7/18/15: The Shadow That Trails Behind

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Afflicted, casual sex, cinema, coming of age, Contracted, Daniel Zovatto, David Robert Mitchell, Disasterpeace, electronic score, film reviews, films, gorgeous cinematography, horror, horror films, hot pursuit, It Follows, Jake Weary, Keir Gilchrist, Lili Sepe, Maika Monroe, Mike Gioulakis, Movies, Olivia Luccardi, rape, Rich Vreeland, sexually transmitted diseases, supernatural, The Babadook, The Myth of the American Sleepover, thriller, writer-director

Gorgeously shot, lushly atmospheric and as funereal-paced as a Sabbath song, writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s sophomore feature, It Follows (2014), has already been pegged as this year’s The Babadook (2014): in other words, the mature, intelligent and well-made antidote to the seemingly endless horror remakes and sequels that clogged multiplex arteries for over a decade now. A hit on the festival circuit, It Follows managed to kick up quite a bit of dust with both critics and fans alike, leading to early calls of “neo-classic” and “the next Halloween (1978).” As someone who was quite taken with Jennifer Kent’s Babadook, I approached this with no small amount of excitement and trepidation. Does It Follows live up to the hype, propelling the horror field into a bold, exciting new era? Follow me and we’ll find out.

Jay (Maika Monroe) is, for all intents and purposes, a pretty normal young lady: she likes to sun in the pool, enjoys hanging out with her friends, Paul (Keir Gilchrist) and Yara (Olivia Luccardi), and sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe) and is just wasting away the lazy days before they all have to head off to college. She’s also dating a “really nice guy” named Hugh (Jake Weary) and, despite some obvious jealousy vibes from “friend-zoned” Paul, Jay and her beau are about to take their relationship to the next level.

After a tender lovemaking session in their car, in the middle of the woods, Jay’s post-coital glow is rudely interrupted by her “nice guy” knocking her out with chloroform. Upon waking, Jay is tied to a chair in the middle of a gutted building and Hugh, albeit apologetically, fills her in on her very grim future. It would seem that Hugh “contracted” some form of curse/demonic STD from a one-night stand and has slept with Jay in order to save himself and pass it on to her.

The “rules” are simple, if somewhat less than consistent: Jay will be followed relentlessly by “something” that has the ability to look like anyone it wants. It will walk after her, slowly, literally willing to pursue her to the ends of the earth. If the “presence” touches Jay, she’s DOA. If it kills Jay before she passes it on, Hugh is DOA, meaning he has an obvious stake in keeping her alive. The only thing that Jay can do is stay on the move and find some unlucky guy to screw (literally and figuratively).

As she rushes about, always keeping one eye behind her, Jay and her friends, along with some dude named Greg (Daniel Zovatto), try to unravel the true nature of Hugh’s identity and get to the bottom of the curse that threatens to end Jay’s very young life. No matter where they go, however, “it” is always just over the horizon, slouching towards Jay like that “rough beast” towards Bethlehem. Will Jay opt to meet her doom head-on or will she, like Hugh, decide to damn another innocent? She’d better make her mind up fast: it follows and it has no intention of stopping.

Writer-director Mitchell first appeared on my radar via his feature-debut, the surprisingly exceptional teen relationship drama The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010). Mitchell’s first film was exquisitely shot (the cinematography, alone, was worth the price of admission), realistically acted and full of some genuinely thought-provoking moments: the script, alone, was probably one of the better ones to come down the pike in some time and the film established David Robert Mitchell as “someone destined for great things.”

Flash-forward a few years and we arrive at It Follows, Mitchell’s next major step into the public consciousness. Like his debut, Mitchell’s follow-up looks absolutely beautiful: Mike Gioulakis’ cinematography has a warm, panoramic quality that makes every single frame look immaculately composed, framed and presented for maximum visual impact. The score, courtesy of Disasterpeace (aka Rich Vreeland), is pretty damn awesome, handily recalling both John Carpenter and Goblin’s moody, synthy masterpieces: when combined with the astounding camerawork, It Follows is reminiscent (in mood and look) of something like Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001), albeit filtered through a neo-slasher aesthetic.

The acting is solid across the board, with Maika Monroe proving that her fantastic performance in last year’s The Guest (2014) was anything but a fluke: endlessly likable, strong, intelligent and utterly human, Monroe’s Jay is the epitome of the “final girl” and a massively successful hero. The selfish part of me secretly wishes that she’d get pigeonholed into horror roles for the next several years although, realistically, Monroe is way too talented to get stuck anywhere for long: if It Follows marks her big leap into prestige pictures, it’s still a win-win for everyone.

Despite her commanding performance, Monroe has plenty of able support in the backfield. Gilchrist, perhaps best known as the son on United States of Tara but possessed of a resume that includes stellar performances in everything from Dead Silence (2007) to It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010) to Dark Summer (2015), is great as the love-sick Paul, bringing just the right combo of frustration, obsession, disappointment and infatuation to the role. Paul is a character that could have come across as kind of a creepy perv but Gilchrist makes him as eminently likable as Jay.

While Luccardi, Sepe and Zovatto all turn in strong performances, Jake Weary really surprises as Hugh, the “nice guy” who does a very bad thing. On paper, Hugh could’ve come across as a real villain, a callous, vaguely threatening presence (his chloroforming of Jay carries more than a little hint of rape, despite coming after the actual sex) who exists only to jumpstart the action. Onscreen, however, Hugh is much more sympathetic and seems genuinely concerned about Jay: he’s not a bad guy, per se, just an exceptionally desperate one. While stepping over Jay to “get to safety” will never wash as the “gentlemanly” response to the situation, nothing about Hugh (or Weary’s performance) bespeaks of douchebag bros or raging misogynists.

So: It Follows is beautifully made and features a great cast…how does it actually stack up as a horror film? To be frankly honest…it’s good but definitely not exceptional. Unlike The Babadook, which possessed more than its share of genuine scary moments but was also appropriately knotty and weighty, It Follows is a much more obvious, straight-forward kind of monster. The entire film consists of sinister figures appearing in the background, usually without the main characters noticing, and proceeding to slowly advance to the foreground. There’s certainly a variety of “stalker” represented here (one of my favorites was the exceptionally odd zombie-cheerleader who appears to urinate all over the place) but that’s about it, as far as the “monster” goes.

In fact, one of the places where It Follows stumbles the hardest is with the actual mythos/rules surrounding the sinister presence. To be blunt: the rules end up being vague, inconsistent and more than a little nonsensical. We’re told that the presence walks everywhere (slowly, to boot) and that driving away is a good way to get a head start. No matter how far Jay drives, however, the presence is always just over the horizon: for an exceptionally slow walker, that damn thing sure can sprint, when necessary. There’s also the matter of traveling to someplace like, say, Australia: would the presence need to walk through the entire ocean to get there or would it hop a plane, too? While I realize that the “always there” factor of the monster is a nod to classic slashers like Freddy and Jason, it’s kind of undone when the film goes out of its way to hammer home the whole “walking” aspect.

There’s also the question of the creature’s forward momentum. Hugh makes it a point to say how the creature never stops moving but, time after time, we’re treated to atmospheric shots where the presence is just standing there, looking menacing (chief among these being the rather silly bit where it appears on top of a nearby roof). For my money, the notion of an endlessly moving threat is pretty terrifying: take a minute to catch your breath and kiss your ass goodbye! Here, the creature seems to be given to so much inactivity that, at one point, Jay even goes into the woods and falls asleep on top of her damn car: while I never expect perfect logic from horror films, this silly scene pulled me right out (if only briefly).

A third issue lies with what the creature actually does. Hugh tells Jay not to let it touch her but, at several points, it does and she seems to be just fine. At one point, it appears to fold its victim into something resembling a human pretzel (which is, admittedly, a really nice touch): at another point, it appears to violently “hump” someone to death. There’s also the notion that the creature is only hazardous to its intended victim, since no one else can see it: despite this, however, the others are able to attack it, shoot it, throw blankets over it, et al, while it can handily toss them around the room with impunity. Again, the details of the actual creature become so foggy that it’s hard to ever get fully invested. In a zombie film, we know that a headshot kills, so we automatically tense up when a character shoots anywhere else and assumes it’s groovy: in It Follows, we’re never quite sure what needs to happen (aside from the passing it on part), so it becomes difficult to know when a character is truly in danger.

Thematically, It Follows splits the difference between a coming-of-age story (ala Mitchell’s own Myth of the American Sleepover) and a thinly-veiled metaphor about sexually transmitted disease, ala Contracted (2013) or Afflicted (2013). As such, the coming-of-age aspect actually works a little better: Contracted was much better at portraying the inner turmoil and anxiety of not only the act of sex but the acquiring of an infectious disease, whereas It Follows really shines when it comes to the interactions between the various characters.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed It Follows but definitely didn’t find it to be the “genre savior” that others seem to have. While the film never looks or sounds anything less than gorgeous, it’s also got more than its fair share of problems, including that aforementioned dodgy mythos and a few too many plot holes for my liking. The film is also a little long, which only becomes problematic in the final half where too many scenes devolve into what seems to be time-killing and foot-shuffling. I worship at the altar of slow-paced films but there’s a balance and, too often, It Follows had trouble with the ratio.

Despite all of this, however, I eagerly await David Robert Mitchell’s next foray into film, whether it be horror or something closer to his debut. He’s an obviously talented filmmaker and writer with a real knack for capturing eye-popping visuals: in certain ways, he reminds me of an up-and-coming Adam Wingard, which is certainly no insult. When It Follows is good, it’s pretty damn great: at times, it seems to so perfectly evoke the spirit of J-Horror films that it could almost be an import. It’s a smart film that features realistic, likable characters relating in ways that feel authentic, never phoned-in or phony. It’s also a fairly original film, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at: even if the mythos is inconsistent and vague, it’s obvious that Mitchell put lots of thought into the overall feel. It Follows may not be the next Babadook (and it’s certainly not the next Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), despite the scuttlebutt) but it’s a more than worthy entry in the modern horror sweepstakes and deserves the attention of any discerning fan. Best of the year, though? Not by a long-shot.

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6/27/15 (Part One): The Unreality of Modern Life

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absurdist, Adaptation, Alain Chabat, art films, auteur theory, Élodie Bouchez, breaking the fourth wall, Charlie Kaufman, cinema, confusing films, dark comedies, dream-like, electronic score, Eric Wareheim, experimental film, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, hogs, Hollywood producer, Hollywood satire, husband-wife relationship, insanity, John Gallagher Jr., John Glover, John Heder, Jonathan Lambert, kooky psychiatrist, Kyla Kenedy, life imitating art, Lola Delon, loss of identity, Matt Battaglia, meta-films, Movies, Mr. Oizo, Patrick Bristow, producer-director relationships, Quentin Dupieux, Reality, Rubber, surrealism, Susan Diol, Synecdoche New York, Thomas Bangalter, videotapes, writer-director-cinematographer-editor, Wrong, Wrong Cops

Many filmmakers merely flirt with the weird and “out there,” toeing a carefully demarcated line in the sand between material that genuinely challenges viewers and material that upholds our own, personal status quos. These films may seem impossibly strange, from the outside, but cracking them open, as it were, tends to reveal their decidedly mundane inner workings. Gussying up a traditional narrative with stylistic tics and quirks, complex timelines and pseudo-philosophical meanderings doesn’t make it genuinely challenging any more than slapping a suit on a dog makes it the chairman of the board.

Standing on the fringes of these “politely difficult” films, however, are another batch of filmmakers: the agitators, the genuinely strange and the patently difficult. These are the filmmakers, artists like Charlie Kaufman, Yorgos Lanthimos, György Pálfi, Guy Maddin and Gaspar Noé, who possess singular visions that sit so far outside the mainstream as to seem almost alien. From films like Adaptation (2002) and Synedoche, New York (2008) to movies like Taxidermia (2006), Enter the Void (2009), Dogtooth (2009) and Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1988), these headscratchers are as far from popcorn multiplex features as one can get, immersing audiences into bizarre worlds that look strangely like our own, albeit twisted through a fractured mirror.

And, just to the left of that particular group, stands French auteur Quentin Dupieux. With a body of work that includes some of the most genuinely bizarre, out-there films I’ve ever seen, Dupieux has quickly become one of my very favorite modern filmmakers. As a firm believer in the auteur theory, Dupieux is sort of my gold standard in this day and age: not only does he write and direct his films, he also shoots, edits and performs the electronic scores (Dupieux is also a world-renowned electro-musician who goes by the name Mr. Oizo)…talk about a one-man band! Any new Dupieux film is cause for celebration, which leads us to the subject of our current discussion: his newest oddball creation, Reality (2014). Did I expect the unexpected? But of course. Did Dupieux deliver? Between my aching cranium and over-stimulated imagination, I’m gonna have to answer in the affirmative.

Coming across as a bizarro-world take on Adaptation, threaded through with elements of The Truman Show (1998) and left to melt in the noonday sun, Reality deals with three separate individuals and the ways in which their lives eventually crisscross each other, leading to no small amount of pandemonium, confusion and inner turmoil. Reality (Kyla Kenedy) is an inquisitive young girl whose hunter father (Matt Battaglia, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Paul Newman) has just killed a wild boar in the woods and pulled a blue videotape from its carcass. She also seems to be the star of some sort of film being shot in her room, while she sleeps, by a kooky director named Zog (the always-kooky John Glover)…you know, your basic kid stuff.

The next corner of our triangle is inhabited by Dennis (John Heder), the mopey, downtrodden host of a TV cooking show who wears a moth-eaten rat costume and scratches his (possibly imaginary) eczema like it was going out of style. All that Dennis wants is a little relief from his constant irritation but a trip to outrageously obnoxious Dr. Klaus (Patrick Bristow) makes him out to be either a liar, an idiot or both.

The final point of the triangle, preternaturally nice cameraman Jason (Alain Chabat, who featured prominently in several Gondry films, among many others), also ends up being our defacto protagonist. After working his way up from receptionist to cameraman on Dennis’ show, Jason now wants to take the next step and secure funding for his own film, a strange little sci-fi movie about evil, sentient televisions called Waves. When Jason goes to pitch his idea to mega-producer Bob Marshall (Jonathan Lambert), however, the Hollywood exec is only interested in one, single aspect of the proposed production: if Jason can come with the best, most “Oscar-worthy” groan of all time, Marshall will fund his film, sight unseen.

From this point, it becomes a madcap dash as our three corners all attempt to achieve their goals: Reality needs to find out what’s on the videotape, Dennis needs to cure his skin condition and Jason needs to find the ultimate expression of pain and present it to his increasingly unhinged producer. Did I also mention Henri (Eric Wareheim), Reality’s school superintendent, whose cross-dressing dreams appear to be bleeding into reality? How about Jason’s wife, Alice (Élodie Bouchez), the shrink who’s treating Henri in between disparaging virtually every aspect of her husband’s life? Somehow, all of these disparate elements come together to form a real tsunami of the strange, culminating in a truly mind-melting meta-commentary on the nature of authorship, the terror of identity and the inherent insanity of the Hollywood movie machine. In other words: par for the course for Dupieux, the crown-prince of impish cinematic provocateurs.

As an unabashed fan of anything and everything Dupieux (last year’s Wrong Cops was my pick for best film of the year), approaching any new film of his is always a bracing mixture of anticipation and nervous optimism: I haven’t been let down, yet, but I’m the kind of gloomy gus who always expects disappointment around every potential corner. As luck would have it, however, Reality isn’t the film to break Dupieux’s hot-streak, although it definitely doesn’t rank as high as Wrong Cops or Wrong (2012) in my personal metrics. Despite being a much more baffling, confounding experience than any of his prior films, Reality handily displays an outsider filmmaker in full control of his faculties, bound and determined to submerge us in his particular flavor of “reality,” whether or not our poor minds are equipped to handle the experience.

One of the most notable differences, right off the bat, is the more austere, “realistic” vibe of Dupieux’s newest film. In fact, it isn’t until nearly 30 minutes in where it really “feels” like a Dupieux: the scene where Wareheim is introduced, driving a jeep down the street while wearing a gray dress and red scarf, all scored by that subtle “Oizoian” brand of simmering electronica, is quintessential Dupieux and one of his most striking scenes yet. While the film goes on to blend the more serious vibe with some of the goofier elements of his past films (Klaus is the kind of character that can pretty much only exist in a Dupieux universe), there’s a much different vibe here than either Wrong Cops or Wrong. If anything, Reality plays like a more under-stated, low-key take on the existential insanity of Wrong.

As befits Dupieux’s films, he gets some extraordinarily great work out of his cast. While Heder doesn’t get quite as much screentime as I would have liked, he gives the role his all: at times, his performance reminded me of Michael Keaton’s outstanding work in Birdman (2014), albeit without many of Keaton’s subtle shadings. Kenedy does a great job as Reality, disproving the old adage that child actors can’t hold their own amongst the grownups. Glover is predictably odd as Zog, while Lambert has an obscene amount of fun as the batshit crazy producer: whether he’s forcing cigarettes on poor, non-smoking Jason or sniping surfers with a high-powered rifle (complete with scope), Marshall is an absolute force of nature.

For his part, Wareheim turns in my second favorite performance of his ever, the first being his role in Wrong Cops. I never actually liked anything Wareheim was a part of until he got involved with Dupieux’s films: needless to say, I still don’t care for any of his other roles but I’ll be damned if he’s not an integral, necessary part of this particular world. Any and all of Wareheim’s scenes here are easy highlights (the dream sequence where he yells at an old man is, hands-down, one of the funniest sequences of the entire year) and he fits the overall ethos like a glove: as strange as it seems, Wareheim just might be Dupieux’s muse.

While the ensemble cast does remarkable work, however, Alain Chabat’s performance as Jason Tantra is the beating heart of the film. Reality would frequently collapse into chaos if we weren’t so invested in poor Jason’s quest: as he tries to satisfy not only his work and home commitments but his inner, artistic ones, it’s easy to see Jason as a kind of “Everyman” (albeit one focused on the entertainment industry), an avatar for a modern world lost in the clang and bustle of its own progress. The scenes where Jason fights to retain not only his sanity but his very identity are so fundamentally powerful because Chabat cuts through the inherent absurdity and shows us the real, scared and confused individual beneath.

As befits the rest of Dupieux’s oeuvre, Reality looks and sounds amazing: he really has an eye for crisp, colorful cinematography that pops on the screen and that trademark score elevates and enhances everything it comes into contact with. Dupieux may wear an awful lot of hats but he wears them all like a champ, not a chump: he’s a true auteur, in every sense of the term.

While Reality is a typically strong film, I would also be remiss if I didn’t admit that I found the whole thing rather baffling and confounding: this is the kind of film where logic and narrative cohesion mean a great deal less than mood and intention. Although none of Dupieux’s films could ever be called “simplistic,” Reality layers level upon level of meta-commentary until the only natural response for one’s brain is to yell “Stop!” and pull the dead man’s switch. While I’m fairly confident that I understand aspects of the film (the commentary on authorship is pretty difficult to miss and it’s rather easy to see the character of Jason as a surrogate for Dupieux’s own filmmaking experiences), there’s much that remains a complete mystery to me, at least until I’ve managed to watch the film several more times. Suffice to say that Reality is such an experience, I don’t mind doing the heavy-lifting: much better to imperfectly understand a clever film than to be endlessly bored by a dumb one, methinks.

At the end of the day, there’s really not much to say here that I haven’t already said about the rest of Quentin Dupieux’s films: the French filmmaker is a true marvel, one of the freshest, most ingenious voices operating today and just the kind of filmmaker who can help push the industry into a higher plane of existence. If Reality doesn’t rank as my favorite Dupieux (it actually ranks towards the bottom, perhaps tied with Rubber (2010)), it still manages to stand head-and-shoulders above most of what’s out there, proving that the most fascinating things are still coming out of the fringes. Here’s to hoping that if Dupieux ever gets co-opted by the mainstream, he manages to retain more of his identity than Spike Jonze did: I’d love the chance to see him play in a bigger sandbox but only if he got to do it on his terms and his alone.

5/25/15: Zom-Beavers Wander By the Lake

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Al Kaplan, Bill Burr, Brent Briscoe, cabins, cheating boyfriends, cinema, Code Monkeys, Cortney Palm, dark comedies, dark humor, directorial debut, Ed Marx, electronic score, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, girls only weekend, goofy, gory films, horror, horror-comedies, Hutch Dano, isolation, Jake Weary, John Mayer, Jon Kaplan, Jonathan Hall, Jordan Rubin, Lexi Atkins, Movies, multiple writers, Peter Gilroy, Phyllis Katz, practical effects, Rachel Melvin, Rex Linn, Robert R. Shafer, silly films, sorority sisters, toxic waste spill, Troma films, writer-director, Zombeavers, zombie films, zombies

There’s a point in Jordan Rubin’s ridiculously fun Zombeavers (2014) where our hapless heroes need to execute one of those standard “shoring up the defenses” scenes that’s as much a fixture of siege films as the actual siege itself. Working together, the group goes through all the familiar motions: moving dressers against doors, nailing boards across windows, frantically working to keep what’s outside from coming inside their small, isolated cabin. Despite their best efforts, however, it seems to be a losing battle, the gist of which isn’t lost on one of the exasperated survivors: “You do realize that the whole point of a beaver is it chops fucking wood, right?”

It’s an astute observation but, more importantly, it’s a damn good line and pretty much par for the course in a debut feature that’s always more intelligent than it seems, never quite as crass as it means to be and an easy step above similarly goofy horror-comedy fare. Writer-director Rubin comes from a long background as a writer on TV comedies (most notably the crude but effective Crank Yankers and several late night shows, including Craig Kilborn and Carson Daly) and his script (co-written with Al and Jon Kaplan, who also handled the fabulous score, just as they did with the criminally under-rated Code Monkeys) is consistently smart, if constantly silly. The biggest coup? Rubin and company manage to take a fairly dumb concept (zombified beavers) and inject just enough genuine tension and action to keep the whole thing from floating away into the ether. Zombeavers may be the class cut-up but it sure as hell ain’t the class dunce.

Kicking off with a fantastic gag involving a heavily disguised John Mayer and comedian Bill Burr as less than attentive truck drivers, we immediately get the nuts and bolts of the tale: a mysterious barrel falls off the truck, proceeds down a river and winds up at a beaver dam where it’s inspected by a couple of cute beaver puppets. If you grew up in the ’80s, you probably know what mysterious barrels that fall into rivers do and, by Jove, that’s just what happens here: exit the cute, friendly little beavers…enter…the zombeavers!

Our cannon fodder, in this case, consists of a trio of sorority sisters, Mary (Rachel Melvin), Zoe (Cortney Palm) and Jenn (Lexi Atkins), who’ve headed into the woods for a “girls only” weekend. Jenn has just seen a photo of her boyfriend, Sam (Hutch Dano, grandson of Royal), canoodling with a strange girl (or, at least, the back of her head) and Mary and Zoe want to help take her mind off her misery. Or, to be more accurate, Mary does: for her part, Zoe is the kind of amazingly snarky, sarcastic and just plain shitty character who can either make or break a film and she’s a complete blast.

While they settle in, the girls meet a local hunter, Smyth (Rex Linn), who flips the tired, old “leering redneck” cliché on its head by admonishing the young ladies’ skimpy bathing suits and “weird tattoos” rather than wolf-whistling. They also find the beaver dam from the beginning, although it’s now covered in neon-green “beaver piss,” so they keep their distance. As the “friends” play Truth or Dare, a pounding at the door begins as a fright but culminates in that other, great slasher film cliché: the crashing of the girls’ night out by their loutish boyfriends. Seems that ultra horny Zoe can’t go a weekend without screwing her equally horny boyfriend, Buck (Peter Gilroy), so she secretly invited him, along with Mary’s boyfriend, Tommy (Jake Weary) and good, old, cheatin’ Sam.

With our crew assembled, it’s only a matter of time before the zombeavers rear their vicious little heads and, before they know it, our young lovers are knee-deep in ravenous, dead-eyed little dam-builders. When the group is forced to split-up, it seems that tragedy is looming ever nearer over the horizon. As they must deal with not only the very real outside threat but their own internal struggles, a new wrinkle emerges: this is a zombie film, after all, and we all know why it’s a good idea to keep those fellas at arm’s length. Will our plucky heroes be able to pull together and kick beaver ass or have they just been dammed?

On paper, Zombeavers is a thoroughly ridiculous, silly concept, akin to something like Sharknado (2013) or FDR: American Badass (2012): after all, this is a film about zombified beavers…gravitas might seem slightly out-of-place, here. Thanks to a pretty great script, however (it’s probably one of the most quotable newer films I’ve seen), Zombeavers functions as more of a high-concept parody/homage than a lunk-headed bit of SyFy fluff. While it’s not in the same vaunted company as the stellar Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010), Zombeavers is pretty equitable to Mike Mendez’s fun Big Ass Spider! (2013) in that it mixes fun, dumb gags with more clever, subtle marginalia. One of my favorite bits in Zombeavers is a throwaway gag that features a teenage fisherman wearing a “#1 Dad” ball cap: it works on a number of levels but, most importantly, it’s the kind of absurd detail that makes the film’s world feel so much more complete than it could have, something akin to the immersive worlds of Troma films.

Rubin and company throw a lot of schtick at the screen (particularly once we get to the last act “twist” that introduces a whole other, outrageous element to the proceedings) but most of it actually sticks, unlike something like the obnoxious, tone-deaf Sharknado. Part of this has to do with all of the aforementioned nifty little details but the whole thing would collapse if there wasn’t an incredibly game cast propping it up. Luckily, Zombeavers is filled with actors who perfectly understand the razor-thin line between “campy” and “stupid” and manage to (mostly) walk it with ease.

While the central trio of Melvin, Palm and Atkins are set-up as rather feather-headed (particularly Melvin’s Mary), they have tremendous chemistry together: their scenes have such a quick, snappy pace to them that they handily recall films like Mean Girls (2004) or, to a lesser extent, Heathers (1988). While Melvin’s exquisite comedic timing and Atkins’ slightly ethereal bearing fit like a glove, the real standout is Palm’s Zoe. Time after time, Palm manages to swipe the film right from under the others, whether it’s the bit where she gleefully doffs her bikini top only to cover herself up when a bear looks at her or any of her perfectly delivered bon mots (her deadpan rejoinder of “Maybe you should try going down on me more often,” to Buck’s “I’ve never seen a real beaver before” is so perfectly delivered that it hurts).

As befits their characters, the guys are pitched as pretty unrepentant, obnoxious horn-dogs but it works, for the most part, although Dano never seems to connect with his character in any meaningful way: his delivery always seems awkward and slightly off. Although Weary’s Tommy doesn’t get as much to do, Gilroy’s Buck is another highlight, just like his equally churlish girlfriend. While Gilroy’s delivery doesn’t always work (there are some definitively odd things that he does, beat-wise), he almost hits an Andy Kaufman-lite vibe when it does. His “my dick is asleep” bit starts out irritating but becomes oddly amusing (and weirdly charming) but moments like his bizarrely energetic sex scene (screaming “You’re way too hot for me!” as he enthusiastically humps away) or any of his great throwaway lines (“Who the fuck is crying on vacation day?!”…”I’ll see you in the bone zone!”) are all but essential to the film’s overall vibe.

And back to that vibe: one of the most notable things about Zombeavers is that, despite the assumed crudity of the concept and execution, the film is anything but a collection of stupid “beaver” jokes and frat boy humor. If anything, Rubin’s script constantly pushes against those stereotypes, walking a fine line between embracing the clichés and setting them on fire. This isn’t to say that Zombeavers is wholesome family fare (penis-chomping, eye-gouging and Zoe’s boobs abound): it is to say, however, that Rubin and crew are smart and savvy enough to know that raunchy humor doesn’t have to be braindead…there’s nothing in this film that comes close to approximating the inanity of the aforementioned SyFy tripe, no matter how hard they try.

As should be plainly obvious, I was quite taken with Zombeavers: as a directorial debut, it’s even more impressive. While not everything worked, the elements that really worked tended to soar: the last fifteen minutes of the film are so damned perfect that I, literally, cheered. Since the film ends with a direct, clever set-up for a sequel (there are other things in the woods besides beavers, after all), I’m hoping that Rubin can capitalize on what worked here and come roaring out of the gate on the next one. After all: any guy that can see the inherent, soul-shattering evil of those flat-tailed, buck-toothed bastards…well, he’s pretty alright in my book.

2/18/15: Love is a Battlefield

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2014 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, Academy Award Nominee, auteur theory, based on a book, Ben Affleck, Best Actress nominee, Carrie Coon, Casey Wilson, cinema, dark comedies, dark films, David Clennon, David Fincher, electronic score, Emily Ratajkowski, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl, infidelity, Jeff Cronenweth, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Kim Dickens, Lisa Banes, Lola Kirke, media circus, misogyny, Missi Pyle, missing person, missing wife, Movies, mysteries, Neil Patrick Harris, Oscar nominee, Oscars, Patrick Fugit, Rosamund Pike, Scoot McNairy, Sela Ward, spoiler alert, spoilers, spousal abuse, Trent Reznor, twist ending, twists, Tyler Perry, unreliable narrator, voice-over narration

Whenever I review or discuss films, especially recently released ones, I always try to walk a careful line between giving enough information/support/examples to back up my points and trying not to spoil another filmgoer’s enjoyment of said film. Some films are just easier to spoil than others, however: films like The Crying Game (1992), The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Sixth Sense (1999) are predicated on their twists, prior knowledge of which certainly tends to lessen one’s enjoyment of these otherwise varied thrillers. There are just some cases where reviewers need to tread a little lighter: after all, one of my primary reasons for doing what I do is to help turn folks on to new films…what would be the point if they already knew how they all ended?

I begin my review of David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014) thusly for one reason: it’s extremely difficult to really discuss the film – and my subsequent reactions to said film – without spoiling major chunks of it. Like the aforementioned films, Gone Girl utilizes several twists and “surprises” which must be experienced blindly in order to get the full effect. Since any discussion I tried to base around the meager bit of the story that IS common knowledge (man’s wife mysteriously disappears, suspicion falls on him) would be rather worthless, I find myself in the rare position of needing to spoil a film’s plot: if you have yet to see Gone Girl and intend to, read no further than this paragraph. For anyone who plans to see the film and wants the Cliff Notes version of my opinion, here it is: as with most of Fincher’s films, I found Gone Girl to be extremely well-crafted, albeit exceptionally shallow, rather silly and, occasionally, flat-out ridiculous. Most of my issues with the film are directly related to the midpoint twist (the first of several), making the following spoilery discussion necessary. Know one thing, though, gentle readers: as someone who’s always enjoyed Fincher’s output, I found Gone Girl to be the slightest, least impressive film in his canon.

We begin with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), our hapless protagonist and initial narrator, on the morning of his wife, Amy’s (Rosamund Pike), disappearance. It’s their five-year anniversary, although we get the impression from Nick’s snarky conversation with his twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon), that the marriage has been anything but a happy one. His griping about his “awful” wife is belied by the flashback that we then get, showcasing the couple in much happier times. The film continues to cut back and forth between the present, where Nick discovers evidence of foul play concerning Amy’s disappearance, and the past, where we see the couple meet, fall in love, marry and go through all the usual trials and tribulations that married folks go through.

Our journey through the past is guided by Amy’s voice-over, as she narrates from her journal. Amy’s narration paints a picture of a happy marriage that gradually devolved into endless conflict and strife thanks to the usual economic conditions that foil many couples. Amy’s tale gradually gets darker, as she discusses her husband’s increasingly violent temper and her worries that he’ll eventually end up killing her. In the present, Nick is dogged by the incredibly determined Det. Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens, channeling Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996)) and her partner, Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit), who seem convinced that Nick is responsible for his wife’s disappearance. As Nick’s sister does whatever she can to help her brother, Amy’s parents, Marybeth (Lisa Banes) and Rand (David Clennon), begin to believe that their son-in-law isn’t quite as innocent as he claims. The other shoe drops when we discover that Nick, a professor, is having an affair with one of his students, Andie (Emily Ratajkowski): by the film’s midpoint, things just don’t look good for ol’ Nick.

But then, of course, we get that aforementioned twist: as we find out, Amy isn’t actually dead or even missing…she’s orchestrated the whole thing in order to frame Nick for her murder and punish him for his affair. We come to see that everything we’ve been told, through her journal entries, has all been a web of lies, misdirection, exaggerations and innuendo. As an audience, we’ve fallen into that whole “unreliable narrator” morass and it’s grabbed us, fast: just when we think we’ve got it figured out, Fincher and friends pull the rug from under our feet, dumping us right on our collective butts.

The second half of Gone Girl parallels Amy’s efforts to finish off Nick and stay out of the public eye with his efforts to clear his name and prove his innocence, especially once he finds out that Amy set him up. Amy’s scheme is nothing if not thorough, however, and it seems like Nick doesn’t have a hope in hell of avoiding death row, even after he gets help from Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), a larger-than-life lawyer who specializes in messy “relationship” issues like this. Nick’s only hope for clearing his name hinges on the testimony of two of Amy’s former boyfriends/victims: Tommy O’Hara (Scoot McNairy) was falsely accused of rape and had his whole life implode, while wealthy Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) was branded an obsessive stalker and put on the business end of a restraining order. If Nick and Tanner can get either of the men to tell their stories, they can prove that Amy’s actions follow a very definite pattern, one that aims to destroy any and every man she’s with.

Since one major twist isn’t quite enough, however, we get another “shocker” when Amy ends up back with Desi: she pleads for his help, claiming that she fled the abusive Nick and only wants the safety of her “true love,” the still head-over-heels Desi. While with Desi, Amy is treated like a queen, although his odd personality and some rather sinister proclamations indicate that Desi might have a few screws loose, too. In a rather bravura moment, Amy slashes Desi’s throat in the middle of a particularly aerobic lovemaking session, ending his rather pathetic existence. She then “escapes” back to the safety of her husband and the waiting media circus that surrounds him 24-7: she tells everyone that Desi kidnapped and repeatedly assaulted her before she was finally able to dispatch him and escape. Above all else, she tells the world, she’s just glad to be back with her loving husband.

Except, of course, for the little fact that Nick knows the whole thing is bullshit. Amy knows that he knows, too, and is confident that any attempt by her husband to clear up the whole mess would only result in him hanging himself all over again. The film ends with the couple in a holding pattern: Amy is back and their projected facade is nothing but happy and sunny. Behind the scenes, however, Nick must face the fact that he’s stuck, for all intents and purposes, with an exceedingly clever, amoral, murderous and cold-as-ice sociopath: til death do they part, indeed!

Up to the midpoint twist, I didn’t love Gone Girl but felt it had lots of potential: Affleck and Pike have a tremendous amount of chemistry in the early scenes, as do Affleck and Coon, and I was genuinely intrigued by the inconsistencies between Nick and Margo’s version of Amy and what we get from her flashbacks. If anything, this had a bit of the feel of Rashomon (1950), albeit filtered through the pulpy sensibilities of film noir. It seems as if the film will drag the mystery out across its 2.5 hour running time, maybe even leaving us in doubt as the final credits roll…not the worst case scenario, if you think about it.

The revelation of Amy as not only coldly calculating but also wildly misanthropic, however, effectively drops the film on its ass…hard. For one thing, it removes the mystery angle, which significantly curtails one of the most effective aspects of the film, up to that point: our collective doubt over Nick’s guilt. Once we see that not only is Nick innocent but that Amy is kind of a monster, Gone Girl becomes an entirely different film. At this point, Pike becomes a scenery shredder: she’s so villainous that it becomes impossible to really side with her, despite whatever might have happened between her and Nick. We know that Nick had an affair, one of the few facts that both he and Amy seem to agree on, but we get no sense of the details or even the time-frame: was the affair what set Amy over the edge or was the affair in response to Amy’s original behavior? We’re never told but, thanks to how unreliable the rest of Amy’s narration proves to be, it’s not difficult to guess.

Once the truth comes out, the film lurches from one unrealistic scenario to another. While the first half was just pulpy enough to feel unique, the second half is a complete mess of over-the-top performances, eye-rolling coincidences and wild tonal shifts. While Affleck and Coon still seem to be playing it fairly straight, everyone else seems to be stretching for comedy beats that just aren’t there: particularly egregious is Perry, whose Tanner Bolt never comes across as anything more than a spectacularly goofy, forcefully “quirky” character. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Missi Pyle’s silly “Nancy Grace” impression, however, or the way in which quirky Casey Wilson seems to have wandered onto set from her previous role in the TV show Happy Endings.

Dickens, as mentioned earlier, just plays Det. Boney as a variation on Marge Gunderson (you can almost, subliminally, hear her delivering the lines in regional dialect) and I was never sure what Patrick Fugit was doing: his entire performance seemed to involve him sagely nodding or cocking his head to one side…it was almost a pantomime and rather odd, if I do say so. In a suitably ironic moment, the only cast member who consistently under-acts is Neil Patrick Harris: his take on Desi Collings is as far from any of his previous roles as possible, yet is also so dry and uninteresting as to be largely a wasted opportunity…I didn’t think it would be possible for Harris to come across as “dull” in a performance but Gone Girl proved me wrong.

One of the biggest surprises, for me, was just how over-the-top Pike ends up being, despite the fact that much of her performance is a slow-burn. I expected quite a bit more from the performance, especially after she secured an Oscar nomination, but it never really worked for me: all of the beats and character tics were way too obvious and there was no nuance to the role. Critics (and audiences) tend to love performances where actors get to simultaneously portray both sides of the coin but I never felt that Pike’s portrayal of Amy ever got above surface-level: she’s “good,” then she’s “bad” and that’s pretty much all there is to it.

Affleck, by contrast, comes across as more likable (by default) but he also becomes a bit of a non-entity after the revelation: in many ways, the film becomes more about Amy’s continued attempts to fry Nick than it is about his attempts to clear his name. On a purely nitpicking level, I was also rather turned-off by Affleck’s oddly mush-mouthed delivery, especially in the early sections of the film: there are parts that seem like he’s just sort of mumbling to himself, which (sometimes) fits the character but more often feels like lazy delivery.

The film also felt more than a little misogynist, to me, which seems a strange complaint given that both the original source novel and the screenplay were written by a woman, Gillian Flynn. While Flynn has been quoted as being surprised at being labeled a misogynist for simply writing about “bad women,” my complaint with Gone Girl actually goes a bit deeper than that. In an era where we have several high-profile examples of women coming forward with rape and abuse allegations only to be largely dismissed (the recent Bill Cosby controversy is only one example), it was a little bothersome that part of Amy’s evil plan involves falsely accusing men of rape and abuse. To me, it almost felt as if the film was making a silent condemnation of these various real-life incidents, as if to say, “You just can’t trust these lying women, can you?” Since the film never firmly establishes whether any of the men in her life ever abused her or whether Amy has always been dangerously disturbed, it makes the case that every man in the film is a victim, whereas she’s the only real “villain.” Again, hard to say whether this an issue with the script or Fincher’s direction but it was something that kept rearing its head, time and again.

As far as filmcraft goes, Gone Girl is up there with Fincher films like The Panic Room (2002) or The Social Network (2010), although it’s nowhere near as “dark” as his classics like Seven (1995), Fight Club (1999) or Zodiac (2007). One thing that I noticed was how lukewarm the normally reliable Trent Reznor score is: while I was really impressed with Reznor’s work on The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake (2011), the subtle score, here, blends into the background, becoming the equivalent of white noise. It certainly doesn’t take one out of the film but it also seems like kind of a waste: I definitely expected more.

More than anything, I can’t help but wonder how the film might have played if the “twist” hadn’t been delayed as long as possible, allowing us to stew (along with Nick and the others) in the juices of our own indecision. By establishing that Amy is a monster (at least in relation to the film that we’ve been given), the element of mystery is gone and we’re left with the decidedly odd situation where we’re supposed to root for (I guess?) a sociopath as she frames innocent people for her actions. Nick might not be innocent (again, aside from the affair, we’re not given anything else to go by) but he’s practically a saint when compared to Amy. While the film functions just fine as a rather middling, if decidedly silly, take on film noir, it just never came together enough for me to fully embrace and enjoy it. Fitfully intriguing, mostly frustrating and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious (for all the wrong reasons), Gone Girl stands as one of the larger missteps in Fincher’s oeuvre, to this point. While the masses seem to have embraced Gone Girl, count me as one of the ones standing on the sidelines, wondering what the fuss is about. Going once, going twice…gone, girl…way gone.

1/17/15 (Part One): Set An Extra Place at the Table

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A Lonely Place to Die, action films, Adam Wingard, Best of 2014, Brendan Meyer, brother-sister relationships, bullies, Chase Williamson, children in peril, cinema, covert military action, Dan Stevens, dark comedies, Drive, electronic score, families, favorite films, film reviews, films, Joel David Moore, Lance Reddick, Leland Orser, Maika Monroe, military coverup, military experiment, Movies, mystery, Robby Baumgartner, Sheila Kelley, Simon Barrett, Steve Moore, stylish films, Tabatha Shaun, The Guest, thrillers, war veterans, writer/director teams, You're Next

Hot on the heels of their surprise hit, You’re Next (2013), director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have returned with another gleefully demented genre offering. Whereas their last film took the “home invasion” sub-genre into some truly inspired new directions, this time around, the dynamic duo have set their sights on “stranger in our home” films. Like You’re Next, The Guest (2014) is a gonzo good time, full of clever writing, subtle black-as-coal humor and some truly asskicking action setpieces. At the center of the film is a truly inspired trio of performance from Dan Stevens as the handsome, charismatic and ultra-sensitive “golden boy” who may or may not be a murderous psychopath and Maika Monroe and Brendan Meyer as the savvy kids who may or may not be able to stop him dead in his tracks. The end result? Over 90 minutes of pure, pulpy, cinematic bliss and another check in the “Win” column for the Wingard/Barrett juggernaut.

As the Peterson’s mourn the unexpected death of their soldier son, Caleb, in Iraq, a mysterious visitor shows up and puts the household into a topspin. David (Dan Stevens), a quiet, ridiculously polite and charismatic young man, claims to be a friend of Caleb’s and fellow soldier. After getting discharged, David sought out the Petersons, as per Caleb’s last wish, in order to “watch over them.” Mother Laura (Sheila Kelley) is only too happy to have David around, since any reminder of her beloved son is a good thing. Father Spencer (Leland Orser), however, isn’t quite as big on David, worried that the seemingly nice young man might have a bit of “the PTSD.” For their parts, Caleb’s sister and brother, Anna (Maika Monroe) and Luke (Brendan Meyer), seem to regard David with a mixture of curiosity and faint amusement: the guy is so unbelievably polite and nice that he might as well have stepped out of a woodcut, for all his old-fashioned “aw shucks”-ness.

David ends up staying with the Petersons and goes about the business of ingratiating himself into the family’s good graces: he helps Luke with his homework (with some difficulty), drinks beers with Spencer as he pours his heart out about his shitty job, helps Laura around the house and goes with Anna to a Halloween party. All seems nice and normal, even if we sometimes get shots of a pensive David that border on the unsettling. At one point, Spencer asks David if he’s tired: “I don’t need much sleep,” he responds, with a knowing look, and anyone paying attention should get a little of the ol’ goose flesh.

The situation hits a new level when David finds out that Luke is being bullied at school: in a truly awe-inspiring scene, David has Luke take him to the bullies, at an isolated roadside bar well-known for serving minors. After taunting the high school toughs with a particularly offensive drink order, David proceeds to wipe the bar up with the creeps in a scene that makes Road House (1989) look like a commercial for allergy medicine. The point is crystal clear: David is absolutely not the kind of guy that you want to fuck with, in any way, shape or form.

As David continues to thread his way through the lives of the various Petersons, however, Anna begins to notice that strange things are happening all around them, including the unexpected death of one of her friends. As Anna begins to believe that David might not be quite who he seems, the rest of the family seem to close ranks, more convinced than ever that David is a true-blue friend and confident. Is Anna right or has she unfairly maligned this sweet, young man? Will she be able to convince her family of the “truth” (whatever that might be) before it’s too late? Why, exactly, is David here? Is he really trying to protect the family, at all costs, or is his real mission to destroy everything? By the time it’s all over, Anna will have learned a very important lesson: always be careful who you invite into your home…not all guests are created equal.

Similar to You’re Next, The Guest is sort of a hybrid-genre film, melding together elements of action, horror, thriller, comedy and drama into one seriously delicious stew. The film is stuffed to bursting with some ridiculously energetic action setpieces (the bar beat-down is, without a doubt, solid gold: if you don’t shadowbox the screen, you might be watching a different film), as well as some genuinely nail-biting moments of pure tension. The drama elements are well-represented via the family’s interpersonal dynamics and the ways in which they subtly come to accept (and rely on) David’s presence in their lives. One of the biggest and best surprises regarding The Guest is how funny it actually is: while this is certainly not an out-and-out laugh-riot, the vein of dark humor that runs through the film is quite pronounced and leads to some of its best moments. The bar fight sequence is a great example of all of the elements coming together in one heady moment: this is the kind of genre splicing that folks like Robert Rodriguez and Quention Tarantino excel in and Wingard/Barrett knock it right out of the park.

At times, The Guest almost plays like a more tongue-in-cheek, conventional version of Refn’s Drive (2011): the production values are high, the John Carpenter-influenced electro-score (courtesy of Steve Moore) is utterly fantastic and the whole thing is stylish almost to a fault (the finale, in particular, is an absolute masterclass in stylish anarchy). Where Ryan Gosling’s Driver was a self-styled, if nihilistic, white knight, however, Dan Steven’s David is a decidedly more shadowy individual: for the majority of the film, it’s impossible to really gauge his motives, lending an overriding air of unease and tension to the proceedings. We knew why the Driver was doing what he did, regardless of how violent, self-destructive or pointless his actions, but we’re never sure about David. Even when he’s whupping ass on the “bad guys,” we’re still never quite sure if he’s right or wrong.

While the entire cast is solid, Stevens, Monroe and Meyer are exceptional as the trio at the center of everything. Monroe is a nice, strong female character, with a sardonic edge and just enough youthful inconsistency to make her seem like a real person, rather than a stock “final girl.” For his part, Meyer makes Luke quite likable, while still allowing for subtle hints of darkness around the edges: the scene where he emulates David and kicks the shit out of one of his bullies is all kinds of awesome but it’s also kind of scary and unhinged: predominantly known for TV roles in the past, here’s to hoping that Meyer gets more opportunities like this to stretch his wings.

And then, of course, there’s Dan Stevens. Almost supernaturally good-looking, with piercing eyes and a purposefully blank expression, the British actor is the kind of fellow that you might expect to play a prince in a life-action Disney film, not a potentially insane and murderous misanthrope. His performance is pitch-perfect, however, full of the kind of subtle mannerisms and expressions that build his character without handing the audience a cheat-sheet to follow along with. When David is being nice, he’s the kind of dude that everybody wants to hang out with: nowhere is this made more clear than the awesome scene where David triumphantly walks into the Halloween party, carrying kegs like they were six-packs. It’s the kind of bit that makes you want to high-five the nearest bro. When David unleashes the darkness, however, he’s absolutely terrifying, leading to some of the most surprising, shocking bursts of violence I’ve seen in some time. It’s a terrific balancing act and it’s to Stevens immense credit that he makes it look so easy. Let’s hope this is but Act One of Steven’s career in genre films, since we could absolutely use more of this guy ASAP.

Perhaps the most important aspect of The Guest is how much fun it is. Like You’re Next, Wingard and Barrett’s newest film is an absolute blast from start to finish: adrenalized, stylish and smart, The Guest is almost calculatedly crowd-pleasing, jumping from one awesome setpiece to the next. If the ultimate revelation about what’s going on is both a little silly and a little tired, it’s the only thing about The Guest that ever feels less than totally righteous: I’m not saying that I disliked the “reveal” so much as that I felt Barrett could have come up with something a little stronger and/or stranger. That being said, I wouldn’t change a single frame of the climax, which manages to toe the line between “ridiculous” and “ridiculously cool” with total aplomb.

Ultimately, The Guest is a metric ton of good times, all wrapped up in a nice, shiny package. When the film is completely off-the-rails, such as the bar fight, Halloween party and finale, it’s completely unbeatable. More than just an asskicking action film, however, Wingard and Barrett toss all kinds of subtle details into the mix that constantly elevate the film. From David’s extremely awkward sex scene with one of Anna’s friends to the subtle moment where David and Luke carve pumpkins to the triumphant scene where David takes Luke’s obnoxious principal to task, there are so many little quirks here that add immeasurably to the richness of the film’s tableau.

Judging by this film and You’re Next, it would seem that Wingard and Barrett have decided to be the preeminent neo-thriller advocates for our modern day and age. All I can say to that is: bring on the next one, ASAP…we need more of these films like we need water and oxygen.

1/4/15: Leave Your Mind At the Sound of the Beep

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Ahnna Rasch, Alexander Brøndsted, Antonio Tublen, audio experiments, audio tones, Björn Löfberg Egner, cheating husbands, cinema, Computer Chess, dark comedies, dramas, dysfunctional family, electronic score, Erik Börén, experiments, film reviews, films, flashbacks, foreign films, hallucinations, husband-wife relationship, infidelity, insanity, Johanna Tschig, LFO, Linus Eklund, loners, Lukas Loughran, mental breakdown, mental illness, mind control, Movies, neighbors, Patrik Karlson, Per Löfberg, Samir Dounas, sci-fi, scientists, secrets, sound frequencies, sounds, stylish films, Swedish films, synthesizers, troubled marriages, writer-director-score-editor

Suppose that you invented the perfect self-help device, a machine that would put you into a highly suggestible state, allowing for subtle modifications to your behavior. Trying to cut back on sweets? Simply leave a “message” for yourself and your mind will subconsciously take care of the heavy lifting. Want to exercise more? Listen to a particular tone and, without even trying, you’ll actually want to run a marathon and do sit-ups until the cows come home. Want to just be a “better” person, in general? Set the controls, leave your command and, through no additional effort of your own, your brain and body will spring into action, making your “wish” come true. Sounds pretty amazing, right?

Now…suppose that you also just realized that if your humble little invention works so well on you, it might also work equally well on others. Suppose you discover that your device allows you to “control” others, using the power of hypnotic suggestion to subliminally influence and direct their actions and thoughts. Would you use said device to help make the world a better place, influencing people to abandon selfish, dangerous and destructive behaviors in favor of a more helpful, unified world view, inching humanity ever closer to a long-sought-after utopia? Or would you use it to turn those around you into mindless slaves, unknowingly beholden to your whim and command?

In a nutshell, that’s the conflict at the center of multi-hat-wearing director Antonio Tublen’s (he also wrote, edited and performed the electronic score) intriguing LFO (2014), an odd, stylish and darkly humorous bit of heady sci-fi that whips mind control, mental illness, marital discord and God complexes into a heady brew. While the film can be a little rocky, at times, and comes across as overly complex in the early going, LFO eventually settles down into a smart, edgy and appropriately weird little film that’s somewhat reminiscent of Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (2013), while still managing to stake out plenty of original territory of its own.

Robert (Patrik Karlson) is a loner who lives by himself, routinely ignores his self-posted notes to “Take his medication” and seems to hallucinate the specter of his former wife, Clara (Ahnna Rasch), who appears to serve as his conscience. He also appears to be a scientist, of some sort, who’s working on an experiment involving sound frequencies: Robert collaborates with several other colleagues, including Sinus-San (Erik Börén), via short-wave radio, since he rarely seems to leave his house. Robert makes a breakthrough when he notes that a particular frequency makes him highly susceptible to suggestion: upon further experimentation, he discovers that he can actually command himself to do things by giving an order into his device and listening to the resulting tone. In a humorous bit, Robert makes himself dislike cookies: after “waking up” from the frequency, he absent-mindedly noshes on a cookie, only to spit the treat out in disgust. Success!

After further tests prove how well the device works, Robert decides to take everything to the next level, “Phase 2,” as it were. Inviting his new neighbors, Linn (Johanna Tschig) and Simon (Per Löfberg) over for coffee, Robert uses the device on them and discovers that it has the exact same effect as on him. While in their hypnotic states, Robert plants subtle subliminal commands that have the effect of turning Linn and Simon into mindless drones: whenever they hear the tone, they’re powerless to resist Robert’s commands, although they remember nothing upon “waking.” In short order, the mad scientist is using Simon for free labor, while Linn serves as his sex slave, in a pretty obvious example of “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

As Robert continues to fine-tune and perfect his device, however, outside forces begin to swirl about him. Sinus-san has taken to lurking around the periphery after discovering that Robert has cut him out of their joint discovery, while a mysterious insurance adjuster, Peter (Lukas Loughran), keeps asking questions about a car accident that Robert seems to have been involved with. There’s also the little matter of Clara, whose presence becomes more and more pronounced, as she constantly admonishes Robert to take his meds. Buffeted on all sides, Robert begins to lose control of his unwitting neighbors, who are now beginning to experience strange, unexplained half-memories of things that they can’t quite recall, such as Linn having sex with Robert. As Robert slips further and further into madness, humanity slides ever closer to a complete loss of free will…for better or much, much worse.

Tublen’s LFO bursts out of the gate with a smart, fresh concept and then proceeds to expand on it in some interesting ways. If the initial going can be head-swimmingly complex (perhaps those with knowledge of sound frequencies and the resulting science behind it may be able to keep up but this viewer was underwater fairly quickly), the film eventually settles down and, once we’ve accepted the tech aspect, becomes much more of a basic “mind control” film, albeit one filtered through the cracked, surreal lens of something like a Quentin Dupieux film. While not as outwardly strange or surreal as Dupieux’s films, there’s still the basic sense of a world that’s similar to ours but just off-kilter enough to be strange and unsettling.

LFO is a highly stylish, visual film, filled with vibrant colors, blinking lights, lo-fi technology and lovingly composed frames. The cinematography, courtesy of dual personnel Alexander Brøndsted and Linus Eklund, is consistently strong and the film always looks interesting. As befits a film focused on sound frequencies, the sound design in LFO is absolutely top-notch: I don’t normally single out sound engineers but I’d be a real jerk not to heap some praise on Samir Dounas, since the sound mix and editing is so vital to this particular film’s success. There’s also a highly effective electronic score, courtesy of the director, himself, which adds immeasurably to the atmosphere and tone of the film: another way in which LFO reminded me of Dupieux’s filmography.

The performances are uniformly strong, with Karlson being particularly impressive as the increasingly unhinged Robert. Tschig and Löfberg are quite convincing as the couple, vacillating between dead-eyed drones and confused, slightly frightened babes-in-the-woods: particularly good are the later scenes where Robert pretends to be a marriage counselor and leads the couple through his version of reconciliation therapy. One of the most impressive aspects of the film is how outwardly funny it is, albeit in a dark, rather twisted way. All three of the leads display excellent and subtle comic timing, which helps keep everything moving smoothly.

If I have any real complaints with LFO, they’re the same kinds of issues I might have with any similarly “tricky” film: at times, the film can get tripped-up in its own complex rationalizations and the whole thing feels just slightly longer than it should be. There’s also the underlying problem of Robert’s virtually unbeatable ability to control minds: similar to superheroes/villains that are too powerful, the balance of power in LFO is always drastically unbalanced. Since Robert is able to effortlessly control any and every situation with a click of his remote, there are times when the film feels rather low stakes: regardless of his situation, we’re always fairly sure that our little anti-hero will be able to regain control. Tublen still manages to wring plenty of genuine suspense and tension out of the scenario, don’t get me wrong, but this is definitely the epitome of a “stacked deck.”

In the end, I quite liked LFO: the film was very smart, relentless and genuinely intriguing. While never as unpredictable as something like Computer Chess or Wrong (2012), it was still one of the trickier films I saw last year and is never anything less than thought-provoking. LFO also manages to go out on a real high point, with one of the best endings I’ve seen in some time: in fact, the ending is so good that it actually helped to smooth out some of my previous reservations, proof positive that you always want to leave ’em with your best foot forward. While I’m sure that none of us would ever want a neighbor like Robert, it goes without saying that we could all benefit from spending a little time with the creepazoid, now and then.

10/2/14 (Part Two): Holiday Leftovers

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'80s films, '80s slasher films, 31 Days of Halloween, Charles Cyphers, cinema, Cliff Emmich, co-writers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Dick Warlock, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, film reviews, films, Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween II, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, hospitals, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jeffrey Kramer, John Carpenter, Lance Guest, Laurie Strode, Leo Rossi, Michael Myers, Movies, Nancy Stephens, Pamela Susan Shoop, Rick Rosenthal, Sam Loomis, sequels, slasher films

Memory’s kind of a funny thing. I remember really disliking Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween 2 (1981) when I first saw it, probably because I felt cheated that John Carpenter didn’t direct it. I was a huge fan of the original Halloween (1978) and I’m pretty sure that the thought of a Carpenter-less continuation of the story really ticked me off. Several years ago, I decided to watch the entire Halloween franchise in one fell swoop and I, likewise, remember being disappointed by the second entry, albeit not as disappointed as I was by the Busta entry.

This, of course, brings us to the present day where I decided to screen Halloween 2 back-to-back with the Carpenter classic. I assumed that my findings would be pretty much the same as they were in the past: this was going to be a lame cash-grab. At this point, I figured I could finally give up on the film and relegate it to the special hell reserved for sequels like Wishmaster 4 (2002) or Psycho 3 (1986). And then something kind of funny happened. Perhaps it was the warm glow from seeing the always-dependable original film…perhaps it was my complete focus on the picture at hand…regardless of the reason, I ended up…well, kinda liking the flick. It’s no patch on the original, mind you, and only barely in the same universe, quality-wise, but it actually makes perfect sense as a direct sequel (to a point) and would have brought the series to a pretty decent conclusion if the producers would have opted to end it here.

If younger me would have paid closer attention back in the day, I probably would have realized that Halloween 2 didn’t have as tenuous a relationship to Carpenter’s film as I thought it did. Not only did Carpenter and partner Debra Hill co-produce the film but they also co-wrote it and Carpenter once again provided the musical score. Dean Cundey, the masterful cinematographer from the first film, returned to shoot this, as well, insuring that the overall look would, at the very least, be pretty similar. Many of the original cast members, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence and Charles Cyphers, reprised their roles from the first film and the movie actually takes place immediately after the events of the original movie: not as in “One week later…” but as in “5 minutes later…” In fact, beyond the fact that Carpenter handed the directorial duties over to Rosenthal, both Halloween and its sequel look pretty damn similar.

All of this being said, Halloween 2 is most definitely not in the same league as Carpenter’s film. For one thing, the film falls victim to the biggest sin of sequels: more is not necessarily better. If there was one building blowing up in the first movie, level a city block in the second. Did Rambo kill ten guys in the second movie? Better give him forty for the third. The idea of escalation doesn’t technically help the quality of the film so much as keep setting a higher and higher bar for future sequel makers to leap over. In the case of Halloween, we go from a small handful of deaths in the first film (including at least a couple off-screen ones) to a small battalion in the second. It’s a curious move for the series, since the original film was all about mood and suspense with very little actual gore. Halloween 2, on the other hand, is much freer with the red stuff, including a thoroughly ridiculous scene where a victim’s blood is completely drained out onto the floor, creating something akin to a lake. There’s also a scalding, an eyeball puncture, throat slashings and the like, although nothing ever seems too gratuitous or mean-spirited (even the pool of blood pays off with one of the best ever slasher film deaths…let just say, people should always watch their step…).

The film’s other big issue is the introduction of several extraneous plot elements that seem destined to add depth to the mythos but instead just end up unnecessarily cluttering the narrative. We get druid lore, a surprise lineage revelation, a power struggle at the asylum and an angry mob throwing rocks at the old Meyers place, none of which actually pay off in any meaningful way. Part of the problem with all these plot threads is that it seems to completely push poor Jamie Lee Curtis off the screen: while Laurie was the hero of the first film, she gets so little screen-time here as to be more of a supporting player, while Loomis ends up picking up the hero reins and running roughshod. It’s also a bit disconcerting to see the strong, resolute Laurie of the first film reduced to the weak, bed-ridden Laurie of the sequel: Curtis doesn’t even sound the same in this, seeming to dial the passion down a full notch or two.

Despite all of this, however, Halloween 2 is actually a pretty decent film. It’s much more of a generic slasher than the first, especially since it trades the rich autumnal warmth of Carpenter’s film for the clinical frigidity of the hospital, but it’s briskly paced and no one element really wears out its welcome. The connection to the first film is so seamless as to be almost dizzying, which is a nice trick: while the film begins with “rerun” footage from the first, there’s a point where it seamlessly morphs into the “new” footage and I really couldn’t tell. I know where the original film ends, of course, so seeing the film “continue” past that point was disorienting but also kinda cool. It’s also nice to have another Carpenter soundtrack (I absolutely love his film scores), even if the score for Halloween 2 isn’t as evocative as the original: it’s a bit more strident but all of the familiar beats are there.

There are also plenty of nicely staged setpieces and some really nice shots, although none of this has the creeping claustrophobia of the first film. The aforementioned blood scene has a great payoff, as does the scene where someone passes out on a steering wheel, alerting Michael to Laurie’s presence. There’s also a really nicely staged shot where Michael strangles someone in the background while someone dithers around in the foreground, unaware. And I must certainly admit extreme fondness for the scene where a curious Michael peeks in through an old couple’s window and sees them watching Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968): I’m positive that’s Carpenter referencing his NOTLD nod from the first film (watch the scene where Loomis and the nurse drive up to the asylum in the rain and tell me the white-clothed patients don’t look like Romero’s similarly garbed undead), although I’ll freely admit that it might also just be happy coincidence.

Although I firmly believe that the original Halloween never needed a sequel (for me, Michael’s body disappearing and Laurie bursting into tears finish that story more definitively than “The End” ever could), I’ll also admit that Halloween 2 isn’t a terrible sequel. At the very least, it’s the last time that the series ever really bothered with any true connection to the first film, beyond the Michael Meyers connection, of course. Taken on its own, it’s a pretty decent little slasher with several great scenes but nothing spectacular. Combined with the first film, however, it actually ends up offering a bit more closure. The additional plot details may be largely unnecessary but they do make sense, in context, and the two films become a sort of duology. Halloween 2 may not be a necessary film and it certainly won’t make anyone forget the original but it ends up being a pretty good supplement to Carpenter’s film. If you’ve always given the film the cold shoulder, go ahead and give it a try: you might not be blown away but I’m willing to wager that you’ll enjoy yourself. Younger me was wrong: Halloween 2 definitely doesn’t suck. It’s pretty okay…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

10/2/14 (Part One): The Reason For the Season

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'70s films, 31 Days of Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, auteur theory, babysitters, Brian Andrews, Charles Cyphers, classic films, co-writers, cult classic, dead teenagers, Dean Cundey, Debra Hill, Donald Pleasence, electronic score, favorite films, Film auteurs, Haddonfield, Halloween, horror, horror franchises, horror movies, iconic film scores, independent film, insane asylums, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter, John Michael Graham, Kyle Richards, Michael Myers, Nancy Kyes, Nick Castle, P.J. Soles, Sam Loomis, set in the 1970s, slasher films, small town life, writer-director

Apparently, I owe John Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1978) an apology. Despite regarding the film as one of my favorites for more years than I can remember and revisiting it at least once a year, it seems that I’ve been taking it for granted. Call me “lazy” or “too comfortable” but I’ve been treating the film as background noise for far too long now: something to have on while serving up gift-wrapped sugar treats for the young’uns or to zone out to after a particularly long day at work. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’ve seen the film so many times, kind of like how we all used to get burnt out on big radio singles back when there was radio. I’ve been looking at the movie for years but I haven’t really been “watching” it for some time now. Obviously, this was a situation that needed to be rectified.

For this year’s screening of the seasonal chiller, I decided to give it my complete and undivided attention: rather than just put it on, I wanted to try to view it (if possible) through unbiased eyes. Essentially, I had a question: if I were viewing this for the first time today, would it still have the same impact on me that it did when I was a kid? It’s a flawed experiment, obviously, since there are so many other factors to consider, not the least of which is that at the time I saw the film, I didn’t really have much to compare it to: by this point, I’ve seen more horror films than I probably thought could ever exist back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Nonetheless, I wanted to see if the film could actually still affect me: I’ve been hearing stories lately about young people laughing their way through recent screenings of the film and wanted to see if this forefather to the slasher film still had any of its raw power left. As it stands, I found out two separate things: the film hasn’t lost any of its power over the 36 years since its release…and it’s entirely possible that modern audiences have rocks in their head. I’ll try to prove the former but you’re just gonna have to take my word on the latter.

Since I find it nearly impossible to believe that there are any film fans out there who aren’t at least familiar with Carpenter’s masterpiece (or Rob Zombie’s brain-dead remakes, if that floats yer boat), I’ll just give this the Cliff Notes synopsis: 15 years ago, young Michael Myers (Will Sandin) brutally stabbed his sister to death and was sentenced to an insane asylum. Dedicated psychiatrist Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) spends the next eight years trying to cure and the seven years after that trying to keep him locked away. When Michael escapes from the asylum on the day before Halloween, Loomis tracks him back to his boyhood home, the small town of Haddonfield. Michael arrives in the town on Halloween, steals some supplies (knives and a William Shatner Halloween mask) and quickly sets his sights on decimating the town’s supply of teenagers, in particular Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (P.J. Soles). As day gives way to night, Michael skulks about, picking one person off after the other. Loomis is on the case, however, and has been scouring the town from top to bottom, hunting for any sign of his elusive ward. As Michael closes the distance between Laurie and her two young charges, Tommy (Brian Andrews) and Lindsey (Kyle Richards), will Loomis get there in time or will the resourceful babysitter be forced into a fight for her life against a silent, inhuman monster?

But back to that earlier question: did the film have any impact on me this time around or did I find myself re-evaluating my lifelong love for the film, ala Kevin Smith’s now odious Clerks (1994)? As it turns out, the film is still just as impactful (to me, at least) today as it was a couple of decades ago: despite knowing every twist, turn and plot development, I was still glued to the screen and even caught myself reacting to a few setpieces that I was sure would be old hat by this time. Now that the “Is it still effective?” question is answered, time to think about the “Why?” part. Why is Halloween still such an effective horror, even as it rapidly approaches its 40 anniversary?

The easy answer, of course, is that Halloween is still so damn effective because it’s such a well-made film. Yeah, that’s a bit of a cop-out but let’s increase the magnification to 1000x, shall we? First off, Carpenter is an absolute master filmmaker: that’s no hyperbole, rather one of those accepted scientific facts. By the time of Halloween, he already had a massively entertaining sci-fi epic under his belt (Dark Star (1974), as well as one of the most undisputed badass films in the history of popular cinema: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). I’ve already written extensively about Assault on Precinct 13 in another blog but here’s the recap: Assault is one of those raw, primal films that sprung fully formed into the world, like Athena out of Zeus’ head, and proceeded to rewrite the rule book on what low-budget action films were capable enough. Suffice to say that Assault on Precinct 13 would be a feather in anyone’s cap: for Carpenter, he just called it his sophomore film.

But back to Halloween. So we’ve got a master director who’s just taken his first baby steps towards on helluva career. What else do we have? How about that iconic electronic music score? Short of the Jaws (1975) theme song (and maybe Jurassic Park (1993), come to think of it), I’m hard-pressed to recall another film’s instrumental score that’s so easily recognized and functions so Pavlovian among genre fans. The responsible party? That’d be our man John, again, who also wrote the instantly memorable score for Assault. So we have a master director and an amazing musical score…what else we got? Well, we’ve also got a pretty impressive cast, even if they’re mostly unknowns (with the exception of the legendary Donald Pleasence, of course). Despite appearing in a few TV shows prior to this, Halloween was also the big-screen debut of Jamie Lee Curtis, which also adds a few feathers to its cap: film fans, genre or otherwise, know Curtis as being one of the most dependable, strong and fun performers to tread the boards in this modern film era. Curtis’ performance as Laurie is a true watershed moment in horror, since it introduced the horror world to the notion of a strong female lead. While Laurie might not be quite in Lt. Ripley territory, her character is anything but a damsel in distress: Loomis may shoot Michael several times from a safe distance but Laurie goes mano a mano with the fucker, employing hangers, knitting needles, knives and whatever else she can get her hands on to inflict maximum damage. Loomis may be the guy who gets in the final shots (for all the good that does) but Laurie’s the one who softened up the devil, in the first place.

Unlike the scads of “dead teenager movies” that followed in its wake, the “victims” in Halloween are not a clichéd, unlikable bunch of cannon fodder: they might not be fully developed characters in the way that characters in The Godfather (1972) are, for example, but they’re also a light year away from the “horny/stupid/asshole” stereotypes that would pop up in just about every other slasher film ever made. Laurie and her friends may not quite look like teenagers but they definitely sound like them and it’s pretty impossible (for me, at least) to not feel empathy for them. Contrast this to something like Hatchet (2006), which delights in introducing super-shitty characters so that audiences will cheer when they get fed into a wood chipper: it’s a subtle but big difference.

Alright…so far, we have a film with a master director, excellent musical score, effective acting and sympathetic characters. What else does it have going on? Well, it’s got an exceptionally tight script, for one thing, a script which manages to dole out just enough information to get us intrigued but not enough to make us glaze over (I’m absolutely looking at you, Rob Z). It also has some pretty astounding cinematography, courtesy of Dean Cundey, the man with the camera who shot everything from Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976) to most of Carpenter’s catalog (including The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From New York), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Jurassic Park (to name but a very few out of a very impressive career). Cundey uses plenty of gorgeous wide shots in the film, along with that (by now clichéd) “killer’s POV” that’s name-checked in just about 99.9% of slasher films. If you watch Halloween and think, “Gee, this stuff is so cliché,” ponder this, Poindexter: this was the film that pretty much wrote the rulebook on this kind of stuff (if you held up your hand and said, “Bay of Blood (1971)!,” you get points for that, too).

So all that stuff’s thrown into the mix, which should go a long way towards answering the question, “Is Halloween actually a good film?” (Short answer: Of course.) The deeper question, however, is why is Carpenter’s film still so effective despite all the films that have come and gone since? There have been plenty of bloodier, rawer, more frantic, more hopeless and more eye-popping films over the years, no two ways about it. How, then, could I stand on my apple-box and bend your ears about this old dinosaur? Well, folks, there’s a pretty simple answer: like Hitchcock before him, Carpenter is an absolute wizard at creating tension so thick that you could cut it with a knife. From the opening credit sequence (and let’s be honest: it’s one of the coolest, if simplest, credit sequences in the history of the medium) to the final shot, Halloween is nothing short of a barely concealed live wire. Much of the credit for this impenetrable mood is due to Carpenter’s amazing score: rarely have there been musical tones that seem more suited for reaching into someone’s chest and squeezing their heart into strawberry jam. The film also has a deadly serious tone (despite some welcome comic relief via the ultra-snarky Annie), which helps with the oppressive atmosphere. Digging deeper, however, there’s another reason for this: Carpenter has purposefully crafted a world that oozes menace and threat from every pore, regardless of the time of day, the characters involved or the storyline.

Despite seeming the obvious way to go, the majority of Halloween’s narrative doesn’t take place during the evening: some of the flat-out creepiest shit happens right out in broad daylight. Carpenter does something so simple, yet devious, that I’m surprised no one else has really figured this out yet: he lets his monster just walk around among the unsuspecting sheep. During the lead-up to the night-time festivities, Carpenter manages to stick Michael into the corners or margins of just about every shot. Laurie notices Michael watching her from across the street, while she’s in school…Laurie notices Michael hanging out on a sidewalk, in her neighborhood…Michael is just driving a car around through the streets of Haddonfield, as natural as if he were cruising on a Saturday night. Unlike other cinematic monsters, Michael doesn’t seem to strictly a “creature of the night,” as it were. The majority of the kills occur after dark, but the stalking is pretty-much a 24-7 deal.

There’s a reason this works so beautifully and it has to do with that old chestnut of Hitchcock’s regarding showing the bomb: if a couple are sitting at a table and suddenly blow up, the audience is surprised and shocked but only momentarily. If the audience witnesses someone place a bomb under the table, set the timer and leave, however, than we suddenly have a whole other animal…we have suspense. The characters might not know about the bomb but we do, which has the natural effect of keeping us on the edge of our seats: we keep yelling at the screen, telling the idiots to get the hell away from the table but they, of course, won’t listen.

Carpenter’s bomb, so to speak, is Michael. In many ways, he’s like a living ghost that haunts Haddonfield. Since we already know who and what he is, thanks to the opening, Loomis’ description and the harrowing asylum escape, we already know what he’s capable of once he shows up among the “normal” folks. Laurie and her friends might not know who the goony guy in the Shatner mask is but we do and that makes all the difference. Since Michael is an omnipresent force in the film, we never reach a point where he’s not on our minds: we might temporarily forget him, as we get caught up in some bit of teenage minutiae but he’s always right around the corner to remind us. Once the killing begins in earnest and Michael becomes an unstoppable force, it’s almost like our fears have been confirmed: if only those idiots would have listened to us about the bomb, none of this shit would be happening. Thanks to this technique, Halloween has about a million times more resonance and power than generic slashers that merely set up a group of people, establish a threat, wait until dark and kill ’em all.

These are all great reasons to love Halloween, as far as I’m concerned, but there are plenty of other reasons. Nick Castle’s performance as Michael may be mute but he manages to instill no small amount of characterization, none the less: one of my favorite scenes in any horror movie, ever, is the bit where Michael lifts Bob (John Michael Graham) off the floor, nails him to the wall with a knife and proceeds to stare at him, slowly cocking his head to the side as if he were a dog watching a caterpillar. It’s a terrifying moment precisely because it’s such an innocent, human expression: we don’t expect this emotionless monstrosity to express curiosity, after all, since that makes him more uncomfortably human than we’d like. There’s another fantastic scene (in the same part of the film, ironically enough) where Michael puts on a sheet and Michael’s glasses and goes to see Lynda. She expects Bob while we know it’s Michael under the sheet: her goofing around turns to frustration when Bob won’t end the joke, while our hearts jump from our chest to our throat like a strongman test at the carnival. There are about a million ways this scene could have been played out but only one that achieves maximum chills and Carpenter nails it.

And there, in a pretty huge nutshell, you have it: my rationalization for why Halloween should still be considered not only a forefather to modern horror films but also one of the best examples of the genre that we’ll probably ever see. Like Hooper’s landmark The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the original Halloween is surprisingly light on actual gore: there are plenty of strangulations and off-screen killing but this is about the furthest thing from something like Friday the 13th (1980) that you can get. This, of course, makes the numerous (and increasingly violent) sequels seem even more half-baked than the numerous TCM sequels: while there was some (small) precedent for graphic violence in Hooper’s film, there’s virtually none in Carpenter’s, despite the subject matter.

Despite not really thinking about Halloween in any meaningful way for years, all it took was one good, close viewing to remind me of all the reasons that this film was always one of my favorites. Like eating comfort foods, there’s just something about watching Halloween that seems natural and…well…good, to me. In a day and age where one-upmanship is the name of the game and jaded viewers have seen just about everything short of actual snuff films, it’s refreshing to return to something like Halloween and remember a time when it was possible for a horror film to make you think and feel without battering you into submission. Watching Halloween in this way has only reaffirmed my earlier love for the film: horror films wouldn’t be the same without Carpenter and Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without…well…Halloween.

9/14/14: This Little Piggy

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bad cops, bad decisions, Bad Lieutenant, based on a book, black comedies, Brian McCardie, British films, cinema, Clint Mansell, corrupt law enforcement, Eddie Marsan, electronic score, Emun Elliott, film reviews, films, Filth, gallows' humor, Gary Lewis, homophobia, Imogen Poots, infidelity, insanity, Irvine Welsh, James McAvoy, Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, John Sessions, Jon S. Baird, Matthew Jensen, mental illness, Movies, pigs, racism, sexism, Shauna Macdonald, Shirley Henderson, Trainspotting, voice-over narration, writer-director

When it comes to filmed adaptations of Scottish scalawag Irvine Welsh’s novels, Danny Boyle’s extraordinary version of Trainspotting (1996) will probably always be the gold standard. In a way, Boyle’s film was a perfect storm and, perhaps, the only one of the adaptations to truly capture Welsh’s unique voice and style. Boyle managed to find the essential humanity at the core of some pretty reprehensible characters and wrapped the proceedings in an alternately candy-colored and bleakly hallucinatory environment: the film was the perfect combination of the romantic and the scatological, the joy and shuddering horror of the trod-upon Scotch lower-class writ large for the whole world to see. In Boyle’s hands, there was equal parts poetry and filth, the proverbial rose pushing up through a mountain of shit. Trainspotting works so well because Boyle walks the tightrope so perfectly: too much glitz and we lose the allure of Welsh’s gutter-punk angels…too much vulgarity and we tune out the misery, if only to avoid staring too deeply into the abyss.

Although it’s not (necessarily) meant as a pejorative, writer/director Jon S. Baird’s adaptation of Welsh’s Filth (2013) is no Trainspotting. In certain ways, the film plays more like an over-the-top (waaaaay over the top) take on Abel Ferrara’s classic of feel-bad-cinema, Bad Lieutenant (1999), just as content to shove our noses in bad behavior as it is to comment on it. Where Ferrara’s film wore its intentions on its sleeve, (any film that centers around a nun forgiving her rapist is obviously interested in more than just a visceral reaction), Filth is a little cagier about its ultimate goal. When Baird’s film works, it’s ferocious, funny, eye-popping and endlessly offensive, featuring a truly great ending and a career-best performance by James McAvoy. When the film doesn’t work, however, it’s actually rather dreadful: pretentious, empty-headed and more stylish than substantial, Filth manages to make all of the mistakes that Trainspotting didn’t. While I (ultimately) ended up liking the film quite a bit (no doubt due, in no small part, to that phenomenal ending), there was plenty that I found to be equally eye-rolling, obnoxious and tedious. Filth may not ascend to the heady heights that Trainspotting did but there’s plenty to enjoy here: fans of Welsh’s purple prose may, indeed, celebrate the fact that Baird has captured the author’s often difficult voice so well.

Our “hero” and guide through this little section of Hell is none other than Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), a cop so completely and thoroughly corrupt/reprehensible that he makes Harvey Keitel’s titular “bad lieutenant” look like a real sweetheart. Bruce is virulently sexist, racist and homophobic, hoovers up cocaine by the metric ton and eagerly blackmails the underage daughter of a prominent lawyer into performing oral sex on him. He steals money from his “best friend” while anonymously serving as obscene phone-caller to the poor guy’s wife, while also sleeping with the wife of one of his co-workers. Bruce is angling for a department promotion which, in his fetid little world, involves doing everything he can to sabotage his fellow officers’ chances of vaulting over him to the finish line.

We first meet Bruce’s co-workers via a series of fantasy vignettes in which our resident Mr. Wonderful gives his (slanted) take on his peers: Dougie (Brian McCardie) is the “Nazi” who’s being cuckolded by Bruce; Peter (Emun Elliott) is the “metrosexual” and “closeted gay”; Ray (Jamie Bell) is the “coke-head rookie”; Gus (Gary Lewis) is the “old as dirt, single-IQ” department veteran and Amanda (Imogen Poots) is the “token female” who “must be sucking off the whole squad,” at least according to Bruce’s jaundiced worldview.

While Bruce’s work-life appears to be one never-ending scheme after another, his home-life appears to be just as complicated and unpleasant. We meet his lovely blonde wife, Carole (Shauna Macdonald), through a series of largely unsuccessful vignettes/voice-overs and get some hint of a past trauma after Bruce attempts (and fails) to give CPR to someone who has collapsed on the street. The dead man’s widow, Mary (Joanne Froggatt), periodically appears to serve as Bruce’s conscience, in a way, while also giving hints at the kind of love story that belongs in a much nicer film.

To muddy the waters even further, Bruce’s squad is currently embroiled in the controversial case of a Japanese exchange student who has been brutally beat to death by a gang of Scottish punks. As the team investigates the case, the stakes are raised when it’s revealed that closing the case will virtually guarantee one of them a plum new promotion: Bruce wants that promotion and sets out to stop his fellow officers in any way he can. Bruce has such single-minded devotion to his plan, in fact, that the actual murder case fades into the background, even when it appears that Carole may be the only witness to the incident.

As Bruce dives deeper and deeper into the sewage around him, his tenuous grasp on reality begins to flicker in and out: he starts to imagine people (including himself) with animal heads, loses control of his hair-trigger temper at a moment’s notice and descends even further into an unrelenting drug hell. Will Bruce be able to keep it all together long enough to solve the murder or, at the very least, completely wreck his co-workers’ lives? What mysterious incident happened to Bruce that causes him to constantly reminisce about a dead boy? And what, exactly, is going on with Bruce’s absent wife, Carole? The ultimate revelation is quite a surprise and leads to a truly bravura climax that almost (but not quite) rivals the “Choose life” finale from Trainspotting, albeit from a much grimmer angle.

As mentioned above, Filth is a pretty hit-and-miss affair but the hits are heady enough to gloss over the misses. Chief among the “pros” here is McAvoy’s astounding performance as Bruce: as painful as a raw nerve, as dastardly as any villain and just charming enough to prevent you from wanting to squash him like a bug, Bruce is a massively interesting construct and is brought to glorious life by McAvoy. Without a strong center, the film would, literally, collapse into wet newspaper: who the hell wants to get stuck with an unlovable, lecherous sociopath for 90 minutes? To McAvoy’s immense credit, he manages to humanize Bruce just enough (the guy is still an inhuman creep, mind you) to allow the finale to have genuine impact. There’s a truly odd but relentlessly effective scene where Bruce obscene calls his friend’s wife while watching old home movies: as tears stream down his cheeks and his eyes betray pure misery, Bruce mouths some of the most vile “sex talk” in some time and masturbates in almost robotic fashion. The split screen shows us that Bunty (Shirley Henderson) is also furiously pleasuring herself, which makes a ludicrous parallel to Bruce’s miserable actions. It’s a small but effective moment, a bit that fuses the film’s twin obsessions of gutter-trawling and emotional overload into one dynamic whole.

Although McAvoy is, head and shoulders, the focal point of the film, it’s definitely not a one-man show. The ensemble is a particularly strong one, with all of Bruce’s co-workers receiving their own moment in the sun, along with some despicable behaviors of their own. Particularly impressive, however, is veteran British character-actor Eddie Marsan as Bruce’s put-upon “best friend” and Masonic Lodge brother Clifford. With his doughy features and perpetually hang-dog demeanor, Clifford is a fabulous foil for Bruce: the scene where Bruce takes Clifford out for a night on the town flops wildly between a “night out for the lads” and “complete psychological torture.” Clifford is an intriguing character and Marsan goes for the gusto in the role, expanding what could have been a caricature into a fully fleshed, if largely worthless, individual.

From a craft standpoint, Filth looks great, although it’s occasionally a little blown-out for my tastes. The film also has the benefit of a pretty excellent soundtrack courtesy of former Pop Will Eat Itself frontman Clint Mansell: while the score doesn’t rival the iconic soundtrack from Trainspotting, it’s still an effective combination of Mansell’s traditional electro scorework and some pretty apt pop tunes (Mansell’s evocative cover of Radiohead’s Creep scores the final scene and is absolutely perfect for the mood Baird has established.

While the film has plenty to recommend it, however, there’s also plenty that nearly derails it completely. The interludes with Carole never work and always seem ancillary to the main narrative. They’re also quite irritating, to be honest, and tonally out-of-sorts with the rest of the film. Along those lines, several scenes, such as the impromptu musical number, seem out-of-place and manage to fall completely flat, affording nothing more than a shrug. For a film that’s about lurid and anti-social behavior, Filth also has a strange tendency to seem…well, just a little bit tame, if that makes sense. Whereas Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant was a feral, unhinged fever dream, Filth plays out more as a snide, tongue-in-cheek expose on “bad behavior”: it’s a little like crossing the street to avoid an exceptionally creepy looking stranger only to discover that the stranger is actually Robert Pattinson with drawn-on tattoos. In many ways, I fear that this comes down to the film’s “style over substance” issues: like many other “everything and the kitchen sink films,” Filth throws so much stuff at the audience that, inevitably, fatigue sinks in. Compare this to the groodiest moments in Boyle’s masterpiece and it’s easy to see how less can, indeed, often be more.

Ultimately, I found myself quite taken with Filth, even though it’s several solid steps below Trainspotting. McAvoy is pitch-perfect throughout and is just good enough to warrant watching the film: regardless of your tolerance for the debauchery on display, McAvoy is outstanding and turns in a real “actor’s performance.” If you can forgive the film its excesses and step over the plot holes that begin to spread like wildfire in the second half (my least favorite being the revelation that Bunty doesn’t realize it’s Bruce that’s been prank-calling her: Really? I mean…really?), I think that you’ll find Filth to be a massively entertaining examination of one of the slimiest cinematic slugs to slither its way across the silver screen in some time. You might not be able to stand in Bruce’s corner (I’d be kind of scared if you could) but that shouldn’t stop you from seeing him get his just desserts. Filth might not be Trainspotting but, for patient and tolerant viewers, it just might be the next best thing.

9/7/14: Anywhere But Here

Tags

absentee father, Amanda Anka, Benicio del Toro, boredom, Chris Pontius, cinema, coming of age, divorced parents, dramas, electronic score, Elle Fanning, ennui, film reviews, films, Harris Savides, Hollywood actors, independent film, indie dramas, living in a hotel, Lost in Translation, Movies, parent-child relationships, Phoenix, Sofia Coppola, Somewhere, Stephen Dorff, The Virgin Suicides, writer-director

If there’s one big take-away we can get from Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (2010), it’s that being young, rich and famous is just about as tedious and dull as it gets. Sure, Johnny (Stephen Dorff) may be a famous actor who indulges in endless partying, drinking and womanizing, attending one gala overseas movie premiere after another but it’s the in-between moments that are particularly telling: when not surrounded by paparazzi and sycophants, Johnny’s life seems to entail sitting alone in his hotel room home, drinking and smoking one cigarette after the other. Entitled? Absolutely. Glamorous? Not on your life.

Since this is the movies, however, we know that it won’t be that simple: there’s got to be some sort of catalyst for change. And there is, of course, in the person of Cleo (Elle Fanning), Johnny’s 11-year-old daughter. Johnny’s ex-wife has sent Cleo to spend some time with her absentee father and he’s reluctantly agreed, despite the monkey wrench it will throw into his wastoid lifestyle. Somewhere along the way, however, a funny, cinematic thing starts to happen: Johnny and Cleo begin to connect and the lay-about actor starts to feel the first stirrings of some pretty alien emotions – love, responsibility and a new-found sense of purpose. Perhaps there’s more to life than empty partying and pleasure-chasing. Perhaps it will be 30-something Johnny who finally begins to grow up, rather than his pre-teen daughter. Perhaps it’s actually up to the child to teach the adult the real ways of the world. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Sofia Coppola’s first two films, the gauzy, hazy The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Oscar-winning Lost in Translation (2003), I was really looking forward to seeing Somewhere. While I haven’t kept up with Coppola’s career in the same way that I have her father’s, for example, I’ve long felt that she was a ridiculously talented writer/director who was managing to develop her own unique, distinctive vision, a vision that didn’t look quite like anyone else’s (least of all, her father’s). Alas, I found Somewhere to be something of a mess, alternating between deadly dull non-action and bizarre, awkward, vaguely nonsensical “arthouse” elements, none of which sit comfortably side by side. It’s a film that opens with a terribly tedious, repetitious static shot of a car racing around a track and then manages to one-up this tedium at every possible opportunity.

While there’s undoubtedly an intriguing film to be made out of the skewering of movie star lifestyle clichés, Somewhere just doesn’t have a whole lot to say. Sparse and spare to the point of feeling underdeveloped, the film comes across more as a series of tedious vignettes than any kind of organic, cohesive narrative: Johnny watches in abject boredom as awkward twin dancers perform a strange pole-dance to the Foo Fighters’ “My Hero”; Johnny watches Cleo figure-skate for what feels like 10 uninterrupted minutes; Johnny shares an elevator with Benicio del Toro (playing himself, natch); Johnny sits for a lengthy makeup session that involves the application of an old man mask; Johnny has an awkward encounter with a male masseuse who drops his own drawers since “if his clients are naked, he should be, too”; Johnny and Cleo attend an Italian awards show; Johnny and Cleo lounge by the pool…it (literally) goes on and on and on. Of the various “scenes,” most are deathly dull, although the bits involving the awful twin dancers and the naked masseuse are, at the very least, more entertaining than the mind-numbing figure-skating routine.

There are a few nods to an actual storyline buried in here (Johnny keeps getting mysterious texts from someone who asks him not to be an “asshole,” pushy paparazzi keep tailing him) but nothing ever develops past the most basic level: in essence, Somewhere is 90-odd minutes of minutiae and ennui. There’s no character development, even if Johnny, technically, finishes the film with a different mindset than he began it (never mind that his character arc ends with his car breaking down and he merrily walking into the horizon because, you know, “regular” people walk places): Cleo never seems to serve as more than a plot device, save for one nicely realized scene where father and daughter share room-service gelato and watch Italian-dubbed episodes of Friends on TV.

It doesn’t help that Johnny is kind of a shitty person to spend any amount of time with: he’s moody, disinterested in everything to the point of being disengaged and seems to exist in a constant state of horny boredom. At a certain point, his non-stop womanizing becomes unbelievably silly (Johnny is so desirable that anonymous women flash him, in public, and he always seems to be coming home to a new, mysterious, nude woman in his bed), although there’s something undeniably creepy about his tendency to follow strange, attractive woman around. Is it only considered stalking if the creep isn’t rich and famous? Inquiring minds want to know.

From a craft standpoint, Somewhere is decent but certainly nothing to write home about. While the cinematography, courtesy of frequent Fincher collaborator Harris Savides, features some truly beautiful night shots, it just as often simply revolves around medium close-ups of Stephen Dorff looking bored. The minimalist electro-score, by French electronica-pop band Phoenix, is so restrained as to recede almost completely into the background, providing the kind of generic score that could have been contributed by any number of faceless soundtrack pros. The acting is just fine throughout, although none of the actors, in particular Dorff, ever seem to display much beyond passionless disinterest and melancholic acceptance.

I really wanted to love Somewhere but I’ll be honest: the tedious opening set a tone that, unfortunately, the rest of the film was only too eager to fulfill. Although I’ve yet to see Coppola’s take on Marie Antoinette (2006) or her critically acclaimed recent film The Bling Ring (2010), I must admit that Somewhere has made me extremely wary. While one less than stellar film does not a career break, necessarily, Somewhere felt like an expansion and doubling-down of the worst affectations in Coppola’s first two films. I’m still curious to see what Coppola has in store for the future but count me as someone who would rather have been anywhere than Somewhere.