3/3/15 (Part Two): All The Time In the World

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Alejandro Hidalgo, Cezary Jaworski, childhood trauma, children in peril, cinema, directorial debut, dramas, Efraín Romero, family secrets, father-son relationships, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, foreign films, ghosts, Gonzalo Cubero, Guillermo García, haunted house, haunted houses, Héctor Mercado, horror films, house arrest, husband-wife relationship, infidelity, José León, La Casa del Fin del Los Tiempos, Miguel Flores, mother-son relationships, Movies, mysteries, Rosmel Bustamante, Ruddy Rodríguez, set in Venezuela, Simona Chirinos, supernatural, suspense, The House At the End of Time, Timecrimes, Triangle, Venezuelan films, writer-director, Yoncarlos Medina, Yucemar Morales

Some films grab you from the first frame, locking on like a steel bear-trap and refusing to let go until the end credits roll. Some films, however, take a little longer to work under your skin. Alejandro Hidalgo’s debut feature, La Casa del Fin del Los Tiempos (The House At the End of Time) (2013), is one of those “growers”: while the film has rough patches, it gets gradually better as it progresses, culminating in a genuinely powerful finale that features a twist that’s organic, surprising and very satisfying. For a first-time writer-director, I really couldn’t ask for more.

After spending a couple of decades in prison for the murders of her husband and son, the now-aged Dulce (Ruddy Rodriguez) is released under house-arrest, right back into the same home where the murders originally occurred (her son’s body was never found). Left alone with only her thoughts, memories and the “ghosts” of her past, Dulce settles into a lonely existence, her ever-vigilant guards and the local priest (Guillermo García) serving as her lone connection to the outside world. She’s a sad, broken-down person, surrounded by the ghostly remnants of her former life, never more than a few rooms removed from the place where her husband met his bloody end and her child vanished into thin air.

As Dulce roams around her former home, however, she notes a number of odd occurrences: strange sounds, doors that seem to open of their own volition and, most disturbing, the seeming specter of an elderly man (José León) wielding a butcher knife. The film parallels Dulce’s investigation, in the present, with flashbacks to their original events, decades in the past. In the past, we see a much younger Dulce, her husband, Juan Jose (Gonzalo Cubero) and her two sons, Leopoldo (Rosmel Bustamante) and Rodrigo (Héctor Mercado), as they go about their lives in the house. Before long, the two timelines collide, as Dulce uncovers the full truth of the terrible events that sent her to prison, as well as the full story regarding Leopoldo’s disappearance. What is the history behind the house and its strange, subterranean tunnels? Do ghosts walk its halls or something decidedly more earthbound? And, most importantly: did Dulce really kill her own child?

The House At the End of Time opens with a great deal of atmosphere, similar to the thick Gothic miasma that enfolds Del Toro’s more sedate films, and manages to maintain this for the majority of its runtime. Indeed, one of the film’s great strengths is its claustrophobic aura: Hidalgo and cinematographer Cezary Jaworski get a lot of mileage out of the numerous creepy shots of Dulce exploring her old home, slowly walking from one abandoned hallway to the next. A less self-assured film might pile on the jump scares but Hidalgo shows a remarkable degree of control there, as well: you won’t find a musical stinger or scary-faced spook hiding around every corner in this particular haunted house.

In many ways, the film is a variation on the “alternate timeline” trope, ending up in the same basic peer group as Timecrimes (2007), Triangle (2009) and Coherence (2014). That being said, Hidalgo throws some interesting twists into the idea: it’s nowhere near as complicated as Timecrimes or Coherence but it manages to evoke much of the same vibe. While the various plot machinations don’t always make perfect sense (there’s a reliance on chance and pure, dumb luck that’s uncomfortably close to a deus ex machina, for one thing), it all manages to come together, in the end, and the final resolution is not only a smart way to wrap it up but a genuinely emotional ending.

As mentioned, the film isn’t always smooth sailing. The pacing is slightly off for the first third of the film, giving the movie a lurching, uneven quality. There’s also a few inconsistencies in the performances: while Rodriguez and Cubero are always good (Rodriguez, in particular), the kids waver between decent and way too broad (think sitcom-quality acting). Similarly, Guillermo García is quite believable as the sympathetic priest who takes a personal interest in Dulce’s case, whereas the police officers who guard her feel one step removed from slapstick. None of these are particularly critical issues, mind you: the cops are basically background characters and both of the young performers have plenty of great scenes. The focus of the film is squarely on Rodriguez’s capable shoulders and she acquits herself just fine. For the most part, it’s just the little details that keep the film from really hitting its full potential.

I’ve also got to take a minute to call out the film’s rather dreadful old-age makeup: the constant flopping between past and present obviously necessitates this but there’s absolutely nothing believable about Rodriguez’s “present day” makeup. I’m willing to wager that this was due to budgetary constraints and, as above, is definitely not a critical issue: I’m reminded of how much I enjoy cheap Italian zombie films, despite the fact that the makeup often resembled lumpy oatmeal. It only seems to be an issue here since we spend so much time with “old” Dulce: it’s kind of like having your rubber-suited monster in every single shot…it gets a little hard to properly suspend that disbelief.

When all is said and done, however, The House At the End of Time is a more than worthy accomplishment. Low-key, creepy and intelligent, the film has all the earmarks of a genuine sleeper and bodes good things for Hidalgo’s future. To use one final comparison: imagine the film as an old, reliable vehicle. It may take a few tries to get the motor started but, once it’s chugging away, you have no doubt that it’ll get you to the destination. As I’ve said before: you could ask for a whole lot worse.

2/14/15 (Part Two): Blame the Cat

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Adi Shankar, Anna Kendrick, auteur theory, Bosco, childhood trauma, cinema, colorful films, dark comedies, disturbing films, Ella Smith, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Gemma Arterton, hallucinations, horror, horror film, horror movies, insanity, Jacki Weaver, Marjane Satrapi, Maxime Alexandre, mental breakdown, mental illness, Michael R. Perry, mother-son relationships, Movies, Mr. Whiskers, Oliver Bernet, Paul Chahidi, Persepolis, psychopaths, Ryan Reynolds, Sam Spruell, serial killers, Stanley Townsend, talking animal, talking animals, talking cat, talking dog, The Voices, Udo Kramer, vibrant films

For the most part, live-action “talking animal” movies are awful. Sure, you get the occasional Babe (1995) or Homeward Bound (1993) in the batch but most films in this particular sub-genre are rather abysmal: pitched at the lowest-common denominator, full of bad CGI, “peanut butter mouth” and dumb humor, most live-action talking animal flicks are only good for torturing doting parents unlucky enough to be caught in their orbit. Even the “good” talking animal films tend to be family-focused or comedies: to the best of my knowledge, the only “serious” talking animal film out there is Baxter (1989), Jérôme Boivin’s disturbing fable about a philosophical, if psychotic, dog who kills indiscriminately while we “hear” his thoughts. One is, indeed, the loneliest number.

To this incredibly exclusive group, let’s add the newest film by Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian auteur behind the superb animated film Persepolis (2007): The Voices (2015) is not only the best talking animal film to come out in decades, it’s also one of the most intriguing, disturbing and colorful films I’ve ever seen. In many ways, The Voices is what you would get if you threw Repulsion (1965) and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) into a blender and had Wes Anderson serve up the smoothies. If that sounds like your drink, belly up to the bar for one wild and wooly good time.

Meet Jerry (Ryan Reynolds), our cheerful, sweet and slightly naive protagonist. Jerry works at a bathroom fixtures wholesaler, never has an unkind word for anyone and lives above an abandoned bowling alley with his faithful dog, Bosco, and his aloof cat, Mr. Whiskers. Jerry’s a happy, friendly kind of guy but he’s also go a few problems. He’s lonely, for one, since he’s so painfully shy that he can never get the nerve up to talk to any girls, including Fiona (Gemma Arterton), his office crush. He’s also regularly seeing a court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver), for some sort of unspecified childhood trauma. And then, of course, there’s the little issue about Bosco and Mr. Whiskers: while many folks talk to their pets, Jerry’s got to be one of the only ones who actually holds back-and-forth conversations with them. That’s right, folks: Jerry’s got himself a couple of talking animals.

Jerry’s talking animals are a little different from most, however. For one thing, they’re not quite benevolent: while Bosco seems like a nice enough, if slightly dopey, kinda guy, Mr. Whiskers is a real sociopath. Snarky, foul-mouthed and a firm advocate of violence as conflict resolution, Mr. Whiskers is like a feline version of Trainspotting’s (1996) psychotic Begbie. The other way in which Jerry’s animals are different from the ones in most talking animal films is…well, it’s because they aren’t actually talking. You see, sweet little Jerry is also completely, totally insane, a character trait that he does a remarkably good job of hiding from the outside world. Driven over the deep-end by a patently terrible childhood involving his equally demented mother and abusive father, Jerry has a tenuous relationship with reality, at best.

Disaster strikes when Jerry finally gets up the nerve to ask out Fiona, only for her to stand him up on their resulting date. The pair end up running into each other after Fiona’s car breaks down and Jerry offers her a lift: a bizarre accident on an isolated, country road leads to Fiona’s shocking death and sends a panicked Jerry straight back to the wise counsel of his pets. Bosco tells Jerry that he needs to do the right thing and report the incident to the police. Mr. Whiskers, however, has a slightly different take on the situation: if Jerry comes clean, his future is going to include an awful lot of non-consensual prison sex…his only recourse, according to the cat, is to dispose of the body.

As Jerry tries to figure out what to do, even more disaster looms over the horizon: Lisa (Anna Kendrick), another of Jerry’s co-workers, is smitten with him and coming dangerously close to figuring out his secret. Will Jerry be able to suppress his darker instincts, take his meds and rejoin the land of the lucid or has Fiona’s death opened up a Pandora’s Box that will go on to consume everyone around them? Regardless of the outcome, you know one thing: Bosco and Mr. Whiskers are always ready with an encouraging word.

When press first came out regarding Satrapi’s film, I was struck by her desire to throw herself headfirst into a horror film: after all, her previous films, Persepolis, Chicken With Plums (2011) and The Gang of the Jotas (2012) were the furthest things possible from genre films. In certain ways, it seemed like Satrapi was interested in making a horror movie strictly for the novelty factor, which is always a dangerous route to take (I’m looking at you, Kevin Smith). When someone “dabbles” in something, there’s always a chance that the results are going to be half-assed or, at the very best, significantly flawed. After watching the results, however, I really only have one thing to say: All hail Marjane Satrapi, one of the boldest, freshest and most ingenious “new” faces in the world of horror.

In every way, The Voices is a revelation. The film looks astounding, for one thing, with a visual flair that’s the equal of Wes Anderson’s most candy-coated moments. Indeed, the film looks so eye-popping, colorful and gorgeous that it’s tempting to just stare at the images as if one were watching a particularly lovely slideshow. All of the colors in the film are unbelievably vibrant and genuinely beautiful: one of the neatest motifs in the film is the repeated use of pink and pastel colors, something which gives the whole demented masterpiece something of the feel of a Herschell Gordon Lewis-directed Easter special. Veteran cinematographer Maxime Alexandre (Alexandre Aja’s resident camera guy, as well as the man behind the lens of Franck Khalfoun’s equally colorful Maniac (2012) remake) paints such a lovely picture with his images that it’s easy to forget we’re watching a film about an insane killer. One of Satrapi’s greatest coups is that she has such respect for the material and the film: the quality, literally, shines through the whole production.

The script, by longtime TV scribe Michael R. Perry, is rock-solid, full of smart twists and turns, as well as some truly great dialogue. One of the greatest joys in The Voices is listening to the way that Bosco and Mr. Whiskers (both voiced by Reynolds) feint, maneuver and verbally spar with each other throughout the course of the film. They, obviously, represent the proverbial angel and devil on his shoulders but nothing about the film is ever that obvious. Just when it seems as if things are starting to fall into predictable patterns, the film throws us another curve-ball, such as the instantly classic bit where Jerry starts to take his meds and we finally see the true “reality” of his living situation. In a genre that can often have one or the other but doesn’t always have both, The Voices is that rarest of things: a smart, witty, hard-core horror film that also looks and sounds amazing.

And make no bones about it: The Voices rolls its sleeves up and gets dirty with the best of ’em. For a filmmaker with no previous experience in horror, Satrapi displays an uncannily deft touch with the gore elements: while the film never wallows in its bloodshed (certain key scenes are staged in ways that deliberately minimize what we see), it can also be brutal and shocking. More importantly, the film can also be genuinely frightening: when things really go off the rails, in the final act, the tone shifts from playful to outright horrifying in the blink of an eye. If this is Satrapi’s first shot at a horror film, I’ll spend an eternity of birthday wishes on a follow-up: she’s an absolute natural and, in a genre with a depressingly small pool of female voices, an absolute necessity.

One of the things that really puts The Voices over the top (and another testament to Satrapi’s skill behind the camera) is the stellar quality of the acting. The film has a killer cast, no two ways about it: Ryan Reynolds, Anna Kendrick, Gemma Arterton, Jacki Weaver, Ella Smith…any and all of these folks have turned in more than their fair share of great performances. A great cast doesn’t always indicate a great film, however: plenty of notable names have been attached to absolute dogs. In this case, however, each member of the ensemble compliments each other perfectly, allowing for a completely immersive experience.

Say what you will about Ryan Reynolds but his performance in Buried (2010) was absolutely masterful: his work in The Voices is even better. Reynolds is an actor who lives or dies by the dichotomy between his boyish good looks and slightly unhinged demeanor, ala Bradley Cooper, and his performance as Jerry takes it all to another level. Alternately sympathetic, likable, pathetic and terrifying, this is the kind of performance that should get people talking: at the very least, I find it impossible to believe that he won’t end up on at least a few “year-end” lists. It’s always a dicey proposition when an actor needs to portray someone who’s mentally unstable: Elijah Wood found the perfect balance in Maniac and Reynolds does the same here.

The rest of the cast is equally great: Anna Kendrick brings enough of an edge to her typically bubbly persona to keep us wondering about her actual mental state, while Jacki Weaver, who was so good as Aunt Gwen in Stoker (2013), makes her psychiatrist the perfect combination of quirky and caring. Arterton, meanwhile, manages to make the potentially clichéd, unlikable character of Fiona duly sympathetic: she’s not a “mean girl” looking down her nose at a social misfit…she a real person who doesn’t appreciate unwanted advances. As with everything else in the film, it’s the kind of characterization we don’t get enough of in horror films.

Ultimately, my praise of Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices can be summed up thusly: it’s a ridiculously self-assured, stylish and unique film that manages to constantly surprise, while finding myriad ways to upend the “psycho killer” sub-genre. While I thought Persepolis was an amazing film, The Voices practically comes with my name on it: it’s like handing a carnivore a slab of prime Kobe beef. Visually stunning, smart, packed with great performances and featuring two of the best animal performances in years (Bosco and Mr. Whiskers deserve their own franchises), The Voices is a truly singular experience.

As a lifelong horror fan who watches more than his fair share of horror films, let me close with my highest possible recommendation: The Voices is an absolute must-see and Marjane Satrapi is one of the most exciting, fascinating new voices in the field. I absolutely loved this film and I’m willing to wager that you will, too. I’m also willing to wager that if you have pets, you might never look at them the same way again.

2/4/15: Bones to Pick

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Ali Marhyar, archaeologists, As Above So Below, Ben Feldman, catacombs, childhood trauma, cinema, co-writers, Cosme Castro, Dante's Inferno, dead father, disappointing films, Drew Dowdle, Edwin Hodge, film reviews, films, Flamel, found-footage films, François Civil, Hamid Djavadan, horror, horror films, John Erick Dowdle, Leo Hinstin, Marion Lambert, Movies, multiple writers, ossuaries, Perdita Weeks, Philosopher's Stone, Roger Van Hool, set in Paris, suicide, The Descent, trapped underground, visions, writer-director

Let’s get one thing out of the way right off the bat, shall we? John Erick Dowdle’s As Above, So Below (2014) is not a good film. It has many of the elements of a good film, such as a killer location, some genuinely effective scenes and some thought-provoking ideas but this does nothing to change the final outcome: it just isn’t very good. In the same way that both a good and bad meal may contain identical ingredients, writer-director Dowdle’s movie has all of the necessary pieces, yet the end result is a tedious, dull, overtly silly and largely disposable bit of cineplex fluff. Upon finishing the film, I really only had one question, similar to the question I had after finishing Escape From Tomorrow (2013): how, exactly, did this potential souffle turn into mush? Take my hand as we descend into the darkness and let’s see if we can’t figure that out, shall we?

In the interest of fairness, let’s start with the elements that actually work. First, and most obviously, AASB has an absolutely unbeatable location: the legendary catacombs and ossuaries that lie beneath the streets of Paris. To this point, no other filmmaker has really shot down there (at least that I’m aware of), making the ancient site something of an undiscovered territory. Without putting too fine a point on it, the catacombs are absolutely astounding. Not “cool CGI, bro” astounding, mind you, but honest-to-god “your mind has just been blown” astounding. If there is any real reason to sit through AASB (and there are a couple, mind you), the location is absolutely Reason #1, with a bullet. In fact, the only thing that dings the location aspect is that it isn’t utilized enough: too often, the filmmakers resort to substandard chills in obviously fabricated locations when all they had to do was point at the real site and let our goose-flesh do the heavy lifting. If you have any interest in urban exploration (which I most certainly do), this aspect, alone, might make AASB worth a look.

Secondly, certain elements of the storyline work extremely well. While the film often resembles a confusing hodge-podge of Dan Brown-esque historical adventuring and sub-standard found-footage tropes, the central narrative is just intriguing enough (most of the time) to carry the audience through some extremely choppy waters. Extra points for the myriad references and connections to Dante’s Inferno, a classical work of genre fiction that is relatively untapped in these modern times. While the film, ostensibly, revolves around Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) searching for Flamel’s legendary Philosopher’s Stone, it’s mostly an excuse to dump the cast (almost literally) right into the Inferno. When Dowdle and company focus on the Dante aspect (the “abandon hope” bit is particularly well done), AASB is not only interesting but fairly unique: the gold beneath the mud, so to speak.

Thirdly, AASB contains a handful of highly effective scenes/scares, some of which end up being quite memorable. There’s a scene involving a mysteriously ringing telephone that comes perilously close to becoming a minor classic and the visual of the burning car is actually pretty damn cool. The film’s conclusion, which I won’t spoil here (although I will bet money that you’ll figure it out before Dowdle elects to reveal it), is also pretty neat looking. One of my favorite bits in the film, however, has to be the scene where Scarlett figures out that the group needs to keeping heading down: the bit where she bashes a hole in the floor, allowing water to flood into the unseen space below them, is appropriately Lovecraftian and reminded me (favorably) of the scene in Mann’s The Keep (1983) where the soldiers break through into the “abyss.” There’s an appropriate sense of space to many of the film’s underground scenes that makes the film simultaneously claustrophobic and impossibly large: it’s a great trick and definitely one of AASB’s hidden aces.

And there you have it, folks: the positives, benefits and virtues that can be found in As Above, So Below. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at the rest, shall we? Spoiler alert: it ain’t pretty.

Right off the bat, Dowdle’s film is populated with some of the most obnoxious, tedious, hateful and just plain awful characters I’ve ever had the misfortune of “knowing.” Familiar with the term “cannon fodder?” Dowdle and co-writer Drew (his brother) sure are, since there isn’t a single person in the film worth saving. The chief offenders, of course, are Weeks’ Scarlett and Ben Feldman’s (of Mad Men fame) George. Taken separately, the characters are whiny, obnoxious, nonsensical and prone to some exceptionally rash, stupid decisions. When put together, however, the pair form the Voltron of Awfulness: they’re like a black hole that sucks anything good straight into the cold reaches of the cosmos, never to be seen again. Even worse, they’re both essentially the same character: in fact, their personalities are so interchangeable that I began to refer to them as “female George” and “male Scarlett” in my notes.

The combined wretchedness of Weeks and Feldman’s performances should not take away from the rest of the cast, however: no one makes out like a bandit in this. At best, as with the case of Edwin Hodge’s Benji, the characters (and performances) are clichéd, rote and highly predictable. At worst, as with Cosme Castro’s ludicrous La Taupe or Francois Civil’s blustery Papillon, the characters take us right out of the action (such as it is), reminding us that we’re watching a bunch of actors tromp around in darkly lit tunnels for upwards of 90 minutes. I can honestly say that I never found a character I could root for: even by the film’s rather upbeat conclusion, I was hoping a sudden earthquake would swallow the idiots and send ’em straight back to the Devil’s living room.

To further add insult to injury, the camerawork is genuinely nauseating, as if someone took a look at the seasick camera motions of progenitors The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008) and said: “I can make it even shakier.” When the film is action-packed, the camera shakes. When the film is quiet, the camera shakes. When the group is stressed: shakes. When they’re relaxed: shakes. By the time the whole damned thing was through, the only thing I wanted was some Dramamine and a flat space of carpet to lie down on. This shaky camera issue becomes even more pronounced, if possible, during the film’s handful of action sequences, such as the stone monster attack scene. While I have a tendency to hate overly kinetic action films like The Bourne Identity (2002), AASB made that film feel like it was shot in slo-mo. It’s so hard to figure out what’s going on in any of the chaotic scenes that I eventually just stopped trying.

The film also constantly recalls better films, such as The Descent (2005), by virtue of ripping them off. The scene where Benji gets stuck in the tunnel should be familiar, as are any of the ones where the group realize they’re going in circles (pick your reference for that one). The character of George, who makes a hobby of breaking into places and fixing things (I shit you not), feels like he’s from at least four different films, while Scarlett’s driven, whiny and high-strung group leader might be more familiar to folks when she was Heather, the doomed director from Blair Witch. Time after time, AASB seems to parallel other films, both consciously and unconsciously: it’s like a long, sustained case of deja vu. Hell, there’s even a nod to the infamous “closet vortex” scene from Poltergeist (1982) when Papillon gets pulled into the car, although the CGI utilized here makes the ’80s film look like Avatar (2009), by comparison.

Not to be overly mean, here, but I have to say it: one of the film’s biggest issues is that it wildly vacillates between “reasonably intelligent” and “gap-mouthed drooling,” often within the same sequence. Take, for example, the sequence where Scarlett realizes that she had the wrong stone and needs to go back to get the correct one. The scene is staged and executed exactly like a video game, with Scarlett running, jumping, climbing and punching rock monsters like she’s trying to earn experience points. It reaches its loony apex when she stumbles across the specter of her deceased father: stopping just long enough to hug him and apologize for “not being there,” Scarlett takes off as he fades away. It’s almost as if Dowdle thought: Hmm…I could take the time to give this an extra beat or two, for emotional resonance…or I could just get back to running and jumping.

This lack of reason ends up infecting just about every area of the film: characters act in inconsistent, dumb ways; various elements are introduced, only to be summarily dropped almost instantly (try as I might, I can figure out no good reason for either the ageless Knight Templar or the cowled, “scary face” guy that the group bump into); and there’s no rhyme or reason to the whole Philosopher’s Stone thing: it ends up being the worst kind of McGuffin, since it’s proved to be largely unnecessary (from what I can tell).

And, finally, the film just isn’t scary, despite being billed as a horror film. There are about five legitimate jump scares in the film, one of which (the figure appearing behind Benji) is so moldy that you might need a breathing mask. The others range from good (the phone) to inane (the cloaked guy), although the film gets the most mileage out of my absolute least favorite genre trope: the past coming back to haunt characters. If I’ve seen this once, I’ve seen it a thousand times and it’s just never effective: every character in here sees their dead brother/father/child/lover so many times that it just becomes tedious. Similar to the way in which so many films fall back on the hoary old “possession” cliché, using “past trauma” as a scare factor is really just a way for the filmmakers to admit there’s nothing under the hood: rather than take the time to come up with any genuinely unique, frightening visions, we just get the standard “dead dad/brother under water/person in a burning car” shit. If we actually got to know and like the characters, perhaps these would bear weight. As it was, however, it just made me hate the characters AND their dead relatives that much more.

Here’s the thing: perhaps I sound so bitter over Dowdle’s film because it had such potential to be a real winner. A found-footage film set in the Paris catacombs? Friends and neighbors, that pitch practically prints money, at least for a jaded horror-hound like me. In the end, however, I probably should’ve listened to my gut: after slogging through Dowdle’s previous films, Quarantine (2008) (a direct remake of the Spanish [REC] (2007)) and Devil (2010), I should have figured this wouldn’t be smooth sailing. While critics seemed to have enjoyed Devil and audiences liked Quarantine enough to warrant a sequel, I must admit to disliking them both pretty evenly: if nothing else, Dowdle seems to be a remarkably consistent filmmaker, which surely counts for something. With irritating characters, a squandered setting and enough ludicrous moments to insure that the palm-mark never left my face, As Above, So Below is one of the most disappointing films I’ve seen in some time. Some day, a filmmaker will make a genuinely interesting film about the catacombs. This isn’t it, of course, not by a long shot. For the time being, however, it is, quite literally, the best we have.

 

2/3/15: It’s Always the Quiet Ones

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Aloha Oe, alternate title, Carl Marznap, Carl Panzram, child abuse, childhood trauma, cinema, crime film, dark films, dark tourism, Dark Tourist, disturbing films, dramas, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frank John Hughes, gang rape, grief tourism, Grief Tourist, hallucinations, Hawaiian songs, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, homophobia, horror, insanity, isolation, juvenile detention facility, juvenile offenders, loners, Lovely Molly, Melanie Griffith, mental breakdown, mental illness, Michael Cudlitz, misanthropes, misanthropic, mother-son relationships, Movies, murdered prostitutes, Nayo Wallace, Pruitt Taylor Vince, serial killers, Suri Krishnamma, Suzanne Quast, Taxi Driver, transgender, Travis Bickle, twist ending, unpleasant films, voice-over narration

In certain cases, I can predict exactly what I’ll be getting when I sit down with a previously unknown film. Sometimes the cover art will give clues or there’ll be some strategic stunt casting that sets off alarm bells (anything with a WWE personality, for example, is probably not going to be “a contender”). It might be a filmmaker that I’m familiar with, giving me a general idea of what lays ahead, or a screenwriter that’s intrigued me with other scripts. In some cases, certain films just project an aura of…well, let’s just call it “compromise” and be generous, shall we? These are the equivalent of the direct-to-video detritus that used to line store shelves back in the glory days of VHS: they’re still here, of course, although now they clog virtual racks rather than physical ones.

There are always those films, however, that end up defying, destroying and resetting expectations. Every once in a while, a film that might seem completely forgettable from the outside ends up surprising me and boring straight into my brain-pan. One of my favorite examples of this is Eduardo Sanchez’s Lovely Molly (2011), a film which seems so generic and bland from the outside that it feels like you’ve been dipped in lava once it reveals itself to be an absolutely unholy hell of an experience. Without a doubt, Lovely Molly is one of the single most unpleasant films I’ve ever watched: it’s also completely unforgettable and, quite possibly, one of the greatest unknown films of the 2000s. While Suri Krishnamma’s Dark Tourist (2012) isn’t quite the film that Lovely Molly is, it still managed to obliterate my low expectations, positioning itself as a sort of cross between Taxi Driver (1976) and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). When Dark Tourist is good, it’s absolutely riveting and, easily, one of the most grueling, unpleasant cinematic experiences I’ve had in months. This is definitely not a film that can (or will) appeal to everyone. If you’re ready to take a trip to some seriously damaged locales, however, Dark Tourist is saving you a seat on the bus.

Our protagonist is Jim (Michael Cudlitz), a misanthropic security guard who works the over-night shift at some sort of factory. Via his near constant voiceover, we learn a few handy things about our wannabe hero: he absolutely loves his solitude, eschewing human contact whenever possible; he’s obsessed with serial killers and their lives to the point where he makes yearly “pilgrimages” to check out their childhood homes, murder sites, etc.; he’s a virulent homophobe, racist and sexist, who decries Hollywood as “for the faggots,” bitches about his “Jew fucker” doctor and cheerfully describes his co-workers as “sluts, drug addicts, whore mongers and child molesters.” That Jim is able to be this terrible of a human being while still maintaining the outward semblance of normalcy is admirable, to say the least: we know how fucked up the guy is, since we’re getting the info straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. To everyone else, however, he just comes across as a standoffish, polite but cold guy with some weird hobbies. In other words, the epitome of “he seemed like such a nice, quiet guy.”

For this year’s trip, Jim has set his sights on the life and times of one Carl Marznap (based on real-life serial killer/monster Carl Panzram). Marznap was a killer/arsonist who was gang-raped in a juvenile facility and sought to take out his anger on the rest of the world, culminating in burning down a church full of people. Jim traces Marznap’s journey from his boyhood home to the (now abandoned) juvenile facility and the remains of the burned church, trying to get some sense of who the real Carl was. Along the way, Jim strikes up a tentative friendship with a lonely diner waitress (Melanie Griffith) and stays at a fleabag motel where the constant activities of the resident hooker, Iris (Suzanne Quast), start to provoke some rather “Travis Bickle-esque” feelings in him. Soon, Jim is having a hard time concentrating on his “vacation,” a situation which becomes even more difficult once he starts to see visions of an adult Marznap (Taylor Pruitt Vince). As Jim’s grasp on reality gets more and more precarious, he finds himself rocketing towards a revelation that is both impossibly sad and unrelentingly horrifying.

One of the greatest tricks that Krishnamma and screenwriter Frank John Hughes pull with Dark Tourist is making the misanthropic Jim such a thoroughly fascinating character. Chalk this up to a combination of good writing and a great performance by Cudlitz (who instantly reminded me of a younger Ron Perlman) but it’s a real coup: Jim should have been an absolutely miserable character to spend 80 minutes with but we still end up on his side (kind of/sort of) right up until the whole thing goes ass-over-tea kettle in a holocaust of violence. For a time, it’s easy to believe that Jim is just a severely damaged individual, ala Travis Bickle, who still has some deep-buried sense of morality, however perverted. When the worm turns, however, we’re smack-dab in Henry territory and it’s a pretty nasty place to be.

Craftwise, Dark Tourist isn’t exactly a home-run. The cinematography is often flat and kind of ugly, at its worst, and serviceable, at best. There’s an unfortunate lens-distortion effect used on the flashback scenes, which is rather cheesy, and the supporting performances range from good (Donna Ponterotto as Jim’s waitress mother) to serviceable (Pruitt Taylor Vince’s performance as Marznap is fine, if rather clichéd and perilously close to a cameo) to rather dreadful (I adore Melanie Griffith but the less said about her awkward, halting performance as Betsy, the better). There’s also an unfortunate tendency to hammer things home a bit hard: the part where Jim’s voice-over explicitly lays out his mental state is way too obvious, especially since the film had been so good at subtly laying out the same notion prior to that.

When the film follows through on its convictions, however, it comes perilously close to being a truly soul-shattering experience. The “twist” is a real gutpunch, which allows the previously foregone conclusion to pack much more emotional weight than it might otherwise have. The violence is sparse but genuinely disturbing when it comes (similar to Henry, if you think about it) and Krishnamma’s use of traditional Hawaiian instrumentals and songs such as “Aloha Oe” help keep the whole thing off kilter. For every familiar beat, Krishnamma throws in something so outside the box that it makes the whole production feel much fresher than it probably should have. This is, without a doubt, the very definition of something being far greater than the sum of its parts.

Ultimately, for as good as Dark Tourist ends up being (and the film is very, very good), it’s still the kind of movie that will have extremely limited appeal. Similar to Simon Rumley’s misery-epics The Living and the Dead (2006) and Red, White & Blue (2010), there is no sunshine to be found here whatsoever. Things begin on a grim note and degrade from there into abject and complete despair: it’s not spoiling a thing to say that nothing in Dark Tourist will end positively because there’s no way it could…Jim (and the world he inhabits) are way too fucked up for any sort of “fairy tale ending.” This is the kind of film that is best described as an “endurance match”: for as much as I respected Krishnamma and Hughes’ bleak vision, I would be extremely wary of anyone who said that they actually enjoyed it. Gentle readers, take note: if you’re not ready to descend to the depths of human depravity, you might want to book passage on an entirely different cruise.

11/16/14 (Part Two): The Dance Commander Cometh

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British comedies, childhood trauma, Chris O'Dowd, cinema, comedies, Cuban Fury, dancers, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, foreign films, Ian McShane, James Griffiths, Kayvan Novak, Movies, Nick Frost, Olivia Colman, public opinion, Rashida Jones, romances, romantic rivalry, romantic-comedies, Rory Kinnear, salsa dancing, Strictly Ballroom, UK films

Fear of public ridicule can be a powerful mitigating factor, even for those of us who consider ourselves “above” such considerations: it can affect how one dresses, walks, talks, eats and slurps soup. Concern over our own self-image can result in “guilty musical pleasures,” “ironic” interests in pop culture and “hate-watching” programs rather than admitting to actually liking something “uncool.” If you think about it, it’s a pretty sad way to live: so concerned with the court of public opinion that you’d rather listen to something “respectable” than blast the Eddie Money cassette that you idolized as a kid. When folks can no longer feel free to leave the house wearing their most comfortable clothes, ladies and gentlemen, than the terrorists, whoever they may be, have truly won.

Bruce Garrett (Nick Frost), the heroic schlub at the heart of James Griffiths’ Cuban Fury (2014), knows all too well the high price of looking “uncool”: as a kid, Bruce was a salsa-dancin’ machine, a bespangled dance floor maestro who had the goods to go all the way. On his way to the championships, however, poor Bruce is accosted by a group of loutish teens who mock his shiny red outfit and beat the crap out of him in an alley. Properly chastised, our faithful protagonist vows never to dance again. We, of course, know better: once the dancing bug has bitten you, all you can do is hold on for dear life.

25 years later, Bruce is a buttoned-down, boring as white toast architect and any dreams of championship gold are too far in the rearview mirror to even consider. He’s got a decent job, a boring life and one of the biggest shit-heel co-workers of all time in Drew (Chris O’Dowd breaking the bank on obnoxious behavior): in other words, he’s probably like most of us. Unlike most of us, however, Bruce has got the dancing fever in his veins and, once in your DNA, you’re never completely free of it. All it takes is a little nudge, a wee reminder of how things used to be…how they could’ve been had the fork in the road gone a bit differently. All it takes is one little incident to change everything…if you let it.

Bruce’s “little incident” comes with his company’s new project manager, the adorably quirky American Julia (Rashida Jones). Bruce is sweet on her but she seems to be way out of his league, although horn-dog Drew, ever the cretin, sees her as “easy pickings.” When Bruce finds out that Julia is taking a salsa dancing class, he suddenly sees an in with her, although it means stepping back into his dreaded past and, once again, donning them dancin’ shoes. In order to prevent himself from looking like the rusty, out-of-step idiot he currently is, Bruce hunts down his old salsa coach, Ron (Ian McShane), and begs him to finish the tutelage he started 25 years earlier. Ron’s still a bit pissed off at Bruce, it turns out (being abandoned by your star pupil during a national championship will do that, apparently), but he eventually shelves his hard feelings and agrees to get Bruce ship-shape enough to duly impress Julia.

Since romantic comedies are nothing without a little rivalry, Drew decides that he’s in love with Julia, too, and determines to sweep her off her feet faster than Bruce can say “cha cha cha.” As he smugly puts it, “Women go and get advice from guys like you about guys like me.” This establishes a rivalry between the two that will result in a parking garage dance-off (impossibly silly but also fun) and will culminate in another salsa championship: will Bruce be able to overcome his old fears, put Drew in the rubbish pile, win the competition and get the girl or will this be another example of “too little, too late?” If you’ve ever seen another romantic comedy in your entire life, I’m reasonably sure you can figure out the answer to this ahead of time.

First off, Cuban Fury might seem a little familiar to fans of quirky British comedies since it is, for the most part, exactly like at least two dozen other similar films, from Kinky Boots (2005) to Brassed Off (1996), from The Full Monty (1997) to Calendar Girls (2003). Specifically, Griffiths’ feature-debut reminds me of the cult-classic Aussie flick Strictly Ballroom (1992), which was also about a neebish overcoming the court of public opinion to succeed on his own terms. For the most part, Cuban Fury does nothing to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack although, to be fair, there’s not much it drops the ball on, either. All of the expected beats/scenes are here: the bit where Bruce’s gay friend finally drags him to a nightclub to “let loose”; the dance-off between Bruce and Drew; the climatic finale at the salsa championship; the training montage…Cuban Fury manages to tick each and every one off the list.

Truth be told, despite its complete familiarity, Cuban Fury is a fun, sweet and spirited little film, full of great performances from the likes of Frost, Jones and O’Dowd (even playing a real asshole, O’Dowd is relentlessly watchable and charismatic: anyone else would have played Drew like a complete Neanderthal but O’Dowd somehow makes him kind of pitiable…kind of) and is a quick, fun watch. The script, written by Jon Brown from an idea by Frost, is full of some nice dialogue (Bruce and Drew trade some snappy zingers throughout the film) and everything gets wrapped up in a pretty tidy package by the end. McShane is great as the grumpy salsa expert, although Jones doesn’t do much noticeably different from any of her other roles: she has some decent chemistry with Frost but no one will mistaken them for star-crossed lovers anytime soon. The film’s many dance scenes are nicely realized, with some effective choreography but, again, nothing mind-blowing: this probably won’t make anyone forget Luhrmann’s debut any time soon.

More than anything, my takeaway from Cuban Fury is thus: if you’re looking for a nice, polite, fairly non-challenging romantic comedy with a good cast, Cuban Fury is for film. At the very least, I find it hard to believe that any audience would walk away from this without a smile on their faces. Will you remember the film a year (or even six months) from now? Highly doubtful. Not everything in life needs to be a grand slam, however: sometimes, you can get the same results with a humble little pop-up into the outfield.

11/1/14 (Part One): Through the Killing Glass

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Absentia, Brenton Thwaites, brother-sister relationships, childhood fears, childhood trauma, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, differing viewpoints, estranged siblings, evil mirror, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, haunted mirror, horror, horror films, horror movies, institutionalized, James Lafferty, Jeff Howard, Karen Gillan, Katee Sackhoff, Miguel Sandoval, Mike Flanagan, Movies, Oculus, paranormal investigators, possession, Rashomon, Rory Cochrane, voice-over narration, writer-director-editor

Is truth absolute or relative? It’s a question that philosophers and social scientists have been asking for pretty much as long as the disciplines have existed. If we perceive something as “true,” does that make it so? The vast majority of us can agree that 2+2=4 but is this because the math behind it is absolute or because enough people agree that it is to make it so? What if 2+2 actually equals 5 and we’ve all been deluding ourselves, accepting as “true” something that only exists thanks to our shared rationalizations?

The question of “What is truth?” or, in variation, “What is real?,” is one that films have been asking (and answering) practically from their genesis. When the Lumiere brothers first shocked audiences with the dread notion that an actual train might rampage from the screen straight into the theater, there was much discussion about capturing the “reality” of life and putting it on the big screen. Some fifty years later, legendary auteur Akira Kurosawa would explore the idea of absolute vs relative truth with his classic Rashomon (1950), which explored the vagaries of a single terrible crime through multiple, opposing points of view, leading audiences to wonder whether there could ever be “one truth” when multiple individuals are involved. And now, over sixty years past Rashomon, we once again visit the concept of truth with writer-director-editor Mike Flanagan’s stylish slow-burner Oculus (2013), in which childhood memories and fears come back to haunt the grown children, leading them (and the audience) to wonder just what is true and what is a horrible nightmare.

Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) has been under a psychiatric hold for years after some undetermined childhood trauma: after being deemed fit to re-enter society by his shrink (Miguel Sandoval), Tim must now make the difficult reintegration back into “the real world.” Luckily, he’s got his sister, Kaylie (Karen Gillan), for support: they both lived through the same trauma, so who better to lean on? When Tim moves back into the old family house with Kaylie, he ends up receiving a pretty huge shock: the supposedly cursed mirror that Tim held responsible for the tragic deaths of their parents is back in Kaylie’s possession. Kaylie, for her part, is revealed to be more than a little obsessive: while Tim has spent his years in the looney-bin trying to forget the evil mirror, Kaylie has spent the same amount of time tracking it back down, with the ultimate goal of destroying the cursed glass once and for all.

This, of course, is not as easy as it first seems: the mirror appears to possess a feral intelligence and ruthlessly protects itself, confusing both Tim and Kaylie with hallucinations and false memories. Or does it? You see, neither Tim nor Kaylie seem to be playing with full decks and we get the notion, early on, that all is not as it seems. Things become even more complex when we begin to get flashbacks of their childhood incidents, their individual memories of which completely contradict each other. Who’s actually telling the truth, Tim or Kaylie? Is the mirror actually haunted or are these just two very damaged individuals who need to be locked away from polite society? What actually happened to their parents all those years ago? And if the mirror really is malevolent…what does it actually want? By the film’s powerful twist conclusion, we’ll get the answers to all of these questions, along with a host of others that we didn’t even think to ask.

Mike Flanagan first came to my attention with the indie horror film Absentia (2011), a subtle, creepy little movie about what happens when a woman’s long-missing husband mysteriously shows up again, as if nothing had ever happened. While I enjoyed the ideas and measured pace behind Absentia, there was something about the film that just left me cold: I was left with the notion that Flanagan was a potentially fascinating writer-director who just needed a slightly better vehicle. I’m very happy to report that Oculus is, indeed, just that vehicle and manages to surpass his preceding film in every way imaginable.

Look-wise, Oculus is an elegant, stately affair that fits in nicely with the polished aesthetic of recent films like Insidious (2010) or The Conjuring (2013). That being said, the film is actually a good deal more vicious than either of those entries, coming in as a more intelligent, well-made variation on Alexandre Aja’s gore-athon Mirrors (2008). Oculus gets lots of mileage out of the notion that Tim and Kaylie might not be perceiving reality in the same way that we are: the thoroughly uncomfortable scene where Kaylie gets ready to take a big bite out of a juicy apple that’s probably a lightbulb is a real eye-opener. This particular conceit works so brilliantly in the film precisely because it’s so intrinsically tied with the notion of true: if we can’t believe what we see, how do we actually know what’s true and what’s an illusion?

Structurally, Oculus employs a dizzying melding of the past and present, as we witness two separate timelines (Tim and Kaylie as kids, in the past, and adults, in the present) play out, oftentimes simultaneously. By the film’s rollercoaster final third, the two timelines have become so connected that they seem to overlap and blur into each other: as Kaylie and Tim get more and more lost down the rabbit hole of their childhood, so, too, does the audience get more and more lost trying to figure out what’s taking place when. While this could have become unnecessarily frustrating and overly complex, the tactic works like a charm: the film is so tense and chaotic by the end that I was, literally, riveted to the front of my seat.

One of Oculus’ biggest assets is a whip-smart script, courtesy of Flanagan and co-writer Jeff Howard. Rather than dumbing things down for an (assumed) tuned-out audience, Flanagan floors it and lets spectators hang on for dear life: Oculus is absolutely not a film that rewards lazy viewing, as so much of the film happens in the margins. Oftentimes, what Kaylie and Tim don’t say to each other is more telling than what they do. There also seems to be a refreshing lack of holes in the storyline: while we’re still left with doubts by the end credits, the most important realization is that Flanagan and Howard had none…everything about Oculus speaks to careful planning and exact execution.

On an acting-level, Oculus is, likewise, rock-solid: Gillan and Thwaites make for an appealingly sympathetic pair of protagonists: even when they appear to be deep in the thrall of complete insanity, we really push for them to pull through. There’s a deep vein of tragedy that runs through Oculus (or, perhaps, fatalism?), similar to films like The Burrowers (2008). Thanks to the jagged performances and forbidding atmosphere, we’re never far from the notion that this all will end horribly: when it does, there’s not so much the idea of “calling the ending” as there is Shakespearian pre-destination. These characters will not fail because they are bad people: they will fail because they, like all humans, are fallible and bound by their fate. Oculus is one of the few modern horror films that actually earns the word tragedy, imbuing it with every inch of the classical definition it deserves.

All in all, Flanagan’s Oculus really is an exceptional, powerful film: it should easily appeal to fans of “prestige” horror films, despite the occasional gore scene that “goes to 11,” shall we say. There’s a rare intelligence and grace here that marks Flanagan as exactly the sort of filmmaker I was hoping he would turn out to be: with any luck, he’ll continue to create individual, memorable works like this for some time. While there will always be a soft spot in my heart for mindless slashers and creature features, I’ll take intelligent, mature horror like this any day. If nothing else, Oculus might make you think twice every time you walk by a mirror or catch movement out of the corner of your eye: like any good horror film, it burrows its way into your psyche, taking up residence in the attic of your mind like so many family ghosts.

10/25/14 (Part One): Where’s Howie When You Need Him?

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31 Days of Halloween, brothers, Bryan Rasmussen, childhood fears, childhood trauma, cinema, creature feature, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Eric Stolze, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, Gattlin Griffith, Jonny Weston, Kelcie Stranahan, kids in peril, Little Monsters, monster movies, monsters under the bed, Movies, Musetta Vander, nightmares, Peter Holden, Sam Kindseth, Silent Night, Steven C. Miller, The Gate, Tyler Steelman, Under the Bed

If there’s one fear that’s pretty universal among kids, I’d be more than willing to wager that it’s the old “monster under the bed.” For generations of youngsters, bedtime consists of a series of arcane processes – not touching the floor, staying under the covers, keeping the light on – solely designed to prevent one from becoming a late-night snack. As children grow older and get their first experiences with the “real” world, however, the omnipresent threat of monsters under the bed diminishes, replaced by the all-too real knowledge that plenty of flesh-and-blood monsters are around to worry about without stressing over the imaginary ones. For a time, however, monsters under the bed are as real as it gets for kids (just watch the mortifying Little Monsters (1989) for evidence of that) and, undoubtedly, perfect fodder for a horror film.

This, of course, leads us to director Steven C. Miller’s Under the Bed (2012), the follow-up to his excellent remake of the Santa-themed slasher Silent Night (2012). Working from a script by Eric Stolze (who also wrote the upcoming werewolf flick Late Phases (2014)), Miller turns in a glossy, rather bombastic, effort that has a similar visual style to films like Insidious (2010) and The Conjuring (2013), yet ends up being a much more violent, graphic affair. If anything, Under the Bed’s rather formidable violence is one of the film’s big issues, as it sets up a decidedly schizophrenic tone: at times, the film feels like it’s pitched at young adults, yet features a scene where someone’s head is slowly ripped into several pieces. Suffice to say, Mr. Rogers would not approve.

Under the Bed kicks off as Neal (Jonny Weston) returns home for the first time in years, coming back to his younger brother, Paulie (Gattlin Griffith) and father, Terry (Peter Holden, looking for all the world like a surly Zach Galifianakis). It would appear that Neal has spent time in some sort of care facility, apparently due to the traumatic death of his mother in a house-fire. The relationship between Terry and Neal seems to strained, indicating that the father may hold his son more accountable for his mother’s death than he lets on. When Neal returns, however, he seems to be more on edge than ever: he’s afraid that the evil he fled years ago is still there…and he would be absolutely correct.

Turns out that Neal had a run-in with an actual monster years ago, a beast which now appears to be stalking his little brother. Terry won’t listen to this foolishness, however: he’s convinced that Neal had a nervous breakdown and is now back to “infect” his other son with the same foolishness. Only Neal and Paulie know the truth, however: something hungry, evil and vicious lives under the bed in Paulie’s room. As Neal and Paulie inch ever closer to confronting this source of ultimate evil, this monster that was also responsible for their mother’s death, they find a kindred spirit (of sorts) in neighbor Cara (Kelcie Stranahan), whose little brothers think Neal and Paulie are just about the creepiest things in the neighborhood. Aid also comes from an unlikely source when the boys’ new step-mom, Angela (Musetta Vander), comes to believe them and throws her support into the ring. Will all of this be enough to destroy childhood fears made flesh or will the brothers and their allies become just more midnight snacks for the creature?

For the most part, Under the Bed is a perfectly decent, middle-of-the-road “kids versus monsters” story, albeit one told with the utter seriousness of a biblical epic. Truth be told, the bombastic, over-the-top tone of the film, reinforced by everything from the overly shouty performances (Jonny Weston, in particular, can effortlessly play to the back rafters) to the brash, loud musical score, tends to wear one down after a while: for the life of me, I found myself wishing that everyone, monster included, which just chill out and have a quiet sit-down by the time the film was rushing towards its manic climax. There’s just too much of everything here: too much shouting, too many loud musical stingers, too much “acting” when something more subtle would suffice. Under the Bed isn’t a bad film, by any stretch, but it is an extremely tedious one, which might actually be a worse sin.

Which, ultimately, is a bit of a bummer, since there’s plenty to like here. The overall storyline, about the demonic presence under the bed, is a solid one, if hammered home with way too heavy a hand and the creature/gore effects are expertly executed. In particular, the scenes where Neal goes into the “under the bed world” to save Paulie are pretty fabulous: I really wish we got to spend more time in that apocalyptic world, with ash floating through the air like snow, but the most we get are a couple fast, rather confusingly edited bits that are the equivalent of a famous actor making a quick cameo. I was also dutifully impressed by the filmmakers’ ability to kill off kids and main characters at the drop of a hat: usually, both group tend to be fairly sacred cows in films like this but there’s the refreshing notion that no one is safe, which tends to up the stakes considerably.

If anything, Under the Bed reminds me of a combination of the disappointing, Guillermo del Toro produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010) and the minor ’80s classic, The Gate (1987), both of which focused on demonic beasties harassing spunky kids. The film borrows its slick visual sense and tone from the former, while it gets some of its violence and story structure from the latter. This also means, of course, that the film seems to have precious little identity of its own, a matter further complicated by the aforementioned extreme violence: often times, the film is completely appropriate to younger audiences, similar to The Gate. At times, however, the violence zooms straight into Grand Guignol territory (that head-ripping bit is a real corker and this comes from a guy who’s pretty much the definition of jaded.

Ultimately, Under the Bed isn’t a bad film but it’s much less than what it could have been, especially when one considers just how great Silent Night was: the “backward” progression seems a bit worrisome, especially for a director with a relatively small body of work. With a lot more restraint and a clearer goal, Under the Bed might have been a minor classic, just like The Gate. As it stands, however, the film should appeal to monster lovers and curious horror-philes but probably won’t have much of a bigger resonance past that. Which, again, is a shame, since it came so close to being a contender.

 

5/28/14: Your Life, Minus the Bad Parts

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abused children, Brendan Fletcher, child abuse, childhood trauma, cinema, cutter, Dead Poets Society, film reviews, films, Final Cut, Genevieve Buechner, Jim Caviezel, memories, Michael St. John Smith, Mimi Kuzyk, Mira Sorvino, Movies, near future, Omar Naim, Robin Williams, sci-fi, science-fiction, Stephanie Romanov, Tak Fujimoto, tech-thriller, The Final Cut, thriller, Vincent Gale, Where the Buffalo Roam, writer-director

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could edit our own lives, go back through the “footage” of our years and remove all of the embarrassing, sad, shameful and hateful moments? In a perfect world, perhaps, we’d be able to remember just what we wanted: every golden sunset, ever moment of empowerment, every true moment of happiness, would stand in greater relief without all of the “other stuff” to clog it up. We would be able to remember our first kiss forever, while completely forgetting every racist, sexist, despicable or stupid thing we ever did. It sounds pretty great, on the outside, but it’s also pretty foolish. Indeed, it’s often the bad stuff, the moments that we’re most ashamed of, that help us to grow the most, to form our worldviews and personalities. It’s impossible to know love without knowing hate: good doesn’t exist without the presence of evil. We know all of this, of course, but we’re also humans and humans, by default, are pretty foolish creatures. We’re always looking for the perfect, idealized version of ourselves, sometimes to the deficit (or destruction) of those around us. It’s just what we do, really.

Omar Naim’s Final Cut (2004) examines not only this particularly human phenomena but also the tendency to whitewash (or tar, depending on the situation) someone after they’ve died. Dead people have a difficult time defending themselves, after all, so it’s no difficult thing to proclaim someone as either “hero” or “goat” after they’re unable to do anything about it. While it’s always disheartening to see how quickly people will rush to dig up dirt on a newly dead celebrity, it’s no less worrisome to see how willing some folks are to deify undeserving people. After all, if the memories of a person’s bad deeds can be erased from the public conscience, doesn’t that, in some twisted way, absolve them of their actions? It’s an intriguing idea and one that the film examines, at some length, with rather varying degrees of success.

Alan (Robin Williams) is a “cutter” in the near-future, a craftsman charged with editing the lifelong memories of recently deceased people into attractive, bite-sized pieces that are perfectly suitable for hi-tech memorial services/funerals called Rememories. Alan is one of the best cutters in the business, which means that he’s particularly adept at cutting out all of the nasty little bits that would tend to be upsetting in a public setting: for every life accomplishment, Alan cuts out a memory of savagely beating one’s spouse…for every moment of infidelity, child abuse and hatred that Alan removes, he leaves in the moments of charity, love and joy. Essentially, Alan gives families the “gift” that they think they want: an idealized, pain-free memory of their deceased love ones. It’s similar to history books that skip over the ugly parts, in favor of a more homogeneous, white-washed version of events: if we don’t see them, they couldn’t have happened.

While he may be good at his job, Alan doesn’t seem like a particularly happy person. For one thing, he’s constantly tortured by half-lucid, childhood memories of his friend, Louis, dying: from what he can remember, Alan was explicitly responsible for Louis’ death but he just can’t remember enough about the incident to know one way or the other. As such, he walks around bearing the burden of crushing guilt for an incident that may not have even happened…at least the way he remembers it. Talk about a key to a happy life!

Alan’s life is further complicated when his “boss,” Thelma (Mimi Kuzyk) presents him with a new assignment: edit a suitable Rememory for Charles Bannister (Michael St. John Smith), the recently deceased executive who was intrinsically tied to the implant technology that allows people’s memories to be recorded. Charles was an important person, perhaps one of the most important in the “new world,” but he was also a monster, as Alan discovers when he comes across the terrible footage of Bannister molesting his young daughter, Isabel (Genevieve Buechner). Isabel’s mother, Jennifer Bannister (Stephanie Romanov) seems to be well-aware of the abuse, since he’s careful to keep Alan away from Isabel: she doesn’t want her “muddying” the waters, as it were. Bannister was a very important person and they need to ensure that the public remembers him as a technological innovator rather than the monster who routinely raped his own daughter.

To further complicate matters, there’s a heavily anti-implant faction in society, a group that fights for a return to the days when memories were personal and couldn’t be manipulated by corporations. One of Alan’s former cutting peers, Fletcher (Jim Caviezel), is deeply embedded with the protesters and wants Alan to break the tenets of his profession and get him Bannister’s uncut footage: if the general public can see the truth, Bannister won’t be deified and his horrible actions will be dragged into the light of day. Alan protests, as dedicated to his job as anyone who truly believes in their work but cracks are forming in his smooth veneer. When Alan finds out a secret about himself, a secret which automatically sets him at odds with his own profession and fellow cutters, he must decided whether to do the right thing or to follow the oath he took, regardless of how unjust it may be.

The Final Cut, first and foremost, is a very serious, somber film: just a few minutes in, it reminded me explicitly of Gattaca (1997), another ultra-serious, portentous science-fiction film. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a serious film, mind you, but The Final Cut ends up slingshoting past serious into a cinematic realm usually reserved for stuffy historical dramas or “big, important” pictures. Unfortunately, the film never becomes quite “big enough” to make these affectations seem anything more than pretentious. It’s kind of like getting Brian Eno to score a Roger Corman boobs-and-aliens-in-space epic: adding gravitas to a pulpy storyline doesn’t make the subject inherently weighty. Likewise, The Final Cut seems focused on big, intellectual issues yet the resolution still hinges on the kind of maudlin, sentimental “feelings” that the film (mostly) avoids for its running time.

The ending, on its own, ends up being a pretty massive problem, since it purports to morph the film into a completely different beast with the movie’s final 10 minutes: never the best place to “flip the script,” as it were, unless you’re going for a “twist ending.” The finale to The Final Cut is no twist: rather, it’s a non-ending that sort of shrugs its shoulders, leaving the audience to pull together any deeper meaning. Worse yet, the ending posits the highly insulting notion that everyone in the film knows what Alan wants more than he does. It’s the equivalent of spending twenty minutes trying to convince the ice cream man that you really do want vanilla and not strawberry before he hands you a double-scoop of strawberry, anyway.

Craftwise, The Final Cut has the exact same look/feel that I tend to associate with most “Dystopia-lite” films, although the presence of veteran cinematographer Tak Fujimoto definitely lends the proceedings some weight. Fujimoto, known for Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) and Silence of the Lambs (1992), among many, many, many others, doesn’t bring a ton of individuality to the film but there’s plenty of nice shots here, including some truly impressive overheads. Again, the whole thing tends to remind me rather overtly of Gattaca, but that could just be a by-product of the whole “independent, intelligent sci-fi” subgenre. The score, as a rule, is always ponderous and somber, as if we need constant reminding that this is a “serious” film with “big issues.” A lighter (or, at least, more subtle) approach might have been more effective but it is what it is.

Robin Williams, as befits his late-career “serious” roles, is completely subdued, almost to the point of blending into the background. It’s definitely not my favorite of his low-key performances but I’ll be honest: I’ll take a hundred “mediocre” performances like this to one of his obnoxiously manic “funny guy” personas. I’ve never been a fan of Williams when he gets truly wound-up and rewatching some of his more “classic” roles, such as Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and Dead Poets Society (1989) showed me that he’s been guilty of this for some time. While Williams’ performance in The Final Cut is nowhere near as relevatory as his turns in One Hour Photo (2002), Insomnia (2002) or World’s Greatest Dad (2009), it’s still a nicely low-key performance that maintains a consistent pitch throughout the film. I’m not sure that Alan has much of an arc, to be honest, but it’s nice to get through a Williams’ film without getting “mugged” to death.

Aside from Williams, the rest of the cast ranges from capable to fairly anonymous. Mira Sorvino has a rather thankless role as Alan’s on-again/off-again girlfriend, Delila, and Caviezel ends up being less than convincing as Fletcher, the former philistine who’s had his eyes opened to the evils of modern technology. To be fair, I’m rarely, if ever, blown away by Caviezel, who seems to underact to the point of non-acting. That being said, Fletcher is a rather confounding character and I’m not sure that anyone could have made him distinctive.

While The Final Cut isn’t a bad film (although it has a very bad ending), it’s also not a particularly interesting film. Any of the plot’s intriguing concepts (how would you act if you knew that everything you did would be recorded for the rest of your life?) become mundane by sheer repetition (a fact not helped by the tedious aural flashbacks that remind us of things we may have missed) and the whole thing is too glum and joyless to be much fun. While it’s interesting to think of our lives as one big editing project (like with film editing, Alan separates the footage into various categories, although his categories have names like “Masturbation,” “Personal Hygiene,” “Youth,” and “School”), I can’t really see the concept having much interest to anyone who’s not well-versed with the Final Cut editing program. Ultimately, The Final Cut ends up being so similar to other films that you might begin to wonder if someone hasn’t removed your memory of seeing it before. You probably haven’t but you’re sure gonna think you have.