31 Days of Halloween: Good Boy

2025, Ben Leonberg (feature debut) -- download

Elevator pitch -- ever catch your dog staring at things in the corner of the room, where there is obviously.... nothing? Or growling at a closed door, maybe to the basement? What if it wasn't ... nothing? So, let's do a movie entirely from the dog's viewpoint -- not always literally from the ground level, but from what the dog is aware of, not what the people are. And add to it a conceit where the humans are truly secondary, often only shot from the shoulders down, to lend weight to perspective from below their knees.

As a shadow grows in the corner of their room, good boy Indy whimpers and crawls into the lap of owner Todd (Shane Jensen, FBI). Todd is coughing up blood, and not long after, checks himself out of the hospital, arguing with his sister Vera (Arielle Friedman, feature debut) on the phone. Things are not good and he is relocating from the city to the abandoned home of their grandfather (Larry Fessenden, We Are Still Here), who lived alone in a rural area, and recently passed away under mysterious circumstances. The house is off the grid, relying on generators.

Whatever shadow Indy saw in Todd's home is also here. Its ever present, a strangeness that is constantly catching Indy's eyes and ears. Todd doesn't notice; only the dog is haunted. And not just by the shadow but also by the grandfather's dog Bandit, a hollow whine from the basement that only Indy hears. Vera said something about their grandfather's dogs always disappearing, in one of the angry dismissive phone calls she has with Todd. He has not come here to recover, to rest, but to escape, and she challenges him on the choice, which only makes him angry.

Whatever haunts this family only wants its men folk, and the good boys who protect them are a nuisance. Todd is frustratingly just not paying attention to Indy's silent warnings, until it is too late. 

Indy, the NS Duck Toler plays his role perfectly. Despite a lack of fear/growling in most interactions with the shadow, he is steadfast in his dedication to Todd. The movie has fun not only depicting something that only the dog perceives, but also playing with shadows and angles and isolation, from a non-human perspective. Of course, we are keen on dogs, so we are biased, but it was quite engaging, if contained.

Reservation Dogs Season 3

 2023, FX - 10 episodes
created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi

It's hard saying goodbye.

The great shows don't just build characters, they build communities. The greatest shows build characters, communities, families, entire realities that exist only within the time and moment of the show.

When you build such a reality for a show, you can do anything, anything at all within that show. You can tell any kind of story, so long as they make sense for the world.

Reservation Dogs started out as a comedy about a quartet of teen shit-asses who were causing trouble on their Oklahoma res. But the humour of the show was always tempered by a bitter pang of reality. Their thieving and scamming was all for making money for a trip out to California as tribute to their friend who committed suicide.  

They had elders who looked down on them, elders who looked the other way, friends they could call on for support, and a parallel quartet who wanted nothing more than to intercept their path at every turn. The cast sprawled out from there.

Nearly every character on the show has had the opportunity to step out of the periphery and into the spotlight, if only for a brief moment, over the three glorious yet all too brief seasons of this show.  That most players have a spotlight moment, or entire episodes, just highlights that this show isn't only about four kids, but an entire ecology, how they support and develop and grow despite the obstacles before (and behind) them. 

The young quartet of actors are our grounding point, though, even as others step forward. It always returns to them. D'Pharoah Woon-A-Tai (Bear), Devery Jacobs (Elora), Paulina Alexis (Willie Jack), and Lane Factor (Cheese), each started out the series as surprisingly strong, unknown performers, and leave the series as veritable forces of charisma that, in a just creative system, would find them each in a star-accelerating vehicle immediately.  The reality is every actor in this show, every member of its vast community (which seemed to incorporate every Native American or Indigenous Canadian of any acting prominence, from Graham Greene to Wes Study to Jana Schmeiding to Zahn McClarnan) is fantastic, and by the end of season 3 it's heartbreaking to say goodbye -- or "go on fucker" -- to this community we've been welcomed into.

The great shows valiantly try to provide closure and send you off feeling like it all had a point. The greatest shows end leaving you full in your heart, knowing you've been part of something special, but unable to avoid the selfish ache of wanting more time in its world.

Season 3 is the show at peak community, its apex of world building. It spends time weaving between generations, seeding  delicately and intentionally a different group of Res Dogs from 50 years ago, honouring the elders, and taking a detour back in time to see them when they were young.  The third episode of the season provides an origin for Deer Lady (Kaniehtiio Horn) rooted in Boarding/Residential School trauma that colonialist culture has barely even started to reckon with.

It's a show that has feasted on magical realism, employing it heavily for comedy (through William Knife-man, played by Dallas Goldtooth) but it's most effectively used in providing insight and promoting character growth.  The magical realism in most other stories is typically quirk or affectation, but here quirk is only a small part of it. It's cultural and spiritual, the meaning behind seeing spirits, the connectivity it brings to one's heritage, as well as connection points within a characters lineage unfolds the storytelling layers.  Bear is our central character who sees spirits, but he's not the only one. When his mom (Sarah Podemski) starts seeing a spirit too, it not only connects her to unresolved grief, and guilt, but brings her closer to her son, even as she decides she's moving away.

Each episode of Reservation Dogs this season stands on its own.  Like Atlanta, it's adopted the format of, effectively, mini-movies that tell a pretty full story in around 30 minutes.  But unlike Atlanta, and even unlike the previous two seasons, this final season connects itself more cohesively thematically, the threads of community and family are strongly woven throughout every episode.  It feels of a whole.

Connection to culture and people is at the heart of each story, even when those connections are painful -- connected to memories or history -- but all part of the fabric of a people who are stronger together.    There have been a few episodes dealing with the death of a member of family and community, and each of those episodes highlights how it's a point not just for mourning the spirit departed, but for connecting with the spirits that remain. That the series ends with the passing of another member of the community is the most appropriate way to show what Reservation Dogs has ultimately been celebrating for 28 beautiful episodes. It provides the community a reason to come together, gives the characters time to have moments with each other, it celebrates their connections with tears and laughter. It's sweet and bitter and brilliant.

It's hard saying goodbye.

31 Days of Halloween: Huesera: The Bone Woman

2022,  Michelle Garza Cervera (feature debut) -- download

Perhaps if I was more connected to religion, motherhood and doubts about sexuality, I guess I would find more to relate to with this movie? But, that said, its not always about relating to a movie or its characters & situations, as long as you connect with the style, and in this case, the horror elements. The problem is that there was very few horror elements involved, and almost the entire movie is focused on the drama of a young woman becoming a mother, and it being the clincher of her doubting all of her life choices. Oh, the horror elements, when present are more than sufficiently creepy, but I found it was all just hand-waved away with no explanation seemingly required.

Valeria (Natalia Solián, Red Shoes) is happily married to Raúl (Alfonso Dosal, 3 Idiots) and are trying to get pregnant. At least they seem happy enough, rolling around on the floor, wrestling and laughing. Then it happens, Valeria gets pregnant. Its like a light goes on, and the doubt is seen on her face. Not long after, while looking out the window on a warm night, she sees a women across the street, get up and jump out the window. When Valeria tries to show her husband the broken body, it is not there.

From there she is haunted by this creaky, crawling apparition with no face and cracking bones. After a few encounters she goes to her "spinster" aunt, who is very obviously a lesbian, and I am not all that familiar with queer culture in Mexico, but it implies a tie to the supernatural as well, and her aunt's friend, a bruja of sorts tells Valeria that indeed she has a spirit attached to her, but she shouldn't worry, it will go away soon. I got the impression that perhaps, in Mexican culture, that doubts and worries can invite in the wrong sort of spirits, sort of like bad thinking can summon unseelie fey folk.

It gets worse. Not really the creepy-crawly bone woman, but more Valeria's disconnect with becoming a mother. Months are passing, she is having constant issues, and even returns to the punk life of her teen years, and reignites a relationship she had with a woman. She makes  passing attempt at babysitting her niece and nephew, but that is a disaster when the bone woman makes an appearance and Val freaks out, hurting the children in turn. Nobody trusts her, not her family, not her husband, not her ex-GF. 

And then she has the baby. She finds no connection whatsoever, not even wanting to look on the child, and in a state of post-partum delusion, she briefly becomes the bone woman herself, and hides the baby in the fridge, to find some peace. She realizes that if she doesn't do something drastic, she will lose everything so she turns to her aunt, and her friends, and a ritual is performed. It apparently drives off the bone woman but it doesn't change how Valeria feels, and the movie ends on her leaving the baby with her husband, as she departs that life.

In saying/writing it out loud, it sounds compelling and dramatic, but in execution, I was not captivated at all. I just found little to no connection with the characters and the situations. While the monsters was creepy, we don't know what or why it exists, and while I was able to forgive that missing element from The Grimcutty, I am not sure why I could not accept it here. And then there was the ritual that drove the spirit away -- the movie jumps suddenly from a tragic drama, to .... art school final project? Naked, writhing women in the forest, a macramé shawl wearing image of Valeria that catches on fire, all kinds of imagery which... just left me mystified. Again, I can only guess it had some meaning in Mexico? But I found none.

A bit of Googling will tell you there is a folk tale from Mexico, about The Bone Woman, attributing to it an old woman who wanders a desert collecting bones. Buuuuut, how does that connect to this movie? How does that connect to motherhood? Still not finding anything....

31 Days of Halloween: Host

 2020. Rob Savage (Strings) -- download

Finally, something that was not only tightly done, well scripted & acted but also EXTREMELY timely, as it all takes place during the 2020 Lockdown, on Zoom. Yes, the horror movie via webcam has been done before, but not with so much of its viewing populace having recently used the platform for pretty much the same reasons the characters in the movie did -- to reconnect with their friends while all stuck at home. But, I wonder how many have actually run a seance...

Haley arranges the seance between her and five friends, and a spiritual leader Seylan. Despite the at hand booze, and a Room full of sceptics, Hayley asks one thing -- take it seriously. We can see there is already some tension between the friends, but that is to be expected amongst a largish crowd of 20sumthins who have been locked indoors for a couple of months by now. The movie, based on the meeting details, is set in July, 2020.

One of the girls mocks the spirits, which according to Seylan is the wrong thing to do. When you lie about the spirits, it can give a gateway to dark things, demonic things that won't follow the rules and only have malevolence in mind. It starts mildly enough; noises and lights, and a sliding chair. But things quickly escalate. This is one fucking violent spirit that tosses the girls about, one by one, smashing them and anyone around them like rag dolls until... the Zoom meeting ends.

I loved how it mixed the technological aspects of the movie into a tight, quickly resolved plot. Free Zoom meetings can only be 40 minutes, and the movie runs just over an hour. Some of the girls are using laptops, some their phones, which changes perspective and interaction. There is no soundtrack, bad camera work (front cams suck) and LOTS of eerie darkness. And then there is that yellow labeled bottle at the centre of the screen that begs to have an eye kept on it. The movie had some very good scares, not an empty ounce of jump scare, using every scary element to its fullest.

While this may be accused of being just another found footage style film, it really does do an effective scary movie while acknowledging its predecessors. That one girl spends much of her time under a blanket seeking protection harkens back to the tent scene in the ff original, Blair Witch Project. And some of those barely scene images of the evil spirit are so obviously inspired by those viral videos that had the horrid face inserted, to scare kids and parents alike, with their false connections. I can see this movie becoming a favourite of teenage girl sleepovers, well once sleepovers are a thing people are allowed to have. Zoom's having a banner year, so it should still be around by then.

31 Days of Halloween 2018: The Lodgers

2017, Brian O'Malley (Let Us Prey) -- Netflix

At what point in recent pop culture did we decide that decrepit, old but still lived in manor houses of the UK were ripe to be haunted? I am assuming, that as the regency era came to a close and fewer of those old moneyed families had the coin to keep the estates in a state of full repair, they became more attuned to the "haunted house" vibe of America's Victorian mansions? Creaking, cracked, moldering and falling down. But something in only more recent memory has had more of them attract spirits and other creatures of the night.

The Lodgers takes us to early 20th century Ireland and the house of the twins Rachel and Edward. Their house shares a state akin to Crimson Peak, with no servants and no funds to keep it repaired. Barely enough to feed the young adults.

Unlike most of these movies, we wade into the sinister quite immediately as Rachel, who has fallen asleep while reading, has to rush home before the last bell of midnight. As she reaches her bedroom door, we see the trapdoor at the base of the staircase bubble up with fetid water. Something wants out of ... the basement ? The next morning the twins sing the nursery rhyme that defines their lives:

"Girl child, boy child, listen well. Be in bed by midnight's bell. Never let a stranger through your door. Never leave each other all alone. Good sister, good brother be, follow well these cautions three. Long as your blood be ours alone, we'll see you ever from below."

Rachel is of an age, past puberty but isolated by her obsessive brother and the supernatural circumstances. The funds are finally running far too low for them to ignore, and Rachel tries to scheme her escape. Her brother won't have any of it, as he knows the true danger. He saw what 'the lodgers' in the water did to their parents. He is afraid of what will happen should they break the pact.

This is a lovely looking, artful movie. Rachel is fey and sultry and her brother is just... pale & creepy. There is an unsettling connection between the two the belies the tie to the watery creatures beneath the house. Rachel wants to run away from it and is helped by a local boy, recently returned from war with his own bonds. But can she escape with no cost? No, no she cannot.

I just wish the sodden weight of the end of the movie had felt heavier. There is no great reveal, not that there needs to be, but we never really felt the menace of these other worldly creatures. What was the pact? What would happen if they just left? There had to be more danger than just death? Alas, we get nothing.