We Agree: The Babadook

2014, d. Jennifer Kent (no relation) - TMN

As David writes at the start of his 31 Days of Horror (you really need a "31 days" tag for that Toasty!) each year "Kent is not that much of a horror fan".  It's true.  I don't hate it but I also don't really enjoy it.  Large parts of "horror" exist only to try and out gross-out the viewer, most other parts of horror exist to jump scare an audience through a series of convoluted or obvious set-ups (like action set-pieces, both of these are the horror set-pieces a film builds itself around).  In both cases story and character are largely dispensed with.  Rudimentary frameworks for gags and boos.  I find most horror off-putting or tedious.  The horror I like most is ones that are mythology heavy, crossing into fantasy/sci-fi conceits with the level of exploration.  The 80's were rife with these, where horror creatures became icons...Michael Meyers, Freddie, Jason, Alien, Gremlins, Ghoulies, C.H.U.D.s, Critters, Leprichauns, Poltergeists, Chucky dolls... too many franchises to count.  Even still most of the big franchises would offer only the smallest amount of mythos-building.  What the average fantasy or sci-fi story would do in one film, you're often lucky to get half that over the run of an entire series of a horror franchise.  So, because I get bored, or put-off, or generally feel unfulfilled by horror, I stay away from it.

There have been some horror movies in the past 20 or so years that I really liked.  Most of them have been very meta in nature, such as Cabin in the Woods or Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.  Even Bride of Chucky which was mid-90's alongside Scream, Wes Craven's New Nightmare or Halloween H20...those are kind of my stand-out horror flicks.  They're the ones that look at the genre and say "well this is stupid, we know it's stupid, we're going to fully acknowledge how stupid it is, and we're going to scare/entertain the pants off you anyway".  I mean, the scares are fairly light in these kinds of meta flick, but they are entertaining.

Every now an then I'd get suckered into watching some "new, great thing" in horror only to find it direly like all the old, tired horror I've seen before.  I assume this is what people who get bored by action movies feel like every time someone tells them how great The Raid or John Wick or the latest Fast and Furious are and how they take things to another level.  The Babadook was my latest suckerpunch.

For starters, it stars the great Essie Davis (star of the wonderful Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries available on Netflix), second it's directed by a woman (with my surname no less) which usually infers a different viewpoint for a genre film (since they're so male-dominated), and third it's Australian, so perhaps the tropes of horror aren't the same Down Under.  Now that the Babadook has become a pop-culture icon (with all that Pennywise/Babadook slash fiction and meme-ery blossoming) , I figured it was time to watch.

And jeebus was I bored.  Davis plays a single mother with a child who, to put it lightly, is a handful.  But he's no more a handful than most kids out there, she's obviously been depressed for a long, long time and as such has been light on discipline with the boy (I don't mean punishment, I mean more in setting boundaries and holding him accountable to them).  As a parent I can attest how hard it is to be mindful of your kid all the time. Even with a dedicated partner in parenting it's still brutally taxing, so as a single mother battling depression it's got to be utterly crushing when your child refuses to easily cooperate.

It probably doesn't help that this mother character reads her child ghoulish tales at bedtime.  I'm not sure why she thinks this is a good idea.  Pulling an unfamiliar book off the shelf, a scratch-line-illustrated, black and white pop-up book called the Babadook, she reads it to the boy and sends him off to his restless, nightmare-filled slumber.  She doesn't sleep well either.  Soon the boy is seeing the Babadook everywhere, and her world starts to fall apart.  Is it the sleep deprivation or the depression, or is there really a mythical entity that's trying to get in?

This is a tedious movie, one which I really struggled to get the message of.  Yes, parenthood, especially single parenthood is hard...doing it while combating depression probably makes it so a hundred fold.  But what is the Babadook supposed to represent?  The personification of you "not being yourself"? The biggest failure of the film is to establish the Babadook's mythology.  The children's book is irritatingly opaque in its story to suggest anything about what its motivations are (it wants to take over people..."Let me in" it screams... or is it "Let me out"?  This movie didn't leave much of an impact). 

I left the Babadook, as I do with most horror, feeling unfulfilled.  Effective horror for me leaves me either entertained or contemplative, or both.  I like a romp of action-horror, or a strong metaphor (still need to do that Get Out review), or a rich mythology to process.  Like David, I found the boy to be more irritating than sympathetic.  Davis does an excellent job appearing beaten down by her depression and lack of sleep and general life situation, but the editing and camera techniques designed to sell it even further are distracting, sometimes looking like cheap television. 

When Davis' character is finally overcome by the Babadook,it doesn't feel right... it's too overt.  The film's riding on subtlety, so that when it finally cracks, and the monster reveals itself, it's too cartoony, too over-the-top.   The resolution is similarly pat in a way that feels like cheating.

I wished I liked it. I wanted to like it, but it just didn't click.

Justice League

With Toasty taking an internet hiatus I better pull up my socks and post with regularity.  He's been keeping this thing floating for a couple years now, suppose it's my turn.  Come back soon David, I'm tired already...
 
2017, d. Zack Snyder (*cough*andJossWhedon*cough*)

Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality

The biggest problem Justice League had facing it was everything that Zack Snyder established before it.  Man of Steel was a big enough problem on its own: Snyder produced a decently interesting film, but his fundamental lack of understanding/dislike of the character made for a terrible Superman movie, one where a beacon of hope and altruism became a dour, glowering, brooding, put-upon Christ-like figure.  For the sequel, rather than tone shifting, Snyder basically doubled down on the brooding otherness of Superman, and pitted this sickeningly gloomy version of the character against a bitter and broken Batman.  If there's a bright spot to the 150+ minute Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice,  it was Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, something even more recognizable when Wonder Woman finally got her own film on the big screen (in fact the only not great part of Wonder Woman was the wholly unnecessary prologue/epilogue that shoehorned it back into the Snyder-verse).

The events of Man of Steel are integral to the plot of Batman V Superman, and likewise the events of Batman V Superman are integral to the plot of Justice League.  But Warner Brothers, following the wild success of Wonder Woman, and the critical lambasting of every other DC Comics-centric film they have made, determined Justice League needed to course correct...and since Justice League had already finished principle photography by that point, it was like making a U-turn on a cliffside highway.  Snyder had a vision for a 3-hour Justice League acting as "Part 1" set-up for an even greater "Part 2" menace.  The 3 hour run time would have given enough time to properly introduce three core members to the cast in Cyborg, Aquaman and Flash (as well as establish their own smaller realities and supporting casts) while also running through the gathering of the team and (blowing yet another possible Superman solo outing) shoehorning in the rebirth of Superman. 

By the time Snyder left the project (due to a personal tragedy) this past summer, he had already expressed that Justice League would be lighter AND that it was no longer going to be a two-parter.  When Warner Bros. brought in Joss Whedon as a replacement to handle the reshoots, everyone became very aware that the Warners were likely undercutting, if not attempting to eschew entirely the Snyder aesthetic.  The film that made it to theatres bears that out.

Justice League is a hot mess.  It's a film that's less cobbled together than stripped down.  Gone is the 3-hour runtime, in place is a rather brisk 1h 50 (plus 10 minutes of credits).  The film opens with the world facing the weight of Superman's death (though what it signifies completely flies in the face of what Snyder established in films previous), it tries to catch us up on Batman, Wonder Woman and Lois Lane some time later, but it's all quite rushed.  There's no time to think about the weight of prior events, something else is happening. 

All the dream sequences and all the foreshadowing of Batman V Superman were not for naught, but almost for naught.  They have no real weight or relevance in this film.  What was supposed to be a tried and true sequel now feels like the cinematic equivalent of a U.S. politician distancing themselves from a campaign aide who was discovered to have ties to Russia.  They would just rather you forget about the past altogether, but it's hard when the past keeps creeping into the film.  Despite only having 4 months to reshoot, edit, score and animate, I'd guess about anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the film is made up of the reshoots, so there's totally a rushed feeling to this at times.  I'm sure if this had been all Whedon's vision it would have been completely distanced affair from Batman V Superman.  Likewise if this had been all Snyder's vision, it would have been much more polished (and utterly laborious).

What Whedon brings to the table is an understanding of comic book superheroes and what makes them fun. Snyder wants them to be capital-i "Important" while Whedon mostly thinks you should enjoy their adventures.  What Whedon also brings to the table is relentless quipping.  Every damn character now has quips edited in as asides (Batman has far too many, and while it humanizes Bruce Wayne, it demystifies Batman), to the point where it's always obvious and often annoying (it was pointed out to me that these were probably extracted from longer scenes in the editing process).  Ezra Miller's Flash is almost all quips, with not much else to his character.  At the same time, I appreciate his enthusiasm.

Whedon also brings us a Superman we actually recognize.  Death was probably the best thing to happen to Snyder's Superman, because he came back a much happier, sunnier, uncannily-vallier person.  Almost every scene of Superman is obviously from the reshoots, as evidenced by the now infamous CGI mustache-mask (Cavill was working on the latest Mission Impossible as the villain when the reshoots call came in, and the MI producers refused to let him shave it, so the producers had to edit it out with not enough time to make it look anywhere close to natural).  But in spite of Superman's creepy upper lip, damn, this is the Superman we've wanted Henry Cavill to be for 6 years now.

In fact all the main Justice Leaguers wind up coming out of this okay.  Everyone's getting the short shrift, here, especially supporting cast, but of the main team there's enough there to like, and even want more of.  The same can't be said for the villain, however.  Steppenwolf might as well just be a sharknado that the Justice League is fighting, he's just a force of nature.  There's no personality, no defining traits, nothing remotely close to drive or real motivation beyond plot necessity, and almost no emotional connection for the characters.  Think of the worst of the Marvel Cinematic Universe villains... he's right in league with them, and probably beneath them. 

It's almost the worst case scenario.  While it would have been awful to have two bloated, Snyder-directed Justice League movies, at the same time at least it would be presented as a whole saga alongside Man of Steel and Batman V Superman.  No matter how bad it was, at least the vision would be fulfilled.  Like, imagine if Guy Ritchie stepped in for Christopher Nolan to complete The Dark Knight Rises... it's a flawed series but the consistency of vision makes up for it.  I don't even like Snyder's vision, and somehow I still kind of wish it were allowed to be completed.  Because otherwise we get this, where Steppenwolf, meant as the set-up for Darkseid, but is now just a generic nobody that closes out half of the damn point of Batman V Superman with such a whimper.

Justice League isn't a film you suffer through -- it's actually somehow kind of fun -- but I've been waiting for a Justice League film for almost 40 years (and others have waited much longer than I), and this is just barely serviceable.  This is a starting point, albeit a highly unfortunate one.  This is the WB recognizing that they were wrong and course correcting.  They messed up Superman, twice, they messed up Green Lantern, they've messed up the Joker, and they damn nearly messed up the Justice League (the box office is so underwhelming that, in reality, they did mess it up).  If it weren't for the resounding success of Wonder Woman (and the fact they have an Aquaman feature already finished shooting), I'd be certain they would plan yet another universe reboot in two years time.  But they're committed now.  They so desperately wanted to play catch up with Marvel that they've done just about everything wrong.  The fact is, even with the Wonder Woman/Justice League course correction, the entire DC Cinematic Universe is situated on an foundation that will always taint it.  No matter how good it might get (and let's be realistic, the odds are kind of against it getting really good), it's going to still have Man of Steel, Batman V Superman, Suicide Squad, and, yes, Justice League to answer for.*

(*unless the Flash-based "Flashpoint" movie completely reboots the Universe)

A Netflix Thursday : November 2017

A day off work.  What to do?  Do I waste half my day traveling to and from a theatre to watch a movie?  Do I binge watch a season of a TV show I've been meaning to check out (or finish)?  Do I play some solo board games? Do I read some of my stockpile of comics? Do I continue slowly plodding through my current book? Do I fart around on my phone and the internet, just killing time?  Or do I work through my all-too-long and ever-growing Netflix queue?  A real Sophie's Choice?  Ooh, should I watch Sophie's Choice?

Colossal - 2016, d. Nacho Vigalondo

The film opens with brief prologue of a giant monster suddenly emerging in Seoul.  25 years later,  party-girl Gloria (a bewigged Ann Hathaway) gets dumped by her boyfriend after yet another night of, well, partying and kicked out of his New York apartment.  She returns to her parents furniture-less rental home upstate to help find herself, hoping that perhaps distancing herself from the wrong people will change her behavior.  She reconnects with Childhood friend Oscar (Jason Sudekis) who has never left, now running his father's bar.  After a night drinking at the bar with his friends and an awkward interaction, she passes out at home.  When she wakes up she learns that a monster (the same one from 25 years earlier) has attacked Soeul.  It dominates the news, and everyone's world is a little different.  The next night, she gets blackout drunk, and the monster emerges again...not attacking so much as making weird gestures, and Gloria sees her own actions mimicked by the creature, but she's not certain if she's the cause, and her guilt weighs upon her.  She investigates and finds the manifestation is tied to a specific location and a specific time in her hometown.

I thought perhaps this was some form of allegory or metaphor, that the manifestation of the monster was reflective of Gloria's self-destructive behavior.  And in a way it is.  On another drunken night she shows Oscar and friends what happens, and it's confirmed, but she stumbles and she's the cause of more deaths.  Her recklessness affects more lives than her own, but in the process Oscar learns that he becomes a giant robot in Seoul as well.

To this point, Oscar has been very helpful to Gloria, very sweet and giving.  But after Gloria leaves the bar with his friend Joel, he takes a very sudden and very dark turn.  At first Gloria sees a reflection of her own self-destructive behavior in Oscar's actions, and then Oscar starts manipulating and controlling her by threatening lives.  It's here where the film falls apart, the rather light touch the film had to start turns ugly and dark in a very unpleasant way.  There's a backstory as to why Gloria and Oscar are connected like this to Seoul, why they manifest the monster where and when they do, but it's terribly silly and doesn't make a lot of thematic sense.  Oscar's statement "I'm the robot, you're the monster" doesn't hold water, metaphorically.

As Gloria has to fight Oscar to protect Seoul, it becomes really ugly (as, inexplicably Joel just kind of stands by to watch...Gloria gets no real support from any man in this story...and it's rather unpleasant once I realized that there's no other female characters in this film either).  Yeah, I get that some people are not good people, that their inner demons get the better of them, and that some people can wrest control from those demons while others succumb to them, but the way the film turns the metaphor into physical conflict is ham-handed.  I was hoping this would be all drama, all the way, that Oscar were truly a robot that needed to be reminded about his heart and that Gloria would see that she's not the monster.  In a way the latter happened with her becoming the hero, but it's unrewarding to see what seemed to be a metaphysical light-drama become a muddle drama-action.


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Okja - 2017, d. Bong Joon Ho


Lucy Mirando (a perky Tilda Swinton) has taken the lead of the troubled Mirando Corporation from her unlikable sister, and seeks to reinvent the company with a new super-piglet found in Chile.  They've reproduced 26 of them and scattered around the world to be raised by local farming traditions for 10 years, ending with the Best Super Pig competition prize winner and the debut of new Super Pig food products.  Given the animal's size, yet low consumption, are meant to revolutionize food consumption and ecological footprint.

10 years later we meet Okja, a sweet and gentle giant, we first meet one with a bramble stuck in its paw, and gently begging for food.  She is raised by Mija (Seo-Hyun Ahn) and her grandfather live on a conservation in the mountains of South Korea.  A moment of Mija in peril highlights the creature's intelligence and cleverness, and also her heart, compassion and bond with others.  I think Bong drew a lot of inspiration from My Neighbour Totoro in presenting Okja and her relationship with Mija.  It's certainly effective.

But Okja is not Mija's to keep, and with the 10 year anniversary up, the Mirando corporation takes Okja to Seoul before transporting it to New York for the big competition finale.  Mija runs away to rescue her leading to a big farcical romp in Seoul where activists from the Animal Liberation Front hijack Okja's transport, setting the creature free.  Mija manages to run off with the creature through town, causing much havoc.  In the end the ALF has designs to use Okja to expose Lucy Mirando's white-faced lies to the world, exposing their "natural super pig" as an actual genetically modified aberration.


Lucy is not a cackling supervillain, Swinton gives her a real well-meaning intentions, a real desire to help change the world, but through a through small deceptions.  It's when things fall apart and we meet her sister, who reasserts control, that we realize the machinations of big corporations, whether openly honest or deceitful, tend to succeed regardless as a result of the consuming populace's own willful ignorance.

Is this an anti-meat movie?  Not at all, actually.  What it instead is preaching, if anything, is awareness.  Just be mindful of what you're consuming.  The second half of the final act takes place in a slaughterhouse, a place where Bong could have turned the film into a real horror-show, with stark angles and lighting and skreetchy soundtrack, but it's all presented very matter-of-factly.  Though the animals are fictional, it's pretty true to the reality of mass-production slaughterhouses.  It's a film that doesn't pretend to have the answers...how do we feed the world with compassionate farming.  It knows the conundrum.  It ultimately is merely the story of a girl and her super-pig.  The weight of the reality surrounding it is up to the viewer to decide what to do with it.

It's a sweet, enjoyable, exceptionally well-crafted adventure film, which is always to be expected from Bong.  With a few tweaks (language mostly, but the extremity of a couple of scenes) it would practically be a children's film, although I imagine the heavy dose of reality might be somewhat traumatic for children, which is why it's not a kids film.

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It Follows - 2014, d. David Robert Mitchell

A young woman runs out of the house at dusk in her underwear and high heels.  She keeps looking behind her.  Her neighbour is concerned but she dismisses it.  Her dad is concerned, she avoids him and runs back in the house.  The soundtrack, a pulsating, crunchy electronic score, kicks in, riddled with momentum, and Annie takes off with her family car.  The chase is on.  It ends on a beach in the middle of the night.  There's nobody else around.  At dawn Annie's body is in the same spot, horrendously mutilated.

Jay (Maika Monroe) has been on a couple dates with "Jake".  She has sex with him, after which he chloroforms her.  She wakes up tied to a chair in a run down garage where a clearly paranoid Jake explains the premise...it was passed along to him the same way he passed it along to her, it's something following him, it can look like anyone - friend, family, a complete stranger, a face in the crowd - but it follows.  Never go anywhere without two exits, don't let it touch you, and don't let it kill you or it will come for him again...try to pass it along.  Jake drops Jay off on her curbside at home and runs.  A police investigation reveals he's not Jake and that Jay didn't contract anything from him, not anything science can detect, but it's not long before Jay begins to understand his paranoia.

Goddamn this film is freaky.  No matter where she is...at school, in the house, in her room, there's no safety.  She can't sleep, always on guard.  Her neighbour Greg takes her to a "Jake's place"...an abandoned house that seems set up for hiding out from ...it.  Cans and bottles hanging in front of the covered windows, a bed and supplies among the dirt and detritus, a stock of pharmaceuticals in the drug cabinet.   As Jay, her siblings and friends Scooby Gang their way through finding Jake, the camera pans around the premises, just scanning.

There's an awesomely weird sense of style to this film.  The grinding 80's synth score, the differently advanced technology (an e-Reader that looks like a make-up compact), the lousy black&white sci-fi films on TV, clothes that are modern and retro from multiple generations, the old picture tube TVs, the 70's decor of Jay's family home, the station wagon... as if it's reflecting upon horror films from across decades.

It Follows is an amazing suspense/horror film... an absolute classic of the genre.  It doesn't just live in the suspense of Jay's predicament, but establishes an awkward dynamic among the Scooby Gang.  The film builds a metaphysical entity with a past, and no clear method of stopping it.

(David's take)
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Shimmer Lake - 2017, d. Orin Uziel

Oddly writer-director Uziel conscripted a bunch of typically comedic actors in a crime drama.  Rainn Wilson, Adam Pally, Rob Coddry, John Michael Higgins, and Ron Livingston are the most notible names in a solid cast of character actors muddling their way through a series of murders and betrayals after a bank robbery in a small Ohio town.

The film is told in four chapters, begining on a Friday and works its way back to Monday, the story starting out as fragments, but the puzzle eventually filling itself in the further back we go.  There are so many characters, so many common family names, it's initially a bit of a maze, but by Wednesday the connections and motives start to gel.  A bank robbery, a schlubby Joe on the run, two dull feds, a dead Judge, and the town sheriff, and a meth lab explosion all intertwine to form a rather engaging story, even if the mystery of it is rather obvious.

There's a bit of a Fargo feel (more the TV series rather than the Movie) except there's something off about our lead Sheriff played by Benjamin Walker.  Where in Fargo the Sheriff is our moral compass, the most upstanding person in the town, here Zeke is "the smartest person in the room" but there's an edge to his placid demeanor.  Small moments - a vile distaste for his sister-in-law's cooking for example - doesn't inspire the same smooth calm that we got from Frances McDormand, Allison Tollman, Carrie Coon or Patrick Wilson.  But then it's not Fargo, it's just Fargo-esque.

There's a sense of humour to the proceedings (with all these comic actors there would have to be), odd exchanges of inane banter, more than a bit of bumbling from our crooks after the robbery and even during.  I enjoyed how each day starts with a character waking up with a start, and the running gag of Pally's Deputy having to sit in the back seat of the squad car every day made me wish there were more than just four days being covered.  It's like jeopardy comedy where the big payoff comes first, and then the joke slowly builds to it's starting point.

It's a film that could've tried to be too clever for its own good with its structure, but it's just the framework it hangs an enjoyable story upon...I'm not certain it's ever even really trying to outsmart its audience or be too impressed with itself.  If anything the downside to its structure is its inability to have a coda, to see how things worked out for the schemers.

The Hiatus Post: Blade Runner 2049

I am taking a break from the web. Not being on the web, but contributing. I have been posting something to something blog related since 1999. I have had unintended extended breaks, but I always felt the pressure to do something. This time, I am under far too many other pressures and I just need one fewer thing that I feel compelled to do. The photoblog is paused, this blog will be paused. On my side, at least; Kent will do as Kent's life allows him to do.

2017, Denis Villeneuve (Sicario) -- cinema

Disclosure. I haven't felt compelled to watch Blade Runner in quite sometime. Disclosure. I actually enjoy the original version, with it's noir over-dub. Disclosure. I never really liked the idea of Deckard possibly being a replicant himself. Disclosure. While I never avoided spoilers, apparently I did because I never caught the first one, till the opening footage.

So, thirty years since the last movie took place, 35 years since the last movie came out. And Villeneuve still wonders why this movie didn't do better. To me its obvious; the original's fanbase was not only late in coming (the original didn't do well either) but they are now old & jaded. Sure, the younger fanbase of all things scifi and retro is there, but again... jaded. As for the rest of the world, the world that makes up the population that determines a movie being a success or not? Despite "hey girl" Ryan Gosling being the lead, its slow paced, atmospheric scifi. And it cost a fortune to make. So, really, not so much of a mystery Denis.

But still dude, I loved it. Fucking loved it. But get it, this is not big grins and rush-right-out-to-see-it-again loving it. This is knowing my expectations and having them met, if not exceeded. It is a lush, colourful (no, really it is) homage to the original while being a powerful, standalone movie. I just wish the plot had been tighter, as in the end, after all the exposition about the powerful central theme I still couldn't really tell you anyone's motivations beyond Joe's. Why exactly did the Bad Guy need Deckard? The replicant underground? Hell, other than the option of tossing the old pigskin back n forth, why did Joe need Deckard? But meh, who cares, I just watched the fuck out of this movie.

The visuals, the aging anachronistic world (remember, now was The Future of the original) where the decay of mother earth is apparent. Is that snow? Ash? Ashen snow? Isn't this LA ? No plants, no real animals no nothing but industrial decay and bodies everywhere. One can assume that the humans left on earth exist for no other reason than to fuel the off-world colonies exodus, through labour and spending. At some point that spending will be done, and ... abandonment.

Speaking of the visuals, I must admit, I am in the camp of being disappointed about the female centric sex machine of the movie. C'mon, I get it, you think the girls get Gosling so we get Joi, the Not Real Girl. But, what about the background? Wouldn't the Joi advertising try and appeal to all ? Unless they didn't want to interfer with the whole Joe-Joi unreal couple thing. The how about the pleasure droid brothel? There wasn't a single sexual exploitative male image, and that just seems ... unrealistic.

In the end, after two-plus hours, I was left satisfied. And more than eager for another part of the story, even moreso than after the dozen plus times I have seen the original. I want to see where the offworld colonies go, what is left with Earth, and now that Replicants know they can procreate, what is next for them?

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Stranger Things S2

Netflix, 2017, The Duffer Brothers -- Netflix

Disclosure: This is it. This is the last review for this season. We binged on Season Two over the three days of the birthday weekend. We didn't close out the season. And to be honest, I didn't even keep up with the postings, despite the date on the post.

I loved Stranger Things S1.  So did Kent. And for season two, as it was released on my birthday, it was my gift to myself. I took the day off work and we watched a handful of episodes. No, we do not Whole Show binge.

I, again, loved it. Just loved it. They did a successful followup to an astoundingly popular and successful first season. They did it, they found the niche with which to follow the first season, which was again a mix of familiar genres and tropes related to the 1980s.

Some people lamented the lack of D&D in the second season, and I get it, kids wouldn't just abandon D&D over one summer, despite the trauma connecting their campaign to real life. But as film, as art, opening this season in a video game arcade was downright perfect. And playing the reviled but loved DragonQuest just oozed icing on my birthday cake. You seem, I loved Don Bluth. Even back then, an arcade game that had fantasy and Bluth was perfect. But that 50 cent quarter eater was a fucking fucker of a game. I loved it, I hated it.

So, the first season ended with the defeat of the DemoGorgon and the loss of Eleven. Will is back but she is gone and their lives are changed forever, especially Mike's. Will is just not the same and continues to have nightmares and ... flashbacks (flashovers?) to the UpsideDown. The research lab has been co-opted by a bunch of other scientists who are trying to understand the breach (into said UpsideDown) and seal it. And they are studying Will, under the guise of therapy. But really, they are not the Big Bad this season, and are kind of helpful in a top secret government lab sort of way.

I said it on FB, and I say it here. If season one was Alien (single alien, eerie, dark) then season two is Aliens with its bigger scope, tactical thinking and Paul Reiser. There is one episode that makes that comparison obvious. But this is genre mashing, so we go all the way, even giving us a cabin in the woods and a high school dance.

If the season made one misstep, it was with the after-show. The Walking Dead does it, Game of Thrones did it; almost everyone is doing a show after the show, where cast & guests talk about the show, all meta fanboy like. But the mistake was having this as a "you binged the series, now binge the aftershow". I like to pace things, so I would have liked to flip back and forth, listening to people talk about each episode and savouring it. But instead, I had to listen to the kids struggle to have concrete discussions about themes and ideas, that they didn't actually grasp until it was mentioned to them out loud. Sure, they are a charming bunch (but, Finn Wolfhard [that's his D&D character name, right?] is probably going to grow up to be a Corey) but they are adolescents, so I only have so much patience.

The season ends without any real closure. It was very much a setup for a coming season. They don't so much as defeat the Mind Flayer (what, no one got pedantic and said "It's called an Illithid") as get away from it, and keep it at bay in the UpsideDown. So, darkness is still out there and our world is still in danger.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Creep

2014, Patrick Brice (The Overnight) -- Netflix

This one has stuck with me. Its another from the list of standard recommendations but the premise never caught. But near the end of this month's event, we always just go "nope nope nope nope" and finally settled on, "OK, sure why not."

Its another Found Footage movie, but not from the usual fare. A guy answers a Craig's List posting where someone needs to record footage of a couple of days of his life. In order to leave a legacy for his coming son, as he is dying of cancer. So, guy with camera shows up to house in the woods. Not creepy house, just a twisty, windy house at the top of some long steps. And guy is fucking weird, that uncomfortable guy who is too open, too touch-feely and really, just creeps you out. Thus the movie's title.

But camera guy needs the money and buys into the sob story. Big mistake.

Eventually he figures our our creep is just that, some lying weirdo with no discernible agenda other than getting this camera guy to be his friend. Every encounter is weirder, until things start getting downright criminal. The movie does a wonderful job of just driving us out of our skin. With a personality mixing up a car salesman, a needy new-ager and a dangerously mentally damaged individual, the creep just keeps on escalating the connectivity until... well, until we learn his true agenda.

Chop.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Godzilla

1998, Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow) -- Netflix

Another cheat, but not because we watched it prior, but because its not horror in the least -- but it IS a monster movie!

I hated this movie when I first saw it. They so quickly went from doing a nouveau Godzilla movie into doing a Jurassic Park ripoff when the newly hatched Godzooky's chase Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno around Madison Square Garden. But the early scenes of the mutated Gila Monster, if you take the opening sequence with any credence, are rather awe-inspiring. You can so easily see the inspirational bits used later for Cloverfield, especially with the idea that a 400' monster can hide & sneak up on you.

But I have warmed to the movie, in the way I have warmed to Independence Day. The lunacy of it is heart-warming, which is probably exactly how it was intended. And its a Emmerich movie, so his style which I love when applied to disaster movies, is apparent. But migawd, is it bad. Even less than the oft whinged about new Godzilla movie, they barely use the titular monster. He should be the front & center man, but they keep on hiding him and distracting us with eggs and screaming reporters. If the bad Japanese movies taught us anything, its that we have to bring the monster to the forefront -- he is the leading man. I look forward to the sequel of the current franchise, to see this done.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Alien Covenant

2017, Ridley Scott (Kingdom of Heaven) -- download

Another cheat insert.

I am not a fan of Prometheus. I found it a re-hash of what had been done before and even more plot hole filled than the less popular follow-ups to the original movie. So, I did not have many expectations for this sequel to the prequel (not sequel!). But I was pleasantly surprised that he at least gave us a decent horror movie.

But first the kick-off that pissed me off to no end. The last movie ended with Elizabeth Shaw and David the Friendly Android following a beacon back to the homeworld of the Engineers. That gives a lot to work with, with a first contact by a lone human and android. But no, that's too much for Scott to build a story around, so he kills them all off. An entire planet of Engineers is killed off by the Not-Friendly David android that Elizabeth has reassembled. He has re-engineered (pun intended) the planet into something ruled by whatever the Engineer black ooze virus does when there are no more lifeforms for it to destroy. And Elizabeth is dead. Not since the death of Newt, did I feel so pissed off.

But this is the planet that the next crew of unsuspecting unfortunates arrive at. Its a colony ship, a nice shiny well crewed spaceship filled with frozen humans & embryos and one toned down version of the android David, named Walter. They can re-program the line, but I guess they liked the Fassbender model. The crew has to be awakened when an accident happens, killing their captain.

So, like last time, there is a nearby planet that some want to explore and others want to avoid. They have a destination, but a quick pitstop won't hurt anything, right? Wrong. As said above, David has destroyed the place. They find the devastated Engineer city, but not before inhaling lots of spores left over from the black goo death machine. This is at the source of all the terror; you don't need face huggers to kick off the expected events.

What happens is a decently done, lots of shadows and things that eat you in the night horror movie. Ridley also does an annoying good job of giving us the greater threat, the machine that man made -- David. My namesake android is rather insane, and despite Walter's attempts to explain to him the error of his ways, David proceeds to work with the xenos to kill off the crew. We are left with the Ridley analog, played by Katherine Waterston still bearing the horrible bob haircut from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, having to defend herself and the colony ship from David and the Xenos (my favourite new band name) but we know it will lead into a new sequel aboard the ship.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Incarnate

2016, Brad Peyton (San Andreas) -- download

OK, this is one of our cheats, to fill in the blanks. Because, to be honest, by this point in the month, things had petered out. Work was overwhelming and I was coming home later and later.

Possessions seem to be a popular thing of late, not at the level of vampires or zombies over the years, but still, an up-tick of such movies and TV shows. But you can only do so many straight forward "family having issues, bring in the unorthodox Catholic priest" plots. Something different, like Outcast, is always a death rattle or grave air. Incarnate brings in the idea of what is happening inside the mind that is possessed, what is going on with the person while the demon runs the body. The expert of diving into the minds of said possessed is Dr. Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart), wheelchair bound and still suffering the trauma of the loss of his wife & child to a demon possession.

Despite the reviews that beg to differ, I found this one not so bad. At the very least, it was novel in its approach, if pedestrian in its path. It just isn't different enough. Someone is always brought in on a tough case, an important case, one that greater things hinge on. The best comment from one of the reviews I read, likened Ember to Constantine, which is on the nose. Ember is supposed to be that not-so-Catholic guy who knows more than the supposed experts on demonic possession. But they didn't explore THAT aspect enough to satisfy me, in the end.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: 1922

2017, Zak Hilditch (These Final Hours) -- Netflix

Long gone are my obsessive Stephen King days, but I remember distinctly back then, that I always loved his less-than-horror stories. I liked the way he wrote characters and dove deep into his world building, whether it was small town American (usually) or a period piece. I am not familiar with this novella, actually didn't even know this was to be a King adaptation, until I saw his name in the credits. I almost cringed, because we well know that most of his adaptations suck. Terribly so.

This tale of a man haunted by a decision he made, and all the ramifications, did not suck. In fact, its quite good, if a little one note. Thomas Jane, whom I always like, plays Wilfred James, a farmer in Nebraska whose wife has just inherited some land that could increase his own holding, or benefit her greatly if they sold it to a local conglomerate. To him, a man's land says everything about him. Arlette is a rather independent woman, and she wants them to sell all the land and move to the city. That offends Wilf to his core, so he conspires with their son to kill Arlette and hide her body, claiming she ran away. Nobody would argue; its 1922 Nebraska.

Once the murder is committed, Wilf is haunted almost immediately. First it is the rats he saw gnawing on his wife's body, before he fills in the well. And then its her, surrounded by her rat brood. Is it a hallucination? Is a ghost actually haunting him? It matters not, for the real focus is the guilt it represents, the gut feeling that he has done great wrong, and now nothing but wrong will visit him.

Jane is incredible as Wilf, doing a teeth-clenched accent but more, just wearing the rough-spun farmer's clothes like a unform. You never quite sympathize with him, but you do feel a bit sorry as everything that can go wrong does. He never actually gets caught for the murder, but the consequences are much much worse than jail.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Better Watch Out

2017, Chris Peckover (Undocumented) -- download

This is the one recommendation that we ended up watching this season. Thanks Kent ! It was a good one !

So, take a familiar genre  (babysitter being threatened from outside) and flip it on its head. We already did one babysitter movie, that was more focused on the trope of the young boy in love with his blonde elder, and this continues on that line.  12 year old Luke is in love with his gorgeous, blonde babysitter Ashley. He ruminates with his awkward best friend Garret about how best to win her heart. And then they are dragged into a drama as stalkers keep them inside the house, threatening harm if they leave.

But something doesn't sit right. And Ashley figures it out pretty quickly; the guys had thought fabricating an attack would send her right into the lusty arms of her charge. They are 12, after all. Ashley is pretty pissed about it, and then Luke's real personality is turned on -- as he smashers her in the face, sending her tumbling down the stairs.

From then on, the movie just rolls along. Levi Miller (Pan) really jumps into the role of Luke, a far-beyond-precocious dickhead who obviously needs therapy. Since his first plan, to woo her heart, is dashed after he assaulted and tied her up, his next plan is to eliminate everyone and pin the murders on her ex-boyfriends. He dives into it with bipolar joy & rage.

But Ashley is not stupid. This was the best bit about the movie, that Ashley doesn't devolve into a crying, screaming blonde teenager. She holds her own against Luke.

The weirdest bit is that this is an Australian movie shot as if it was in the US. Not sure why, but it became obvious when all the doorknobs in the house were up really high. Who knew that older Australian homes had their doorknobs higher than the average American home. But I guess they thought the idea of a no-snow movie set at Xmas would be too jarring for American audiences.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Slasher

2016, Super Channel -- download

The season began to wind down around this viewing (you get, I don't always write these on the publishing date, right?) as the stress at work felt like it was being carried home with me, when I subjected myself to the tension and stress of psychological horror movies. I just felt that these movies were not far enough separated from reality to allow for that escapism. And of course, there is that trouble of having depleted most of the quality films.

Slasher wants to recreate the retro fame of Stranger Things while grabbing the audience of anthology series like American Horror Story or Channel Zero. The first season intends to draw upon the memories of Halloween, a psycho killer who stalked a small town. In this case, it was a small Canadian town -- no, really truly Canadian, not just shot in Canada, but set. This killer, dressed in an elaborate executioner outfit, slew a family on Halloween night. Well, not the entire family, as he cut the unborn girl from her mother's belly and left her alive on her mom's belly. Almost 30 years later, the girl Sarah returns home. Of course, trauma mixes with recurring sights of a new executioner.

We only watched the first episode, but it was not terrible. It is so very very Canadian. Its almost a game of "name that familiar Canadian actor", with only lead Katie McGrath standing out from all the recognizable faces. Also, the idea it was shot in Sudbury, Sault Ste-Marie and Parry Sound makes it even more than seminal Canadian. The acting is decent, the directing is capable but, as expected, nothing really stood out.

Well, it did well enough to get a second season, one that will recreate the summer camp murderer idea.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Tank 432

2015, Nick Gillespie (camera guy on Ben Wheatley films) -- Netflix

OK, I admit I have a softspot for those first time directors who emerge from the shadow of other creators, to apply their own vision. Even when they are rough around the edges, you can see some sort of brilliance, and they also usually benefit from the tutelage of their betters, and can snag a few named actors from their connections. That can usually produce a decent product.

Not here.

This is supposed to be high concept, connected to assumed reality and hallucinations. We are supposed to wonder about where reality becomes vision, but almost immediately we can see the falsehoods when they cannot. So, when left with that, the only payoff for us is the explanations, why's and how's. This movie didn't bother with that.

A squad of soldiers (mercenaries? British army?) are leading a pair of captured women across the fields of nameless Europe. Someone is after them and they are cracking under the pressure. One is wounded and they have to find transportation. Kind of a classic premise, even if we get less than zero background. They find a farm that is filled with shipping containers, and inside those containers they find a woman gone mad. The first red flag was that they didn't question shipping containers sitting in the middle of the countryside on a farm; I assumed it must be connected to their mission and they expected them. But nope, they never even reference it. Its just a detail we can ignore. And then there are the headless bodies. And the orange dust everywhere.

The crew is mixed, in origins and skill sets. But none seems a real seasoned soldier but for their commander. I assumed it was just bad acting. But when they eventually end up inside the titular tank, I saw that their unprofessional-ism was by design. Its the plot. They are a bunch of randos in the middle of some experiment using the orange dust. OK, intriguing but only when coupled with details. Details that are never forthcoming. Its just not-soldiers acting soldiery oblivious to their own lack of memory about what is going on.

Oh, I get that is why the movie is so short on details -- that it wants us to feel as they feel, wrapped up in the story but not really sure of what is going on. But eventually as it becomes obvious they are being manipulated, we want to know why. We never get that so the whole thing ends up feeling a waste of time.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Raw

2016, Julia Ducournau -- download

In her first feature film, Ducournau makes one of the most memorable films in our last few seasons of doing this. Like so many of the basically tense movies we see during these runs, its not technically horror, but it provides the most visceral horror response. I found myself talking to the screen, and jumping from one end of the sofa to the other, wishing to climb out of my own skin.

More than ten years of being primarily a sofa movie watcher really has changed me.

Justine is being dropped off at veterinarian college by her parents. She's meek, almost childlike and obviously uncomfortable with the open social dynamic of the college. Almost instantly she has to confront the worst situation, as she is forced to eat a rabbit liver during a hazing ritual. Her family is rabidly vegetarian, but she is guilted into doing it by her own older sister.

And then things begin to change for her. Strange cravings, bizarre behaviour and outbursts. She almost immediately abandons her life long vegetarian lifestyle, but the raw chicken tells us this is more than just adjustment. During an unfortunate accident during a waxing attempt, she cuts her sister's finger off. Her sister faints and she proceeds to eats the finger like a chicken wing.

Her sister explains later that its a family thing, and shows her how to deal. Fake an accident, force a driver off the road, eat the dying driver. Either that or succumb to the inevitable all consuming cravings.  Justine cannot imagine killing and refuses; its the wrong choice.

Its a French movie so sex and cravings get all mixed up together. It never swerves away from the merging of the two carnal desires, even when Justine has sex with her gay roommate. Eventually that leads to her inevitable doom, but her sister comes to her rescue in the most horrible way. All the while, the movie is exploring this like a vampire myth, instead of as a story about crazy cannibals in the French countryside. 

Star Trek Discovery

2017, Space/CBS All Access (5 episodes reviewed)

I'm not a Trekker. I'm not even a Trekkie (the less hardcore of the franchise's fanbase).  I'm an admirer, from a distance.  The Next Generation was my Trek.  I watched the pilot when it aired and each subsequent episode weekly for 7 seasons and 3 movies (I only recently watched the 4th).  I watched a scattering of the first few seasons of Deep Space 9, I watched Voyager sporadically, I never made it past the pilot of Enterprise and I've only seen random episodes of the original series ("TOS").  Every movie, though, I've seen every movie, many multiple times.  So yeah, I've put some time in with the franchise, but this is all to quantify what comes next.

I freaking love Star Trek Discovery.

Unabashedly.

I don't care what the continuity gripes are for a show taking place ten year prior to TOS.  I really don't.  Would this have been maybe better if it were 30 years past the end of Voyager?  Sure, it would help to resolve that stabbing dagger in the back of many fan's brains that make it impossible for them to resolve the better looking sets, the much different looking Klingons, the better technology, the nicer outfits...all the things that modern day television can do so much better than 50, 20, even 10 years ago.  But the showrunners, Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, are operating in this time frame to tell a very specific story, which is the war between the Federation and the Klingons. 


The easy fix though would be to have the Federation at war with another, newer civilization, given that we know tenuous peace between the Federation and Klingons is the eventual outcome.  But that presupposes the fanbase, both hard core and casual (and new) would care as much about the conflict between a new alien race versus an established -- nay notorious -- adversary like the Klingons.  Beyond that, just because we know the outcome of a battle has never stopped anyone from recounting stories from that time.  Every major war has millions of stories to tell.

The opening salvo for Discovery is a 2-parter, a full-blown movie, essentially, and as a movie it is one of Trek's best.  Sonequa Martin-Green is the show's de-facto lead as Michael Burnham, the first officer of the starship Shenzhou under captain Captain Philippa Georgiou (the always welcome Michelle Yeoh).  The show immediately thrusts us in the mix of Burnham and Georgiou's almost familial relationship, it should be noted the first ever female captain-first officer pairing in Trek.  The dynamic is incredible, with spot-on writing that hints at how incredible Georgiou is as both a leader, mentor and person, as well as how Burnham is so utterly capable and yet flawed.

As a child, Burnham was rescued from a Federation space station by Vulcans after a Klingon raid that killed everyone else on board.  Burnham was raised by Sarek (yes, Spock's dad, making Burnham Spock's adoptive older sister...probably the most flagrant attempt the show makes to pander to the fanbase by tying it to TOS), giving her a superior educational experience as well as teaching her to suppress her emotions.  She's no Vulcan though, and her humanity is sometimes at odds with her calculating nature, which keeps others at a distance.

The opening "movie" also introduces us to the Klingon side of the conflict, largely a cultural quest by one Klingon, T'Kuvma, to unite the scattered 24 houses against the threat of the Federation and their gentrification of the galaxy.  Long story short, by the end of the movie, the war has begun, Burnham is jailed as a traiter, the Shinzhou floats lifeless in space, and T'Kuvma is martyred, making him a rallying point for the Klingon armadas.

There's a sense of "where do we go from here" by the end of the gripping two-parter.  With over half the cast gone -- dead, or left for dead, or imprisoned --  there's a thrill of the unknown, especially with the titular starship Discovery yet to be revealed.   It's easy to underestimate how exciting this is both as a movie and the opening act of a new ongoing series.  To establish a cast, to build an exceptional rapport among them, to get the audience excited for the future adventures of this crew together, not to mention their contention with a particularly dedicated adversary, and then rip not one, but both away, it's rather unprecedented. 

The third episode opens 6 months later with Burnham in chains, pleading guilty to her crime (the Federation's first ever traitor) and ready to accept her punishment.  What an amazing point of view character for a Trek show.  Burnham as a human-raised-by-Vulcans, female, person of colour as lead of the show was a marvelous feat on its own, but this turn for her makes her journey a thousand times more fascinating.  Her guilt looms large, though the public blames her for starting a war, her guilt is in not actually finding out whether her treasonous act would have actually stopped it or not, and saving the lives of her crewmates.  When her prison transport ship encounters problems, she's rescued (not by chance) by the Discovery, where she meets a few familiar -- though no longer friendly -- faces from the Shenzhou.  She meets its difficult captain, Lorca (a wonderful Jason Isaacs), who has taken pains to recruit her to help her with the ship's mysterious experiment.

The third episode effectively acts as pilot after the "movie" and it does a good job of establishing all the new and returning crew, giving them distinct personalities from the outset, and then playing with the expectations of those personalities within the next two episodes.  This is a crew of scientists and explorers being led by a military captain during wartime.  Needless to say, no one is particularly thrilled with the situation, least of all Burnham who is trying to both atone and fit in.  Meanwhile, things are no easier on the Klingon side.  In the wake T'Kuvma's death, the outsider Voq has taken the helm of the only ship with cloaking technology, but it's dead in space and the crew is getting desperate, so when another house comes to claim T'Kuvma's cloaking technology, Voq has to determine what he compromises first, his leadership or his convictions in the teaching of the martyred T'Kuvma and Klingon traditions.

Many complaints are lobbed at Discovery... "too focused on action and not enough on science" is one of the main ones early on.   This particular season is meant to focus on the war, so action will be a part of it.  But the focus is never of a particular action set piece, it's always on the players involved, and science (if really comic-booky science) is still a mainstay in exploring the Discovery's new spore drive.  Recently, "Captain Lorca abandons another human on a Klingon prison ship ...that's not the hopeful Trek I'm used to"... because you haven't had a warmongering Captain before.  Lorca is cold, Lorca is calculating, Lorca is shrewd... he's given his command because the Discovery is trying to engineer a weapon, a tactical advantage against their enemy, and they need the most hard-bitten man to get the job done (which flies in the face of the traditional "peaceful explorers" model of Trek's past).  Ultimately Discovery is telling a much different tale, one that is effectively exploring how war impacts a society's tenets (both Federation and Klingon) and the impact it has on the people involved.

This is easily the best looking Trek, the costuming, make-up, effects, and sets are all amazing.  Despite not advancing the Trek chronology, it does advance some of what we see in Trek culturally.  From more people of colour and women in positions of power to gay relationships, it's full of long-overdue progression (even off screen with women and people of colour directing, writing, costuming, and beyond).  As well, the bulk of Trek is episodic in nature, where as this is highly serialized.  While the two-part opener definitely stands on its own, what comes next builds and builds, and is set to make a fascinating season as a whole.  The showrunners have said the war will be resolved by the 15-episode season's end and what happens for season 2 is still a mystery.

As I said, I love it unabashedly.  It's fascinating, it's exciting, it's one of the better looking shows on TV (well, on TV in Canada at least, it's the inaugural show of CBS's "All Access" streaming service), which isn't wholly unexpected when much of (now expunged) showrunner Bryan Fuller's crew is involved.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: The Wailing

2016, Hong-jin Na (The Chaser) -- download

This South Korean movie got nothing but rave reviews from the critics who praise its genre mixing and fresh approach. I suspect these critics haven't seen many Korea horror movies, and while I don't account myself an expert, I found this one rather on-point with the South Korea horror industry. What  a lot of reviewers found unpredictable, I found scattered and confused, like he was changing direction at the last moment, or that he edited together multiple shot versions into a single film. Sure, the genre mixing (crime, disease, zombie, possession, ghost, comedy) was fun but I often found the movie's intent hard to take seriously.

Jong-gu is a dopey cop assigned to investigate a familiar murder. He's not very good at his job, is berated by his mother-in-law, ridiculed by his bosses and just an all around bumbler. But he loves his daughter, and that makes him the hero of the story. His small town, which if this was middle America, would have rusting cars and swing sets sitting in front of dilapidated farm houses, is suffering a spate of unexplained murder sprees.  It seems to be disease related, as the murders are left in a boil covered zombie state. You would think they would call in regional or federal authorities, but nope, assigned to bumbling cop.

He learns of and immediately blames it on the quiet (dead silent actually) Japanese man who recently moved to town. They discover some weird shrines in a hidden room in the man's house, so the stressed out Jong-gu is convinced this man is responsible, and proceeds to kill the guy's dog. Oh, and there is the idea that the Japanese man is probably a ghost.

We get the idea, from a few key scenes, that the Japanese man may be there to investigate the murder spree, maybe he is familiar with it or suffered his own loss. But no, that's just clumsy misdirection. So, a weird little idea that I thought was going to explore Korea and its uncomfortable relationship with its former occupier, is dispensed with to go deeper into the weird shit.

They never seem to really ever investigate the crimes, even when they stack up. Family after family is found murdering each other, but Jong-gu continues to lead the investigation via his own misguided and misled gut feelings. But then his daughter shows signs of being possessed. Is he worried she is going to murder him and his family? He seems more concerned she is ill, than anything. But of course, in a drunken rage, he and his drinking buddies (dude, aren't you on duty?) try to murder the Japanese man, only to be attacked by another victim of this diseases / possession. They suffer horrible repercussions, but luckily (???) run the Japanese man down with their truck.

And then the shaman shows up. This was one of the best elements of the movie, a guy who seems a mix of actual experienced mystic and showman. And yet, in classic Exorcist style, just when it seems the shaman is going to drive the spirit from his daughter, Jong-gu freaks out and decides he should go with traditional medicine. Of course, its the wrong decision.

Meanwhile, in the background, in a few rare scenes, a beautiful woman with all the trappings of being a real ghost appears. She seems at odds with the Japanese man and the shaman, and suddenly things change direction (again!) and she might be the bad guy! But no, that is just another flip flop of the plotting and AGAIN we turn back to blaming the Japanese man, who is not actually dead from the car accident. And the daughter is not actually freed from the possession. And the shaman is probably... a bad guy? And the ghost is... by this point, I just gave up. There was not going to be any explanation that satisfied any of the plot threads that had been weaved into the story.

Oh, and the wailing of the title just seemed to be mainly from Jong-gu himself as he screamed his daughter's name either in grief, anxiety or drunken rages.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Southbound

2016, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath, Radio Silence -- download

"If this segment ends right here, I am out," is what I said as the first segment came to a close. We hoped this anthology series, that claimed to all the segments together, would get better. Many indie anthology series, an excuse for a bunch of horror directors to work together and put something out, show the passion (if not skill) these people have for their genre. They are always rough around the edges, but know where they are going. They are fun.

This was not fun.

This seemed to be made by a number of horror directors who saw other horror anthology series and assumed they could make one themselves. The segments are often pointless, with some good ideas, but never fully baked. Constructing a bloody scene well, does not necessarily means the scene is well done. There was one segment, set around a ritual in the desert, where we thought it could be improved by the arrival of Manos or at the least, Torgo.

And the tied together story? Well, if you ignore the radio announcer (do late night radio shows with creepy DJs even exist anymore?) going on about fate and whatnot, then the final story leads back to the first story that we were dumped into without much adieu. And that's it. Not really a tie, but a timeline. And the first segment still ended with... nothing, absolutely no fucking point. I really should have been out then.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: The Dark Song

2016, Liam Gavin -- download

I found this low key, only dual casting movie somewhat of an enigma. It was compelling enough, a rather well laid out tense and creepy movie, but I wasn't quite sure of the point in the end. Many séance movies have that bit near the beginning, a small ritual by amateurs to summon the dead, and it usually goes wrong. But what if the whole movie is the séance?

Sophia lost her child, to violence. She hires occultist Joseph to cast a powerful spell. She initially says it is because she wants to talk to her son, then admits she wants revenge of the people who took her son from her. Joseph cares not why, as long as she is honest, for that honesty will fuel the ritual to summon forth a guardian angel, of whom she can ask a boon. Any boon.

This is John Constantine level magic, with arcana and long torturous rituals performed over and over. Joseph is harsh, abusive and demanding but he states that he has to be, to control the forces he is letting in. Sometimes we think he is a charlatan who just wants more than money. Of course, she has that worry as well. But with a shower of gold flake, things begin to happen. Before her guardian angel can arrive, stranger darker things enter the house, providing familiar haunted house or ghost tropes.

The movie is carried more by the powerful performances by the leads. Joseph (Steve Oram) is a knowledgeable yet reprehensible seer, fully into this for the power, if not the money. Sophia (Catherine Walker) is drive, so utterly overwhelmed by her grief, she subjects herself to abuse, humiliation and self-torture. Whether she receives what she wants in the end seems to matter naught. She has to do something extreme to deal with her feelings, and this is definitely qualifies.

Does this ritual work? Yes, but not without cost.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: The Babysitter

2017, McG (Termination Salvation) -- Netflix

One of the best of the season comes along as a Netflix original comedy spin on the scary night with the babysitter story. Normally these stories are about the young boy's crush on his hot baby sitter being upset by someone trying to get at them. But what if that someone IS the babysitter?

Cole has a crush on hot & cool Bee. She's your typical blonde sex bomb, but she also relates very well to Cole giving him his nerd quotient and dancing with him. Cole is not a die-hard socially awkward nerd, just a guy who has family induced fear issues. But his understandable crush on his babysitter keeps him awake long after he should, long enough to witness her and her gang of popular kids murder another nerd to begin a satanic ritual. Cole rightfully freaks out.

What continues is a cat & mouse game, where the members of The Cult of Bee try to recapture Cole so they can complete the ritual. Bee never actually intended on killing Cole, just draining some blood, because he is a font of innocence. But that doesn't change the fact she is a murderous psychopath.

The movie is mostly standard McG comedic, with some fun at odds with horror aspects. Like Robbie Amell spending the entire movie shirtless (of which he is challenged, but won't explain), and more concerned with Cole standing up to bullies (like himself) then the actual murdery bits. This crass, naughty movie is meant for teens but none of the humour ever really goes over the top.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Ghost Wars

2017, SyFy -- download

Not covered under this run was the cheesy but not in an intentional way Midnight, Texas based on the other popular book series by True Blood writer Charlaine Harris. In the show a young psychic on the run from someone ends up in a small town that has a vampire, a witch, an angel, a demon, a weretiger and a sexy assassin. The psychic has the ability to see the dead, and it often causes him grief.

In Ghost Wars a young man in small town Alaska can see the dead. He is just about to leave the small town when an earthquake strikes killing everyone on the bus but him. But the earthquake was more the doom bell tolling and suddenly evil ghosts are everywhere, driving people mad and keeping them from leaving. And psychic kid has to save the town.

Its actually much more compelling than the other show, mainly because it has a darker, grittier feel. Its oh so Canadian (shot in Squamish, BC, not Alaska) full of the usual suspects and Kim Coates, finally playing a not so bad guy. And it has an evil lab facility, so if you wanted to apply pithy labels, you might call it Midnight, Texas meets Stranger Things.

Unrelated, I am still rather taken aback that I have finally identified the cliff face that I have been seeing in recurring dreams for about 30 years. In these dreams, I see the town on the side of a lake. On the other side of the lake is a massive cliff face, a mountain side shorn off. That mountain side is in Squamish and plays a prevalent backdrop in the show. The only thing I can imagine is that the cross-Canada trip my family did when I was 13 passed through this area, and the majestic scene took hold in my psyche.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: The Autopsy of Jane Doe

2016, André Øvredal (Troll Hunter) -- download

We loved Troll Hunter.  Probably more in fond recollection than in review, but still I respect the guy for doing it. We should see a couple more of his movies, but this one turned out to be a respectful entry, if a little lazy in the ending.

Tommy and Austin run the local small town morgue & coroner's office, out of an old family home. With typical setup, we get the pair finishing an autopsy with father Tommy explaining to his son Austin that they don't do the investigating, they just collect the information and present it to the authorities. Tommy (Brian Cox) is the venerable expert; his son Tommy (Emile Hirsch) is catching on, but really, he just wants to leave the job, move on with his girlfriend to a new life.

And then they wheel in Jane Doe, who was found in the basement of a murdered local family. The family looked like they may have killed each other, but Jane is a mystery. Her body is pristine, clean and unblemished but... has to have been in the basement for a while. So, WTF.

Jane is a naked anomaly, and Øvredal really plays up the alluring nature of her beautiful nude body. Yeah, he is fucking with us. The best part of the movie is as they perform the autopsy, inspecting a body that should just not be in the state it is, confounding all of Tommy's attempt to determine cause and time of death.

Once they  determine she must be a witch, and possibly one that was killed and branded during the Salem era witch trials, things get more familiar. Spooky things happen, the pair getting cut off from the outside and they accept that the supernatural is involved. There doesn't seem to be any motivating factors to the witch, but they try and appease her, with no success ending in a completely... unsatisfying manner, but one that is meant to lead to sequels, probably origin stories, as things go these days.