So, to roughly recap the first one, which I should have mentally done before clicking Start on this one, but waitress Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving, Azrael) married into the old money Le Domas family. On their wedding day the whole family gathers at the gothic mansion to observe an old family ritual -- pull a card from a puzzle box, which denotes a traditional game. Unfortunately Grace pulls "Hide & Seek" which says the rest of the family has to hunt her down; hide until dawn, or die. Grace gets quickly fed up and dispatches everyone who comes up against her, and survives until dawn, only to witness the remaining family explode to gorey goo, subjected to failing to abide by the curse.
This movie picks up on the doorstep of the mansion, the morning after, Grace covered in blood, her wedding dress and yellow hightops soaked with blood and gore. She passes out and wakes up in a hospital; handcuffed to the bed. Its not like murdering a bunch of people (in defense, of course) and burning down their house would go unnoticed. She is to be questioned by the cops, but is interrupted by the arrival of her "emergency contact", her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton, Freaky). The sisters do not like each other, Grace having walked out on her younger sister when she was 18, seeking to create a better life, before inviting Faith back into it.
Interesting. It was hard not to compare the similarities between "Ready Or Not" and the Zazie Beetz flick "They Will Kill You" but this sequel sets it up to even more similarities.
Meanwhile a bunch of other Old Money Families are receiving phone calls from a lawyer mentioning that the Le Domases have died and a new seat has opened up at the table. Its like the John Wick world but with devil worship instead of assassination. While Grace and Faith argue it out over their family drama, one of the potentials, Bill Wilkinson (Kevin Durand, The Strain), shows up at the hospital with all his best knives, seeking to take out Grace before she can take the seat. But that's against the rules; just as he's about to kill Grace, he explodes into gooey bloody bits -- the Devil, or Mr. Le Bail (Belial? get it?) as the movies call him, has a standard gimmick. Immediately after, the Lawyer (Elijah Wood, The Monkey) appears wearing a gas mask, immobilizes Grace and Faith and takes them away.
Faith has been mixed up in Grace's (new) family drama even before she can get a read on what the fuck is going on. They awaken to Exposition Time, where the Lawyer explains that any of the families' chosen hunters who kills Grace, gets the ring, which provides ultimate power. The two girls run out into the golf course and the Game is Afoot.
Each of the hunters has their own gimmick: the twins have a flintlock pistol and a weird fisted warhammer. Viraj Rajan (Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Brilliant Minds) wears a mask and swings an east Indian sword. El Caido (Nestor Carbonell, Bates Motel) uses a sniper rifle, badly. Wan Cheng Xing (Olivia Cheng, Warrior) has her own sword. And each of their attending family members hang out in the green room watching the show unfold. If there family member dies, they can either forfeit the chance, or sign up (in blood) to take the hunter's place. If any of them kill each other then they explode in gore, along with any surviving family members.
Creative fights, violent deaths, betrayals and subterfuge, and quips galore, eventually leads to Grace making a bargain with Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy, Fear the Walking Dead), to marry him -- he gets the ring, no death required. Except Grace turns the table on that, essentially dooming every single fucking one of the cult, family members and supporting staff all, much to the amusement of The Lawyer. Grace and Faith get to walk out into the sunrise with the cult gone and ... well, the cops are still probably gonna hunt her down.
I still find it weird that we can consider Satanic Activity, murder, mayhem and exploding people as "fun" but there we are -- Horror Adjacent. There's not a lot deep going on here, but some light commentary on Good vs Evil being useless constructs when it comes to running the world. We also get some fun cameos (David Cronenburg as the Danforth patriarch, and that short gooey scene with Durand) and all the Canadian supporting actors you can shove into a movie; and Michelle Gellar as Ursula Danforth.
KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. I've got the week off, so I've been doing more of what I like to do... consume! I am but a product of our capitalistic society.
This Week: The Brutalist - 2024, d. Brady Corbet - in theatre My Old Ass - 2024, d. Megan Park - amazonprime Longlegs - 2024, d. Osgood Perkins - amazonprime
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The Brutalist had, without a doubt, the most striking trailer of 2024. It's striking imagery, bold score and alluring typeface had a visceral impact on me as an audience member. Oh it was absolutely unclear to me, at all, what this movie was about, I just new it was something I must see. Leaving nothing about Gladiator II made even close to the impression that The Brutalist trailer did before it.
Learning of its 3 hour and 35 minute runtime did not deter me (much...but any reservations I had abated once I noticed at the theatre earlier in the week that there was a sign posting about an intermission...bless the intermission!), and having no other agenda I set aside the better part of an afternoon to the film.
There's something exciting about this process of discovery. Information is so readily at hand, our age of social media, podcasts, and other online discourse, it can be so simple to find out everything about an experience without ever having the experience, just as it can also be hard to avoid information at time. I knew The Brutalist was making top 10 lists (but not universally), but I still managed to avoid descriptions and even knowing what the film was about. I didn't even watch the trailer again, because I just wanted to experience it...thinking it would be an experience. At 215 minutes, one expects to be taken on a journey.
So, even knowing nothing about the film's story, I had expectations of what the film would be, and I have to say, dear reader, those expectations were not met. The Brutalist is an accomplished film, of which there's no doubt, and those key elements from the trailer (Daniel Blumberg's incredible score, the utterly unique credits, the myriad of gorgeous tracking shots) were indeed present in the film, and kept me present in the film. Alongside stylistic details such as old film reel inserts (whether it's inforeels on Pennsylvania where the film is primarily set, or even the curiosity of vintage celluloid pornography) Lol Crawley's cinematography contributes to the exceptional style of the film that engaged me at times when the story seemed to lull.
I don't mean to say that the story is, in any way, badly executed or performed. I don't recall the last time I've seen Adrien Brody (Golden Globe winner for this role, for whatever that's worth) so invested in a role. He plays László Tóth, a Jewish Hungarian architect displaced by World War II, separated from his wife as they were filtered to different concentration camps, whom he's not even sure is alive when we first meet him upon his arrival in New York in 1947. It is a Jewish immigrant story, and broad strokes of assimilating in the polite hostility and microagressions of American culture, and the overwhelm of a society already in the thrall of capitalism are definitely felt. But László's story seems highly individualistic, that of someone who is already accomplished in his field given the opportunity to return to his chosen profession by an appreciative benefactor and struggling to complete his vision without compromise.
The first hundred minutes are very effective in establishing László's character, who he is as a person. He feels deep love and connection to his family, coming to America to work with his cousin at his Philadelphia-base furniture shop, but he doesn't feel the same need or desire to assimilate that his cousin does. László's experiences have only solidified his identity in a world cruelly intolerant towards it. He had an incident where his face was bashed in and to deal with the pain, he was given heroin on the transport overseas. He's now addicted. And he is recognized as a womanizer, at least by his cousin, and the way Corbet frames every meaningful female character on screen from László's point of view (from his cousin's American wife to his benefactor's 20-year-old daughter), center screen, gives the impression of attraction and danger.
The film makes plain these weaknesses, alongside his pride and ego, and decades of similar stories have them feeling like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. We're so familiar with the dramatic conflict between womanizing artist and their spouses, we've seen the story of the creator who loses everything to drugs, we've seen the story of the visionary whose ego inhibits their success. Every moment one of László's weaknesses presents itself, I would groan, just a little. I was predicting how it would contribute to László's inevitable failure. As someone who is constantly getting in his own way, I have little patience for stories of people whose character flaws impede their success. Ironic, I know.
So it is much to Corbet's credit that his story never does explode these bombs that are set. I'm much more impressed with it in hindsight than I was in the moment. I can't say, without a rewatch, whether these act as effective character colour, or if it's just Corbet subverting tropes (I go back to his framing of women in the first act as objects of desire, to the impression that it's definitely the latter). But the setup of the pride/drugs/womanizing take up such space when Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, Rogue One) and his niece join him in the second half of the film (following the intermission) and she is forgiving of his past infidelity, and turns the moment of her forgiveness into a surprisingly sensual and intimate scene.
Erzsébet is a charming, cultured character who surprises everyone, including the audience. She is a gentle force to be reckoned with, to be sure. She's a devoted wife who adores her husband (as he adores her) but she's also got her own life, ambitions, and issues outside of László's concerns. She is rich enough to support her own story.
The thrust of the film, what most of it is centered around, is the build that László is leading for the Van Burens. His benefactor, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pierce, Lockout) takes a deep liking to László despite their first contentious encounter, and the community center he wants László to build is in part a memorial to his mother but also a means of (quite literally) cementing his presence in this rural Pennsylvanian community. It constantly seems a folly. László is at odds with seemingly everyone except Harrison about the build. The barrage of microagressions he receives from the foreman Harrison hires, Harrison's son who is managing the project's finances, the local townsfolk wary of this non-Christian foreigner all threaten his work. It is clear, from both László and Erzsébet's perspective of the project that there will be no compromise of his vision, even if it means he doesn't get paid.
For me, the film's most impactful moment was Harrison and László's trip to the marble quarry in Carrara, Italy. László had a pre-war relationship with one of the miners whom they meet up with and he takes them up the mountainside to show them the marbles. I have never seen a marble quarry before, and, looking at it from a macro scale, I was at once one is taken aback by the marrying of the terrain, but what is exposed underneath and the erratic design of the carving is visually fascinating. Up in the mines themselves, there are corridors of marble, that László's friend explains, they miners used to resist (and literally crush) Mussolini's forces. There's the blood of resistance and freedom on those stones (it marries with László's artistic vision for his project nicely).
An incident between Harrison and László on that trip to Italy wrecks László, and the sequences following the trip are the most difficult to process, as they end the story of our main characters with unexpected uncertainty, and the epilogue then jumps two decades into the future. The epilogue is a complete shift in tone stylistically that doesn't fit at all with what came before. It feels much like the end of a long-running TV show that jumps to the future to give you a sense of where things end up, only here, it doesn't feel like we've gotten a resolution to the story at hand. The epilogue serves up the specific intent and meaning of the build, which László never specifically mentions at any time to any one during the build process. In hindsight it does make events of the earlier film more resonant, but it's a really, truly weird mechanism to convey it.
It's this epilogue that I think left me so cold to the film. It doesn't fit. And as much as I loved the design of the closing credits (although it is to read the stylized font as it scrolls horizontally upwards across the screen in multiple columns), Blumberg's accompanying electro-pop closing track, "Epilogue (Venice)" is just so anachronistic (despite otherwise being right up my alley) that it doesn't close out the film on a note that feels representative of the film. The whole epilogue is just bizarre.
Going back to the trailer, it features such experimental boldness, but feels so assured, I was expecting a similar film that would stimulate, maybe even overstimulate with style. But it's not that. The Brutalist is much more subdued, maintaining a consistent mood throughout that makes it easy enough to lean back into, but didn't give me the capital e "Experience" I was thinking it would be. It's good, not great.
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I've been meaning to catch up on Aubrey Plaza's filmography. There are a half-dozen or so well regarded smaller-budget films (eg. Emily the Criminal, Ingrid Goes West) that Plaza stars in that live on Netflix and Amazon that I keep popping up but I never actually watch. My Old Ass is just the latest of these.
The conceit of My Old Ass is that a young woman, Elliott (Maisy Stella), living on a cranberry farm in the Muskokas of Ontario is getting ready to leave for university, when she encounters her future self during a shroom trip. Even following the encounter, they, through magical realism, continue to maintain long distance contact, as Elliott spends her last summer at home.
The "time travel" conceit threatens to overwhelms story of this film, which is a lightly dramatic but breezy and comforting coming-of-age story of this turning point in Elliott's life, but it can only overwhelm conceptually. It is not the focus of the film.
Future Elliott warns herself to stay away from anyone named Chad (not sure if this was meant as a meta joke, or not, given the place "Chad" takes alongside "Karen" in our current lexicon), but when she inevitably meets Chad, he is sweet, funny, and they seem to click with disarming ease. She knows she should stay away from him, but she cannot help but be drawn to him. This flies in the face of her identity as she's known it, a proud and out lesbian. This reexamining of her sense of self, and sexual fluidity seems like such modern, and necessary, exploration in cinema.
On top of romantic encounters, future Elliott provokes her with the initiative to connect more with her family during the summer, to get to know her younger brothers in a way she's failed to do so as she's explored her independence in her teenage years. She is changing, just as everything is changing around her.
It's an exceptionally sweet, charming, and lightly emotional film. It's wonderfully scripted by Park, and Stella, who cut her teeth on the TV series Nashville, carries this film ably and sublimely, like a Canadian Florence Pugh. She's a talent to watch. Plaza is only featured physically in the early and late stages of the film, but her very specific and well-known on-screen persona acts as a useful shorthand for us to understand Elliott (both now and in the future). She is a welcome presence and despite literally phoning in her role for much of the movie, invests a tremendous amount into the character that we only really see in the emotional closing minutes of the film.
I adored this movie.
[As I was writing this, I learned that Plaza's husband had died by suicide this week. Jeff Baena was a director, three of his films I had seen -- Joshy, The Little Hours and Horse Girl -- and he was still and emerging talent with a large support network, at least creatively. I am saddened by this loss. To my Toronto friends, if you or anyone you know is in need of mental health support, call 211. Other Canadian resources can be found here. ]
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There is definitely a divide in the reaction to Longlegs, at least from what I've seen. Critics have been praising it and planning it, audiences have been reacting much the same, with a plethora of 5* reviews, but even more 1* reviews. One thing for sure is the division has been profitable for the film's distributor, Neon, to the tune of over $125 million at the box office.
I avoided Longlegs when it was in theatres because it was already a zeitgeisty thing, and I tend to recoil when things get too popular. If it's already become a meme, I'm less willing to engage with it. Plus, I knew Longlegs came from The Blackcoat's Daughter director Osgood Perkins, and I hated that film. A friend petitioned me to watch Longlegs as he was curious my reaction to it, and a recent podcast episode of Comedy Bang Bang where Taran Killam played "Longlegs" in a sort of Emo Phillips-esque affectation spurred on my curiosity.
I hated this film.
As I watched it, I wondered if how I was reacting was just my preconceived dislike for Perkins, because visually, this is a striking movie. Perkins' stylizing of flashbacks as, like, super8 film, or his title cards, or throughout his framing in sequences are all so striking, I should be drawn to it. But his stylizing doesn't make up for the faults in his storytelling.
Like The Blackcoat's Daughter, Perkins' story works its way backwards and forwards to a semi-twist ending, but so much of his storytelling is the obvious and frustrating omission of information as to leave the twist to the finale. These both are stories told where it's not so much the protagonist - in this case FBI rookie Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, in a performance which I'm not thrilled with, but is clearly what the director was asking for) - unfurling a mystery, but the story being a mystery to be unfurled for the audience through the storytelling of cinema(!). Oh, there are discoveries for Harker to make in the process, but we as the audience are intentionally having key things withheld from us that Harker already knows (as opposed to the common tension-raising device where we as the audience learn things ahead of the story's protagonist). It doesn't work for me, at all.
On top of that, the film presents Harker has having some low level telepathic or extrasensory ability, and just drops that nugget following a visually appealing but contextually confounding testing sequence, and then doesn't follow up on nor explore it. We're just supposed to accept it. Perkins wants this to be a reality where the paranormal exists, but also wants it to be real-world grounded, and he doesn't marry the two effectively. This feels like it is trying to be Silence of the Lambs married with some early Hollywood Cronenberg psychodrama vibes, but it doesn't come close. It doesn't help that its astoundingly clear Perkins has zero concept of how the FBI (or any investigative agency, for that matter) actually function. The investigation is a bigger fantasy than any of the metaphysical aspects of the film.
Nic Cage plays Longlegs, the serial killer of the film, and does so in heavy falseface makeup that makes him look like Teddy Perkins in that great Atlanta episode. Cage is allowed to do his Cage thing and it is what it is. A lot of the divisiveness in audiences seems to stem from whether this performance is good or terrible. It's neither, it is just Cage and it didn't excite me one way or the other.
The film's ultimate reveal, for me, was simply unsatisfying. I had two or three other scenarios playing in my head as the film was withholding so much, all of which I would have found superior to what resulted, and yet would not have changed my opinion of the film. I just didn't buy into anything this film was selling at any point.
To Oz Perkins: you're an incredible stylist, please let someone else write for you. Until then, you're on my shit list.
But Is It Horror? Maybe to some, but I found it more frustrating than scary. I don't think Perkins ever really settled on whether it was suspense or horror, and that indecision is tangible.
Taking a brain-break from all the watching of Hallmarkies and the writing about Hallmarkies and posting something that didn't make it out of the Drafts. I think I am back on a "write about TV" hiatus, as we finished a number of shows, and I just haven't bothered to post a stub. I could blame this on the season (which despite my enthusiasm for the aforementioned Hallmarkies) I find quite ... mentally draining. Add to that my flu bug which came with major brain fog, and I just wanted to Watch, not Write.
Matthew Scott Kane turns up out of the blue as a showrunner for a series that doesn't need a season two as it does everything it requires in one. I was a shade disappointed that a show about "Satanic Panic" didn't even mention D&D but I understood that it had to focus on one thing (heavy metal music & culture) that the pop culture audience would understand.
What 100. Its 1989 in small town America. Two teens are kidnapped by strange, masked men. One turns up dead, the other finds her way home. Meanwhile a trio of high school friends are trying to figure out how to put their heavy metal garage band on the map, when the Pretty Popular Girl suggests they are part of a Satanic Cult. They decide to run with it and it... well, increases their popularity. Meanwhile the rest of the town spirals out of control over the death of the teen, and the idea that a Satanic Cult has come to their safe little place.
1 Great. Surprisingly, it was the deeper than usual characterization. In a show about heavy metal and 80s Satanism, I was expecting nothing but broad trope strokes for all the characters. Sure, it had more than its fair share of exaggerated characters but it needed them to play their parts. BUT for each of them it went just a bit further. Jordyn Stanwyck, or Jordy, is the goth girl in the band who at the beginning appears to have an unrequited love for main character Dylan. But a the show progresses and Dylan shows himself to be shallow and easily manipulated, her romantic attraction wanes while her friendship & loyalty increases. Dylan's father Gene starts as the usual kind of slow, unflappable father, unwavering faith in his son and family, but as his wife goes further and further down the Panic rabbit hole, you see him unravelling in small but increasing ways. Police Chief Dandridge starts as your typical small town cop, suspicious and authoritarian but as the Satanism comes to Happy Hollow he wants to curb the panic, but also cannot ignore what is happening (or is not happening) right in front of his eyes.
2 Good. That this was a show where I honestly did not know where it was going to go. I mean, technically it went exactly how I thought it would go, but every episode it had be doubting myself. Was it actually supernatural or just hysteria? Is it a double-bluff? The show skillfully left you questioning every scene. Were people actually seeing demons, or were they just suffering from mass-hysteria? What about the unexplained quake? It reminds unexplained. Why do they all see the same demon? I mean, that means there has to be a real demon, right? Why are normally stable, even keeled people going off the deep end? Are they playing at being a cult, or are they somehow actually mixed up in real Satanism? Is the deprogrammer / exorcist actually pulling demons out of people, or is he just a normal evil man torturing children? So many times, I thought it was going to take a turn right, and it screeched the tires and pulled left. Metaphorical directions, not political affiliations.
3 Bad. If anything fell, its that the show was all over the place. Yes, this was intentional, but often it felt like there wasn't really as much focus on the main characters (the metal kids pretending to be a cult) as there should be, and in doing so, it sacrificed more exploration of them as people. I wanted to know them more, sympathize with them more.
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.
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.
Loved it !!
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.
This just showed up on Netflix, which is where I would expect it would eventually show up, assuming its not already on Shudder, where horror movies for horror movie fans should be, and what this is. What does that mean? Well, some movies are made for general appeal, and some are only made for the fans of the genre. Whether its intent or quality or style, you can easily see they won't appeal to anyone outside the genre fans. Well, as generalizations go.
Alexandra Daddario's blue eyes (San Andreas) star as Alexis, one of a trio of heavy metal fans on attending heavy metal concerts, partying with other fans. The radio tells them of the continued spree killings by a Satanic Cult, and since this is a heavy metal movie, we put two and two together pretty quickly. Afterall, this is the 80s when heavy metal and Satanic Panic were at their height, so how are the girls and the killings going to connect?
One such post-show party leads back to Alexis's house where the twist turns the knife. If you didn't see it coming, Alexis and her friends ARE the killers!! (dramatic turn of events music!) Her father, a fiery radio/TV preacher, has orchestrated the whole thing to draw more to his flock, to further fill the mattress with money taken from those seeking protection from Satan(!). If "horror" can be light hearted without being straight comedy, this is the path this one takes. Written by the same guy (Alan Trezza) as Burying the Ex, it doesn't have the same amount of flair, and would have fit well into the era it is set, when you would swing by the video store, grab a handful of B-grade flicks and one New Release, a large bag of chips and a large bottle of pop, to shout and laugh at the screen with your friends.
