but it came off as these people people being stupid and antagonistic. For example, in Episode Two, one of the characters discovers what looks like an abandoned hotel or apartment complex -- instant shelter and likely some mouldy supplies. Instead, one alpha character yells about having just finished building a beach side camp for them, so they never go to the buildings.

Episode Three's twist, that they are all inside a chemically induced virtual reality, that they are all convicts participating (against their will) in an experiment, to prove that without the life baggage, they can be Good People (bzzzzzt), proves to be even more inane. After the reveal and the stupidity around it, I was out. Maybe some rainy, channel flicking day will bring me back.

V Wars, 2019, Netflix

After a couple of successes, Netflix must just be looking for the next graphic novel adaptation they can fund or just snatch up. As highlighted above, many are likely to be terrible. But the comic landscape is vast and genre-plenty, so there is lots to try out. We may be post-vampire, but there are still a couple of years to milk it before all the vamp fans fade out.

Dr. Luther Swann (Ian Somerhalder, The Vampire Diaries) is an epidemiologist who is asked to fly north quickly, to find out why some of his counterparts at an Arctic research site have gone silent. Sounds odd, but its entirely a plot of convenience. They need to get Swann to the site of where everything begins; the show doesn't care about the logic of that. So Swann, and his best buddy the pilot, fly off to find the base abandoned, signs of violence and a weird, black ash/mold/motes floating in the air. Be worried? Weirded out? Yes. Protect yourself? Bzzzzzt. But eventually they clue in and admit what they have exposed themselves to.

Back in civilization, they are quarantined. Pilot Buddy shows signs of suffering from some unknown disease, while Swann is just fine. They are released, as nothing shows up to have caused their discomfort.

And then the killing begins. Way Up North, the site dug into old ice and uncovered frozen prions. Both men are infected, but Swann is immune. Meanwhile Pilot Buddy turns into a vampire, which is slowly revealed over the first few episodes. The best friends become enemies when Swann won't help cover up his buddy's blood hungry murders. Things get worse when Swann transmits it to his wife, after some recovery sex, and has to kill her to protect his son. Thus the vampire plague is released.

I stopped watching before I knew the exact path this show was to take, but I assumed it was going to spread as quick as a cold virus, eventually separating the new vampire species from the cattle. Thus, the Wars of V Wars. It was so very very Canadian, and not in the fun, self-aware state of so many shows I watch. It was overly serious, not well thought out, conspiracy trope filled and definitely C-grade. Not being of any higher quality, The Strain, the Guillermo del Toro penned (with a co-writer) series from a few years ago at least had a more compelling plot. This did not. Again, it might end up being a rainy day or flu day (Corona? Vampire?) binge watch.

The Feed, 2019, Amazon

This is the only British show in the mix, and the only truly scifi show. It is set the Near Future when the Google/Facebook/Twitter analog technology The Feed is everything. This is your Black Mirror level creepy technology that is implanted in your brain at birth giving you constant, instant access to the social media tool, communication and even being able to augment reality by replacing what you see with what they/you want to see. Sounds scary/grand until a conspiracy begins to grow, one the points to someone being to control the Feed and anyone connected to it.

The show centres around the Hatfield family (I really hope the McCoys show up) who invented the tech and are the Bezos/Gates analog family. They are at the point where the technology is starting to become more than just social media, where it is beginning to play a part in world politics, so of course it has its protestors. Something seedy is going on, and Daddy Hatfield (David Thewlis, Kingdom of Heaven) seems to know what, and its affecting his family, but he won't let them in on what he really knows. But Tom, the son who really didn't want to have anything to do with the family, gets directly wrapped up in it when his wife shows signs of being manipulated through The Feed.

The problem with shows like this, whether American or British, is that they like to dribble out the actual story while piling on the fictional technology. But, being TV, they only have so much budget so they can really only show you so much, which ends up with us being stuck with lots of lots of filler scenes. Unless you get a stellar cast, great directing or at the very least, a very atmospheric style it gets boring real quick. This one was definitely Black Mirror-lite and I tired of it.

***

And that was just the shows I dropped throughout 2019. Imagine what I can get bored with as this year proceeds !