7/13/15: Judas Strikes Back

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Amy Pietz, Annie Barlow, Caity Lotz, Camilla Luddington, Carl Sondrol, Carmen Cabana, cinema, crime-scene cleaners, Dallas Richard Hallam, family secrets, FBI agents, film reviews, films, ghosts, Haley Hudson, haunted houses, horror, horror film, horror movies, Judas, Judas Killer, Mark Steger, mediums, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, Patrick Fischler, Patrick Horvath, profilers, returning characters, Scott Michael Foster, sequels, serial killer, serial killers, Suziey Block, The Pact, The Pact 2, thrillers, Trent Haaga, writer-director

Of all the films that might naturally lead to sequels, I’ll freely admit that Nicholas McCarthy’s modest serial killer/ghost chiller The Pact (2012) would probably be one of the last to come to mind. This isn’t to disparage McCarthy’s film, mind you: although it certainly doesn’t re-invent the wheel, The Pact is well made, entertaining and features a genuinely surprising, if rather nonsensical, climax. It also features a visually striking villain with Mark Steger’s gaunt, silent Judas Killer, which is always a plus in any horror film. For all of that, however, The Pact was still a largely by-the-numbers indie horror film, not radically different from many others in a very crowded field.

This being the “Age of Franchise,” however, it was probably only inevitable that even something as small and self-contained as The Pact would receive a sequel: after all, who could have predicated that something like Final Destination (2000) would be up to the fifth film in its franchise, with two more in the wings? In that spirit, we now find ourselves with The Pact 2 (2014), the continuing adventures of Annie Barlow and her lethal (now deceased) uncle Charles, aka the Judas Killer. While several of the actors from the previous film reappear to reprise their roles, including Caity Lotz and Haley Hudson, one of the personnel who does not return is original writer-director McCarthy. This time around, the reins have been handed over to the writing-directing team of Dallas Richard Hallam and Patrick Horvath. Does the new film prove that The Pact warrants franchise status or should this have been a one-and-done from the get-go?

Shaking up the original film’s focus, The Pact 2 concerns itself with June (Camilla Luddington), a plucky crime-scene cleaner/aspiring graphic novelist who also appears to be having nightmares about the previous film’s evil Judas Killer. June is dating Officer Daniel Meyer (Scott Michael Foster), the put-upon local cop whose been assigned to a new series of murders that bear plenty of similarities to the Judas Killer’s earlier onslaught. Problem is, Judas has been dead and buried for a week, at this point, so it’s highly unlikely that he’s running around, butchering women and cutting off their heads. Or is it?

That’s just what FBI profiler Agent Ballard (Patrick Fischler) is trying to figure out. An expert (obsessive?) on Judas, he shows up in town to investigate the new crimes, annoy the shit out of Officer Meyer and drop a bomb on June about her lineage. Turns out June’s actual mother isn’t drug-addicted wreck Maggie (Amy Pietz): her real mother was Jennifer Glick, also known as one of Judas’ original victims. After June begins to experience some very similar paranormal happenings at her house, she decides to contact the first film’s hero, Annie Barlow (Caity Lotz), deciding that kindred spirits need to stick together.

Before long, Annie and June are diving headlong back into the Judas case, investigating June’s link to the dead serial killer, as well as the real story behind Jennifer Glick’s murder. Throughout, Ballard hangs out in the margins, acting just oddly enough to make us question his true motives. Has the infamous Judas Killer found some way to return from the dead, hacking and slashing his way straight to June, or are the new murders the handiwork of a sick, sadistic copycat, a twisted individual who looks to Judas as inspiration for his own terrible acts?

All things considered, The Pact 2 is actually a surprisingly good film, certainly equitable to the original, albeit for different reasons. For one thing, it’s an actual sequel: picking up only a week after the events of the first film and featuring several of the original cast members, there’s a genuine sense of continuity here that you rarely find in other indie horror sequels. In some ways, it’s roughly parallel to the close time-frames utilized in Halloween (1978) and Halloween II (1981): despite being made by two different directors, the films feel connected in ways that later entries never would, despite the omnipresent figure of Michael Myers. It’s definitely one of The Pact 2’s biggest assets, especially when we get more of Lotz and Hudson (as well as Mark Steger’s Judas, of course).

Tone-wise, The Pact 2 is also a much different beast than its predecessor. Despite the supernatural elements and inherent ghostly angle, the sequel is, essentially, a serial killer procedural: most of our time is spent with June, Annie and Agent Ballard investigating the case from various angles, either together or separately. We do still get all of the hallmarks from the first film, of course: doors open and close, shadows appear in the background, people are hauled around by unseen forces…you know…the usual. These elements are definitely downplayed, however, even though the sequel is, by definition, much more supernaturally oriented than the original was.

Acting wise, The Pact 2 is on par with the original, probably thanks to the return of actors like Lotz, Hudson and Steger. While the character of June isn’t quite the equal of the first film’s Annie, Luddington gives a solid performance and certainly makes the most of what she’s given. Foster doesn’t make much of an impression as the slightly drippy Officer Meyer, although Fischler seems to be having a blast as the quirky, smart and brutally condescending FBI profiler. There are plenty of hints of Jeffrey Combs’ equally nutty agent from Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners (1996) here and Fischler always stops just short of gobbling the entire scenery buffet, leaving some for the rest of the cast. We also get a very brief cameo from writer/director/Troma-naut Trent Haaga, although it’s not much more than a throwaway bit.

There are problems here, of course: Hallam and Horvath have a dismaying tendency to overdue “mirror gags,” even to the point where we get what (to the best of my memory) might be the first “reverse mirror gag” that I’ve ever seen. There’s also a repetitious quality to the numerous scenes of Ballard pensively reviewing case files: watching a guy flip through papers is probably the least pulse-pounding thing one can see in a horror film and we get quite a bit of that here. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t point out that the climatic twist here is much less clever and surprising than the one in the first film. While I didn’t call the exact specifics, it was an “either/or” situation, so I had about a 50% shot, either way.

For the most part, The Pact 2 isn’t much different from a lot of direct-to-video/streaming indie horror films, although there’s a general level of care and attention to detail that’s certainly refreshing. Hallam and Horvath have a fairly unfussy style (although June’s numerous “flashes” are always too loud and obnoxious) and if the whole film looks slightly cheaper than the original, it’s never enough to take one out of the action. As a horror film, The Pact 2 is just okay: the ultimate resolution really owes more to the serial killer side of things than the vengeful ghost side, after all, and the haunting aspects are run-of-the-mill, at best. I’m also extremely dubious of the very obvious set-up for an additional entry: at this point, the connection to the original films would have to be so tenuous as to be one of those “in name only” affairs and those are rarely quality films.

That being said, I’ve seen plenty of films much, much worse than The Pact 2. There’s no denying that Steger’s Judas is a great villain and franchises have been hung on much less than that, to be honest. If we’re going to keep seeing permutations of The Pact on into infinity, here’s to hoping that they follow the lead set by the first two: while we’ve already got more than enough brainless sequels out there, we could also use more films that actually have something to say. While The Pact 2 probably won’t end up on any best-of lists, it ends up being a worthy sequel and that, on its own, is worthy of its own list.

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7/8/15: If These Walls Could Talk

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abused children, abusive childhood, Agnes Bruckner, based on a short, Bridger Nielson, Caity Lotz, Casper Van Dien, cinema, Dakota Bright, dead mother, dysfunctional family, estranged siblings, family home, family secrets, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, ghosts, Haley Hudson, haunted house, haunted houses, horror, horror movies, Judas, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Mark Steger, mediums, Movies, mysteries, Nicholas McCarthy, Petra Wright, Ronen Landa, Sam Ball, serial killers, sisters, small town life, The Pact, twist ending, writer-director

Based on an earlier short of the same name, writer-director Nicholas McCarthy’s debut full-length, The Pact (2012), is an effective, if overly familiar, little haunted house chiller that manages to distinguish itself by dint of its austere atmosphere, focus on mystery and mood over gore and a twist ending that’s massively entertaining, if more than a little nonsensical. While nothing about the film is exactly revolutionary, the overall quality certainly bodes well for the rest of McCarthy’s burgeoning career.

After vowing to put as much distance between her abusive mother and herself as possible, Annie (Caity Lotz) finds herself returning to her childhood home under less than auspicious circumstances. Annie’s much-detested mother has just passed away and, under no small amount of duress, she’s come home for the funeral, mostly to appease her sister, Nichole (Agnes Bruckner), and see her adorable niece, Eva (Dakota Bright).

When she gets home, however, Annie discovers that Nichole, a former drug addict, has seemingly vanished into thin air, leaving Eva under the care of cousin Liz (Kathleen Rose Perkins). Annie assumes that her sister has relapsed but there’s just something about her old home that doesn’t sit quite right. When Liz vanishes under similar circumstances, Annie is convinced that something sinister is going on right under her nose.

As she investigates the history of her family and childhood home, Annie draws the attention of local sheriff Bill Creek (Casper Van Dien), a pensive, kind-hearted lawman who knew Nichole from her wild, druggie days. She also enlists the aid of Stevie (Hayley Hudson), a mysterious, blind, trailer-park medium who makes house calls along with her sketchy, paranoid brother, Giles (Sam Ball). Stevie detects a ghostly presence in the house, some kind of maligned specter who’s only seeking justice for its untimely end. She also detects something much crueler and more malignant, however, a festering, suffocating evil known only as “Judas.” Who (or what) is Judas? How, exactly, is Annie and her family connected to the tragedies at their old home? Will Annie be able to bring peace to the dead or will she find herself joining them?

Although there’s nothing about McCarthy’s debut that screams “instant classic,” it still ends up being a highly likable, well-made and effective film, albeit one with plenty of cheesy moments, overly familiar plot elements and more than a few outright holes. Caity Lotz is effective as Annie, bringing the right mixture of hard-edge, spunk and insecurity to the mix: she certainly doesn’t vault herself into the company of luminaries like Jaime Lee Curtis or Sigourney Weaver but she more than holds her own and gives us a (fairly) level-headed hero to hang our hats on.

The supporting cast ranges from dependable to slightly over-the-top, with Van Dien underplaying his role to the point of mumblecore, while Hudson and Ball have quite a bit of fun as the oddball, white trash mystics. Hudson, in particular, is suitably ethereal and brings a really odd, interesting quality to her performance as the blind psychic. For his part, Mark Steger brings a weird, lurching and almost insectile physicality to his performance as Judas, making him quite the memorable villain, even if he never utters a single line of dialogue. Just the sight of Steger hanging around in the background of various shots is enough to chill the blood and McCarthy gets good mileage out of it.

One of The Pact’s biggest strengths is its focus on the mystery aspect of the narrative, rather than a simple rehashing of moldy haunted house tropes. While McCarthy’s script certainly isn’t comparable to something like Silence of the Lambs, it definitely recalls Vincenzo Natali’s equally modest and effective Haunter (2013), another indie horror film that prided atmosphere over effects. There are still plenty of traditional haunted house scares, of course: people get pulled backwards by invisible forces, doors open and close on their own, lights turn on and off, sinister forms appear in the background while our heroes look in the opposite direction…basically “Ghosts 101.” For the most part, however, these end up being the film’s weakest moments (the invisible forces aspect, in particular, is so old that it sweats dust): when we’re following Annie on her quest for knowledge, the film is an altogether more interesting, tense and driven affair.

Another aspect of The Pact that separates it from its contemporaries is the big, Shyamalan-esque twist that pops up during the climax. While I would never dream of spoiling the surprise, the whole thing tends to make imperfect sense under closer inspection (it presupposes, for one thing, that a key character is either completely deaf or incredibly stupid, neither of which seems to be the case) but it ends the proceedings with a gonzo flourish that’s a lot of fun, if rather silly.

For the most part, I quite enjoyed The Pact, although it was certainly nothing I hadn’t seen before. When the film is silly, it can be quite silly: the scene where Annie draws a Ouija board into the floor and proceeds to contact a spirit is a real howler, as are most of the parts where Annie is shoved around by empty air. When the atmosphere, mood and languid pace all mesh, however, The Pact has plenty of genuinely chilling moments: the scene involving the ghostly photograph is fantastic, as is the one where Bill and Annie discover the hidden room. Any and all of Stevie’s scenes have a genuinely weird, otherworldly quality to them and the finale (minus the eye-rolling coda) is a real corker.

McCarthy would follow-up his debut with At the Devil’s Door (2014), which I’ve yet to see, along with an entry in the upcoming horror-anthology Holidays, which has been on my must-see list since it was announced. If McCarthy can continue to tweak his formula here, replacing some of the overly familiar material with stuff that’s a bit more singular and unique, he stands a good chance of blazing his own trail through the horror wasteland.

7/5/15 (Part One): Home is Where the Haunt Is

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Barbara Niven, cinema, dead children, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, ghosts, grown children, haunted houses, horror-comedies, Housebound, Jack Plotnick, Jeffrey Combs, John Waters, Kat Dennings, Lucas Lee Graham, Mackenzie Phillips, Mark Bruner, Matthew Gray Gubler, McKenna Grace, Mel Rodriguez, Michl Britsch, Movies, multiple writers, Muse Watson, Odd Thomas, paranormal investigators, racists, Ray Santiago, Ray Wise, Richard Bates Jr., Ronnie Gene Blevins, Sally Kirkland, scatological humor, seances, seeing ghosts, Sibyl Gregory, silly films, Soska Sisters, Suburban Gothic, suburban homes, suburban life, suburbia, The Frighteners, Under the Bed, writer-director-producer

Ah, suburbia: endless rows of identical houses, with identical lawns, with identical Suburbans parked in identical carports, tended to by identical suburbanites as they go about their virtually identical lives. For many people, suburbia is the very picture of success: after all, what really says “You’ve made it” more than your own house, family, steady job and reliable source of transportation? For the outsider, misanthrope and loner, however, the very concept of suburbia can be a kind of hell on earth: the place where all dreams go to become pureed into easily digestible slop. As the Descendents so aptly put it: “I want to be stereotyped…I want to be classified…I want to be a clone…I want a suburban home.”

For filmmakers, the concept of the dark underbelly of suburbia is nothing new: after all, films like The Stepford Wives (1975), The Amityville Horror (1979), Neighbors (1981), Parents (1989), The ‘Burbs (1989),  American Beauty (1999) and Donnie Darko (2001) have been equating cookie-cutter neighborhoods with existential dread for decades now. To this storied tradition we can now add writer-director Richard Bates Jr’s Suburban Gothic (2014): proving that there’s nothing wrong with ambition, Bates Jr takes the aforementioned suburban angst films and throws in elements of “I see ghosts” films, ala The Frighteners (1996) and Odd Thomas (2013), as well as “grown children moving back home” films, such as the instantly classic Housebound (2014) and the less successful Under the Bed (2012). If Suburban Gothic never comes close to reaching the heady heights of Housebound, there’s still enough silly, funny and outrageous material here to give genre fans a grin from ear to ear. Plus, it’s got Ray Wise: any film with Ray Wise is, of course, automatically better than any film without him…that’s just basic math, amigo.

Poor Raymond (Criminal Minds’ Matthew Gray Gubler) is in a bit of a pickle, the same conundrum that might befall many twenty-to-thirty-somethings: he’s over-educated and under-employed. Despite having his MBA, Raymond must swallow the bitterest pill of all and move back in with his over-protective, smothering mother, Eve (Barbara Niven), and obnoxious, disapproving and casually racist father, Donald (Ray Wise, swinging for the rafters), an event which is sure to put a crimp in any attempt he can make to take control of his life.

You see, Raymond is a bit of a mess: bullied as a child about his weight and “gifted” with the ability to see ghosts, he escaped his one horse town as soon as he could, hoping to put as much distance between him and the past as possible. Given to wearing outrageously showy clothes (his bright, purple scarf is a definite highlight), Raymond couldn’t be more out-of-place in his old hometown, especially once he ends up back in the sights of former bully Pope (Ronnie Gene Blevins) and his small crew of miscreants. Everyone in town is glad to see that Raymond failed at life, since it (somehow) validates their own humble existences. Everyone, that is, except for Raymond’s former classmate, Becca (2 Broke Girls’ Kat Dennings), who now tends bar at the local watering hole. To her, Raymond was always the only interesting person in town and she’s mighty glad to have him back, even if she has a snarky way of showing it.

Just in time for his homecoming, however, some truly weird shit has started to happen, seemingly centered around the makeshift childs’ coffin that Donald’s gardeners have just dug up in the yard. Before he knows what’s going on, Raymond is experiencing the same ghostly visions that he used to have, this time involving a sinister little girl. As the occurrences become more pronounced, Raymond and Becca are convinced that a wayward spirit is in need of a peaceful journey into the light, while Donald and Eve are convinced that their son is losing his ever-lovin’ mind. As Raymond and Becca dig deeper into the history of the house, however, they begin to realize that the spirit in question might not be that of a little lost girl: it might just be something a bit more on the “extreme evil” side of things. Will Raymond and Becca be able to set it all to rights or will this humdrum slice of suburban life end up destroying them all?

My anticipation level for Suburban Gothic was pretty high, right out of the gate, for one very important reason: I pretty much adored writer-director Bates Jr’s debut, the outrageous Excision (2012), a slice of high school life that managed to combine Grand Guignol gore with fanciful dream sequences and arrived at a wholly unique, if often repugnant, place that wasn’t so far removed from what the Soska Sisters did with their stunning American Mary (2012). Excision was the kind of debut that puts a filmmaker firmly on my radar, which leads us directly to the sophomore film, Suburban Gothic. If his newest possessed a tenth of the gonzo energy of his first, this seemed like a pretty sure-fire no-brainer.

In reality, Suburban Gothic is a good full-step (certainly at least a half-step) down from Bates Jr’s debut, although it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable romp on its own terms. The big difference ends up being tonal: unlike Excision, which buried its blackly comic sensibilities under a lot of very unpleasant material, Suburban Gothic is a much sillier, goofier affair. Nowhere is this made more explicit than the impossibly silly scene where Raymond watches his toenails rise and fall to the tune of the old chestnut “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Shoddy CGI aside, the scene has the feel of something truly slapstick and goofy, perhaps closer to The ‘Burbs than anything in Bates Jr’s debut.

This “silly” elements end up seeping into almost every aspect of the film: John Waters shows up as the blow job-obsessed head of the local historical society, the medium’s daughter is named Zelda (et tu, Poltergeist (1982)?), Raymond and Becca dress up in the most ridiculous ghost costumes ever (think Charles Schultz), anonymous hands grab Raymond from every-which direction and there’s more mugging going on than a thug convention. In one of the film’s most notable bits, Raymond masturbates while checking out his favorite site, “Latina Booty,” as an overhead light slowly fills with “ghostly” semen: at the “appropriate” moment, the light shatters, showering poor Raymond in about fifty gallons of spooky spunk. Disgusting? You bet yer bottom dollar! Terrifying? Not quite.

The aforementioned example, however, is also a good example of Suburban Gothic’s ace-up-the-sleeve, as it were: for all of the film’s silliness and scatological humor (along with the jizz, we get a lovingly filmed vomiting scene and a nice, long shot of a turd in a toilet), there’s also genuine intelligence and love for the genre. The light gag might be an easy-shot gross-out joke but it’s always a subtle, kind of brilliant nod to Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead (1981). There’s also a not-so subtle reference to del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), lots of visual ques for The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist and plenty of cameos by genre royalty (the legendary Jeffrey Combs gets to play a bugshit-crazy doctor (natch), while the Soska Sisters pop up in a crowd scene).

While the actual plot is nothing revolutionary, Suburban Gothic is such a good-natured, eager-to-please popcorn flick that it’s never painful to watch: the CGI is fairly well-integrated (save that rather dreadful toenail bit) and if the color-timing on the cinematography seems constantly off (the film has an odd red cast that’s pretty noticeable), cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham (who also shot the much more striking Excision) serves up plenty of nicely composed, evocative images.

On the acting side, Gubler is pitch-perfect as the sarcastic, quietly suffering schlub who must swallow his distaste for everything in order to save his (decidedly undeserving) childhood home. Gubler has a rare ability to mix wiseacre dialogue delivery with Stoogian physical comedy, an ability which serves him well here: one of the film’s easy highlights is the hilarious scene where Raymond accidentally drops an ice cream cake, over and over, until he finally stamps on the damn thing in an abject display of childish tantrums writ large.

While Dennings takes a little longer to get revved up (her early scenes have a rather distracting “I don’t give a shit” quality that’s off-putting), she fully comes into her own by the film’s final reel and her and Gubler make for a believable enough couple. Although she’s never as consistent as Gubler, Dennings shows enough steel, here, to make me interested in her next move: here’s to hoping she spends a little more time in the horror genre…we could use a few fresh faces!

While Niven is fun as Raymond’s mom, Wise really gets to run roughshod over the proceedings: whether he’s proclaiming that all of his Latin American workmen are “Mexicans,” telling his son to “take a knee” as he rolls up to him in a squeaky office chair or apologizing to his black football players for his lack of “grape pop,” Wise is an absolute blast. If anything, his performance as Donald makes a nice comparison to his role as Satan in Reaper, albeit tempered with more than a little lunk-headedness. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if there’s ever a Mount Rushmore for iconic genre personalities, Wise is guaranteed to be there.

Ultimately, Suburban Gothic is a thoroughly entertaining, amusing and mildly outrageous horror-comedy: fans of this particular style will find no end of delights, I’m willing to wager, although I still found myself slightly disappointed by the time the credits rolled (the less said about the ridiculously sunny coda, the better). Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by standout films like Housebound and The Frighteners, a pair of horror-comedies that are pretty much the first and last word on this particular subject…perhaps I was hoping for something with a little more bite, ala Excision. Whatever the reason, I have no problem whatsoever recommending Suburban Gothic (provided, of course, that potential viewers are prepared for the often rude humor), although it’s not quite the Richard Bates Jr joint that I hoped for.

I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that Bates Jr is going to become a force to reckon with in the next several years. If that doesn’t blow yer toenails back, pardner…well, I don’t know what will.

5/6/15: Blurring the Lines

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Alexandria Fierz, backwoods folk, based on a true story, Bert Wall, cinema, David Z. Roberts, dead father, Devil's Backbone, Devil's Backbone Tavern, Devil's Backbone Texas, directorial debut, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, found-footage films, ghosts, Haley Buckner, haunted houses, horror, horror films, isolated estates, Jake Wade Wall, James Carrington, Jodi Bianca Wise, mockumentary, Movies, screenwriter, supernatural, twist ending, Unsolved Mysteries, writer-director-producer-actor

If the whole point of mockumentary/found-footage horror films is to obscure the dividing line between truth and fiction, freely mixing the “real” with the “fake” until audiences are too dizzy to know the difference, then Jake Wade Wall’s debut, Devil’s Backbone, Texas (2015), just might be one of the most successful yet. By interweaving the actual story of his horror writer father’s experiences on the titular patch of land with the kind of traditional found-footage aspects that we’re used to seeing (the Blair Witch Project (1999) is an obvious inspiration), Wall is able to come up with a virtually textbook example of the subgenre. If Devil’s Backbone, Texas is less successful as an actual film, well…let’s chalk that up to growing pains: there’s enough good ideas here to make Wall someone to keep an eye on in the future.

The concept of the film, as mentioned above, cleverly blends the real-life story of Bert Wall, a writer/rancher who lived in the area of Texas known as Devil’s Backbone, with the usual “running through the woods with a camera” found-footage schtick. Wall’s ranch came to fame via a mid-’90s segment on Unsolved Mysteries that detailed the massive amount of ghostly activity that he claimed to witness on the land, including everything from ghostly monks to ghostly Native Americans. Wall’s real-life son, Jake (the film’s writer/director/producer/lead), uses this as the basic setup and then jumps us 20 years into the present. After his father has died, Jake’s mom asks him to take his ashes to his old homestead and perform the “ash ceremony” that Bert always wanted.

Seeing this as a great opportunity to explore stories of the area, Jake takes the ashes and a small passel of his best friends, a group which features the usual mixture of believers and non-believers. As Jake interviews the locals, in order to get a better picture of his estranged father, he also begins to uncover hints of the strange doings in the area: there’s even stories about a mysterious German POW camp on the ranch, providing yet another possible source for the region’s “hauntings.” As things gradually become stranger, Jake’s friends want to pack up and leave, especially after they keep bumping into a strange pickup truck that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t be there. Jake has become obsessed with getting to the bottom of his father’s death, however, as well as the legends of Devil’s Backbone and he has no intention of backing out. Will Jake’s stubbornness lead to the ultimate revelation of the Devil’s Backbone’s secrets or will his poking around spell the doom for everyone he holds dear?

One of Devil Backbone, Texas’ greatest strengths (perhaps its single greatest one) is the way in which it ingeniously melds fiction and reality within the framework of the film. To be honest, I wasn’t actually aware that there really was a Bert Wall: I assumed that the Unsolved Mysteries segment was a clever mock-up and that the whole film was an entirely fictionalized account of a real area/phenomenon. Imagine my surprise, then, when a little research revealed that not only does Bert Wall actually exist (along with that illuminating Unsolved Mysteries segment from 1996) but that Jake is his son. This sort of (gently) blew my mind, as it managed to recontextualize much of what I had just seen, especially considering the familial angle. Any film that can actually fool me gets big props, in my book, and Wall definitely deserves props.

The main problem with the film doesn’t really have much to do with the story, although it does end up feeling a bit musty, in places: in general, Wall throws plenty of good ideas around and many of them end up sticking, even if nothing is explored in as much depth as it should be (in particular, the German POW bit is so under-developed as to be mystifying). The big problems with the film, unfortunately, all stack up on the actual production side of things: while Wall has plenty of intriguing ideas, the film that contains them is, at best, rather average.

As the lead, Wall has a tendency to swing between an effective, upbeat kind of understatement and a much more ineffective hyper-emotionalism: when Jake really gets wound up, his character tends to come across as whiny,  shouty and altogether unpleasant. Found-footage films have a history of leads like this, of course (think back to Blair Witch’s insufferable Heather), but that doesn’t make it any more tolerable here. If anything, I found myself constantly wishing that Wall had stayed behind the camera: while his character definitely has moments, I found my suspension of disbelief shattered a few times too many for comfort.

The rest of the cast does decent work, although I’ll admit that the only one who actually left any kind of impression on me was the fella who looked sort of like Hugh Jackman: he had an easy-going delivery and charisma that was quite effective. Other than that, however, the group seemed like the usual crew of interchangeable types. As with similar mockumentary films, Devil’s Backbone, Texas, also features various interviews with academics, experts and towns’ folk: this all help with the film’s verisimilitude immensely, even when the acting from the cast becomes just rough enough to notice.

Ultimately, Devil’s Backbone, Texas is a decent debut, albeit one hampered by a shaky lead, slight lack of focus and a rather dreadful twist ending (not to put too fine a point on it but the lazy “surprise” finale is easily the dumbest part of the film, hands down). That being said, there’s something about the film that still got to me: perhaps it was that initial blurring of real and fiction or Wall’s very obvious enthusiasm for the film and subject. Perhaps it was the genuinely creepy location or the standout bit of atmosphere where we see teeming masses of spiders all over the walls of Bert’s abandoned home (as a lifelong arachnophobe, this practically had me crawling out of my skin). Whatever the reason, I walked away from Wall’s debut entertained, which is quite a bit more than I can say for many micro-budget indies. As such, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

4/25/15: The Fixer-Upper From Hell

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Adam Thomas Wright, Altar, Antonia Clarke, British films, British horror, children in peril, cinema, film reviews, films, ghost whisperer, ghosts, haunted house, haunted houses, hidden mosaics, home renovations, horror, horror film, horror films, horror movies, husband-wife relationship, isolated estates, isolation, Jan Richter-Friis, Jonathan Jaynes, Matthew Modine, Movies, Nick Willing, Olivia Williams, parent-child relationships, possession, Rebecca Calder, Satanic rituals, set in England, sins of the past, Stephen Chance, Steve Oram, supernatural, twist ending, UK films, writer-director

If we go by the conventions of horror films, one of the single most dangerous occupations out there is home renovation. Sure, law enforcement, fire fighting and high-rise window-washing might seem more dangerous, at least on paper, but we know the truth: anytime someone tries to fix up a creepy, old, decaying country estate, there’s a roughly 90% chance of something terrible happening. If those were Vegas odds, Sin City would have gone the way of the dodo generations ago.

Writer-director Nick Willing’s Altar (2014) is but the latest in a long line of haunted house films precipitated on the above notion: a family moves into a creepy, isolated country manor in order to renovate it, runs into long-buried secrets and ghostly presences and must survive the sinister residence’s sustained assaults upon their persons and psyches. In this case, Meg Hamilton (Olivia Williams) is the renovator who, along with her artist husband Alec (Matthew Modine) and children, Penny (Antonia Clarke) and Harper (Adam Thomas Wright), move into the creepy abode. Faster than you can say “Jack and Wendy Torrance,” the family are dealing with ghostly manifestations, Alec’s obsession with suddenly crafting a life-like clay figure and Meg’s discovery of a strange, vaguely pagan floor mosaic. If you guessed that “possession” factors into the proceedings, you’d be right but Willing has a few tricks up his sleeve that help take Altar in a slightly different (even if barely so) direction from the rest of the herd.

As far as atmosphere and location go, Altar is strictly top-notch: there’s a genuine sense of foreboding that lingers over every scene, thanks in large part to the exceptionally creepy location. Quite simply, Radcliffe House is the kind of evil, Gothic edifice that can make or break a haunted house film: in this case, it goes an awful long way in stocking up good will for the (occasionally) rough going. Willing goes light on the obvious jump scares, allowing for the whole thing to feel much more organic and old-fashioned than similar films (obnoxiously loud musical stingers are, thankfully, few and far between) and cinematographer Jan Richter-Friis’ camera-work helps to subtly play up the creep-factor.

The acting is uniformly good, which is another important factor in this kind of film: when a movie relies on mood and atmosphere, nothing spoils the party quite as effectively as over-the-top, amateurish or stilted acting. Williams is excellent as the mother/renovator: her extremely expressive face always seems to be reflecting some new measure of fresh horror, amping the psychological horror to an almost unbearable level. Modine, who’s had an almost ridiculously varied career over the past 30+ years, doesn’t fare quite as well as Williams does, mostly because his character is saddled with a few more eye-rolling traits than hers is. That being said, Modine and Williams have good chemistry together: until things go completely off the rails, it’s easy to imagine these two as a (once) loving couple, which is certainly more than you can say for many horror film duos. As the beleaguered children, Clarke and Wright are quite good, although they don’t get quite as much to do as their parents: at the very least, neither one wears out their welcome which, again, is more than you can say for many young actors in horror productions.

If anything really lets the air out of Altar’s sails, it’s definitely the hum-drum, overly clichéd ending: while the plot has plenty of holes (especially in the later going), the film manages to glide over most of them pretty effortlessly until it crashes headfirst into the chasm that is the film’s final “revelation.” While I wouldn’t dream of ruining the ending (perhaps because I understand it so imperfectly), suffice to say that faithful genre devotees will have seen this exact same thing done many, many times in the past…and done much better and much clearer, might I add. It’s a pity, really, since the film has some fairly intriguing ideas about transmogrification that are completely lost in the muddle. However unique the film begins, it ends in territory that is, to be kind, well-worn.

Ultimately, Altar is a good, if not great, entry in the crowded “family in peril” subgenre of horror films. When the atmosphere and mood are allowed to develop at their own measured, glacial pace, Willing’s film stands tall above the pretenders, buoyed by its own sense of stately grandeur. When the film becomes overly familiar and middle-of-the-road, however, it sinks right back into the teeming masses, indistinguishable from any one of two dozen other similar films.

4/8/15: The Silence is Deafening

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British films, cinema, Erin Richards, evil dolls, experiments, film reviews, films, foreign films, ghosts, Hammer, Hammer Films, haunted houses, horror movies, insanity, isolated estates, Jared Harris, John Pogue, Movies, multiple writers, obsession, Olivia Cooke, paranormal investigators, possession, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Sam Claflin, set in the 1970s, The Quiet Ones, twist ending

For old school horror fans, few names bear quite as much weight as Hammer Films. For the uninitiated, Hammer Films was a British production company that specialized in lush horror films that were, by turns, elegant and suitably lurid. From the ’50s all the way through the Swingin’ ’70s, Hammer churned out a fairly staggering amount of stylish films, many of them sequels and offshoots to popular properties like Dracula and Frankenstein. As the times changed, Hammer Films became bloodier and more sexually charged, although they always maintained a least a little of that initial elegance. As the world moved on into the 1980s, however, Hammer’s cachet in the genre dwindled to nothing and the company, essentially, petered out of existence.

Like any good undead monster, however, the Hammer story would also include a bit of reanimation. After lying dormant for decades, Hammer Films was bought-up and the company began to release new films in the mid-2000s. Beginning with Beyond the Rave (2008), Hammer would release a handful of films including the American remake of Let the Right One In, Wake Wood (2011) and The Woman in Black (2012), as well as a sequel in 2015. They would also jump into the currently hot topic of possession stories with The Quiet Ones (2014), which is where we enter this particular tale.

As someone who grew up on Hammer Films, I was pretty excited when they announced a restart to the fabled production company. My one concern, of course, was the same one that I had when Hammer originally petered out: would they have any relevance in a modern world that had long ago left behind the stylish, Gothic trappings of their best films or would they stick out like a septuagenarian at a One Direction concert? My first experience with the “new” Hammer didn’t set the bar very high, as I found Wake Wood to be a marginally entertaining, if massively flawed exercise. Much better was The Woman in Black, which managed to retain much of the old-school Hammer elements (slow-burn horror, stylish production design, mature themes) and used them in service of a pretty good ghost story. As such, I was primed to see where The Quiet Ones would take me: would this be the disappointment of Wake Wood or the pleasant surprise of The Woman in Black?

Taking place in 1974, The Quiet Ones concerns the experiments of one Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris), the kind of driven, obsessive man-of-science that was practically a staple for Hammer back in the day. Coupland is conducting research into the intersection of “faith, superstition and medicine” which, as we all know, is shorthand for “messing around where he doesn’t belong.” Along with his faithful students Brian (Sam Claflin), Krissi (Erin Richards) and Harry (Rory Fleck-Byrne), Coupland seeks to observe actual poltergeist activity in a test subject, with the ultimate goal being to remove said “bad spirits” in a purely scientific manner. The subject, in this case, is Jane (Olivia Cooke), a disturbed young woman who seems to have an unhealthy relationship with a sinister doll named Evie.

After Coupland has his funding pulled by the overly-cautious Oxford University administration, he’s forced to relocate Jane and his team to a secluded, out-of-the-way country estate so that they can continue their experiments. If you guessed that moving the proceedings to a secluded area is a bad idea, go ahead and give yourself that cookie. As strange, unexplained things begin to happen around them, Coupland and his team are quick to realize that they’ve opened a door to a very, very dangerous place. Our obsessed professor has a secret, however, a secret which will threaten not only the team’s collective sanities but their very lives. Who, exactly, is Jane? Is Evie an actual sinister presence, like a demon, or she just a manifestation of Jane’s own damaged, fractured psyche? All these questions and more will be answered as our intrepid heroes discover that, sometimes, the quiet ones are the ones you need to watch out for.

As previously mentioned, my opinion on the “modern” Hammer Films is a little mixed, making The Quiet Ones a bit of a tie-breaker, as it were. In this case, however, the scales have definitely tipped down towards the Wake Wood end of things, rather than the Woman in Black end. Like Wake Wood, The Quiet Ones alternates between measured, stately scares and purely ridiculous moments in an awkward ballet that never seems to come into its own. The initial premise is intriguing and there’s plenty of room for commentary on the obsessive quality of “good” researchers, the horrors of the past, etc etc but a late revelation about the “true” nature of the evil upends the film and turns it into an all-too-familiar possession story without adding anything new to the mix.

For my money, however, The Quiet Ones critical flaw is, ironically, found right there in the title: for a supposedly stately film about “quiet” evil, this film had more excruciatingly loud jump scares than anything I can remember in the near past. This was also an issue with Wake Wood, although not to this extent, while The Woman in Black managed to largely avoid this issue. Here, each and every instance of Evie’s presence is denoted by some sort of blaring loud sound, usually an intensely unpleasant EMF “whine” that’s positively headache inducing. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a complete and total bias against loud jump scares: call it extreme prejudice, if you will. In this case, The Quiet Ones obnoxious sound design managed to hobble the film before it even made it out of the gate.

Which, in a way, is kind of a shame: there’s a lot to like here, even if nothing is extraordinary or particularly thought-provoking. Harris gives a phenomenal performance as the far beyond driven professor, proving, once again, that he’s an absolute diamond in the rough when it comes to these sorts of films. While none of the other actors have anywhere near Harris’ presence or charisma, they still produce decent enough work, although I can’t shake the feeling that Sam Claflin has to be one of the most generic, vanilla protagonists in some time. The film also blends its found-footage and “traditional” cinematography to good effect, although the film, eventually, devolves into much more of a stereotypical found-footage film, complete with “spooky” things in the background. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the location: the secluded mansion is a masterpiece of set design and any of the film’s genuine frights are to found from the hapless researchers bumbling down its dark halls, ala any number of more traditional Gothic affairs: this is one aspect of the “new” Hammer that most resembles the “old.”

Ultimately, The Quiet Ones was a disappointing film, mostly because there was so much potential here. I’ve yet to see the Woman in Black sequel, so it would be a little silly to make any concrete declarations about the dreadful state of Hammer’s current incarnation. So far, however, suffice to say that I’m somewhat less than impressed. While the new Hammer resembles the old one in some fundamental ways, it also lacks a lot of the original’s soul and spirit. Like any good ghoul, Hammer refuses to stay dead and buried: at this point, however, it’s difficult to determine whether that’s a noble attribute or whether this particular creature needs to be put out of its misery.

 

3/23/15: Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Golfers

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bad fathers, bad films, Blake Berris, brother-sister relationships, cheating husbands, cinema, confusing films, Diane Dalton, dramas, film reviews, films, ghosts, golf, haunted house, horror films, House of Last Things, husband-wife relationship, Ken Kelsch, kidnapped child, Lindsey Haun, Micah Nelson, Michael Bartlett, Michele Mariana, missing child, Moreen Littrell, Movies, possession, Randy Schulman, RJ Mitte, sins of the past, suicide, writer-director-editor, yellow balloons

The cinematic world is filled with cheap, poorly made and unquestionably bad films: that’s probably the worst kept secret in the entirety of human existence. For every amazing, unmitigated classic, there are at least ten astonishingly bad bottom-scrapers following in its wake, like flies drawn to rotten meat. Filmmaking, after all, is an industry like any other: some architects design works of art, others build out-houses…there will always be a market for both.

This is especially true for the horror genre, where cheaply made “product” is often seen as either a rite of passage for a burgeoning filmmaker or a quick and easy way to pocket some of that fanboy dinero. Suffice to say, it’s often a full-time job separating the cream from the crud, especially when so many films stuff their bullshit sausages into attractive outer casings: many times, you have to wade hip-deep into a film before you realize just how nasty and cloudy the water has become. By then, of course, it’s usually too late.

Michael Bartlett’s House of Last Things (2013) does the honorable thing, then, and reveals its intentions from the very first frame: it’s not a good film and doesn’t mind if we know it. Opening with a ridiculous, slo-mo shot of golf clubs flying through the air, backed by one of the most bombastic scores since the infamous over-head drive in The Shining (1980), Bartlett’s fourth feature film (and first since 1998) is a confusing mess of awkward acting, strange dialogue and obvious camera set-ups, all with a head-scratching golfing preoccupation that mostly involves finding balls in weird places (like…I dunno…inside an apple…). It might not be a good film but it’s never a boring film.

The movie begins with a married couple, Alan (Randy Schulman) and Sarah (Diane Dalton), as they’re preparing to leave for a much-needed vacation in Italy. While they’re gone, Kelly (Lindsey Haun) has been enlisted to watch over their spacious home. As soon as the couple has left, however, Kelly gets a couple of visitors in the persons of her brother, Tim (RJ Mitte) and her skeevy boyfriend, Jesse (Blake Berris). Tim’s a nice enough guy, reasonable and fairly level-headed but Jesse is a complete spazzy douchebag, the kind of character in a horror movie who’s usually designated “Victim #1.” Jesse is a complete asshole to both Tim and Kelly, although the bad boy routine certainly seems to be working wonders on one of them (hint: it’s not the one who used to be on Breaking Bad).

As the trio butt heads, odd things begin to happen around the house: strange shadows pass by the outside windows, blue-collar Jesse develops an unexplained interest in wine and opera and mysterious yellow balloons start popping up everywhere. And, of course, let’s not forget about those damn golf balls, which turn up everywhere from the sugar canister to the aforementioned apples. Meanwhile, as this is going on, we catch up with Alan and Sarah on their awkward Italian vacation. Just like back home, Alan is plagued by golf balls, along with a sinister Harlequin clown, who pulls a golf ball out of Alan’s ear, ala a 10-year-old’s birthday party. There’s also the nagging notion that something unknown and unpleasant has transpired between Alan and Sarah, some sort of past trauma that neither is willing to discuss.

Meanwhile, back at the bat cave: Jesse gets a wild hair up his ass, heads to the local grocery store and appears to kidnap a young boy who’s waiting outside. He takes his young hostage, Adam (Micah Nelson), back to Alan and Laura’s house (much to Kelly and Tim’s immense consternation), where he plans to ransom the kid off, even though he has no idea of how to contact his parents/guardians. After a day passes and there’s no news of a missing kid, however, Kelly comes to the realization that no one has reported him missing…because no one wants him back.

This frightening revelation leads to a series of events that include (but are not limited to): a real estate agent attacked by aggressive yellow balloons; possessions; homemade porno mags; scary visions; intense, indoor toilet-papering; old-time golfers; long-held secrets; a medium who shows up, out of nowhere, and pulls a Zelda Rubenstein on us; more golf balls than you can shake a stick at and a weird apple fetish that might be Biblical but is probably just for convenience. In other words: it all collapses into one glorious, goofy, dog-pile of insane influences and bat-shit crazy plot developments. By the time it’s over, you’ll never look at golf balls…or apples…or balloons…or RJ Mitte, for that matter…the same way again.

There’s not much about House of Last Things that works, to be honest, with the problems and issues stacked like wayward Tetris blocks. The film frequently seems like a straight-faced farce or subtle parody (the scene where Rose asks if the house was built over a golf course had to be a joke…I won’t accept any other possibility), although it also seems to be taking itself way too seriously: the score is always tense and gloomy, while the drama is frequently pitched at a near hysterical level. The split focus between Alan and Sarah’s jaunt through Italy and Kelly and company’s adventures back home does more to kill momentum than give insight into either storyline, while also making little sense in context of the film’s ultimate revelations.

The acting tends to the awkward, made worse by dialogue that often comes out of left-field and seems forced and strained. None of the cast really click together, which makes the various relationships difficult to accept: as mentioned earlier, Blake Berris’ Jesse is such a thoroughly loathsome character that his relationship with Kelly never makes sense. Some of the performances, such as Michele Mariana’s bizarre medium (I guess…?) Rose Pepper, are campy and over-the-top, while others, like Micah Nelson’s Adam are flat to the point of non-existence.

Perhaps the biggest overall issue with the film, however, is how little sense it all ends up making. There’s a point, sure, and even enough vestiges of clues to half-way get there but so much of the film feels arbitrary and unfocused that the whole thing feels kind of surreal. It also doesn’t help that the fright sequences are staged in ways that all but guarantee failure: one of the big set-pieces involves yellow balloons that pop, menacingly, in a real estate agent’s face, as she freaks out. The “For Sale” sign bursting into flames is a nice touch, as she runs out, screaming, but it’s more like the cherry on an outrageously silly sundae. It’s impossible to build up tension or feel genuine fear in a situation like that, regardless of how seriously said scene is staged: replace Michael Myers with Sponge Bob and you get the drift.

For all of my issues with the film, however, I’ll be the first to admit: I was never less than totally wrapped up in what was going on, albeit for reasons that might not have been the original intent of the filmmakers. It’s obvious that care and love went into the film, not necessarily due to the performances (RJ Mitte, in particular, looks like he just wants the whole thing to be over with), but certainly through the detailed, fastidious production design. A lot of attention was paid to establishing recurring themes and motifs (the yellow balloons, the golf balls, the apples), so it’s clear that Bartlett and company put thought into this, for better or worse. The film often looks good, even if it rarely makes much sense.

A quick look at Michael Bartlett’s bio reveals an interesting career that stretches back to his first feature, in 1987 (made in Germany, although Bartlett is originally from California), and includes music videos and another German feature. After watching House of Last Things, I’m curious to see Bartlett’s earlier films: perhaps I’ve missed an over-riding theme or something that might bring a little more order to the insanity. As it stands, however, I found his most recent production to be a mind-boggling miss, albeit a constantly entertaining one. If nothing else, I’ll be keeping my distance from both golf balls and yellow balloons in the near future: that’s one point that I did get, loud and clear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12/15/14 (Part Two): In the Kingdom of the Crow

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absentee father, bad schools, Best of 2014, Brandon Oakes, Canadian films, cinema, Cody Bird, coming of age, crooked government officials, death of a child, dramas, drug dealers, dysfunctional family, father-daughter relationships, favorite films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, ghosts, Glen Gould, heist films, Indian agents, Indian Residential School, Jeff Barnaby, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, Mark Antony Krupa, Michel St. Martin, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Nathan Alexis, Native Americans, Red Crow Indian Reservation, Rhymes For Young Ghouls, Roseanne Supernault, set in Canada, set in the 1970s, stolen money, strong female character, suicide, the Mi'kmaq, truancy officer, writer-director-editor

Every once in a while, a film comes completely out of nowhere and knocks me on my ass like a ghost train ripping through grand-pa’s house. It could be something I’ve never heard of, something that I’m not expecting to like or something that just completely blew away my expectations. While this has already been a pretty great year for film (compiling my Best of…lists has been harder than ever), leave it to one of the underdogs to sneak up and slap the complacency right off my stupid face. In this case, I’m talking about writer-director Jeff Barnaby’s feature-debut, the instantly classic Rhymes For Young Ghouls (2014). Only time will tell but, once the dust has settled, this may very well end up being in my Top Five of the year. Hell…it might even end up leading the parade.

Beginning in 1969 before jumping forward seven years, we find ourselves on the Red Crow Indian Reservation, in Canada. We first meet our hero, Aila, as a young girl (played by Miika Whiskeyjack). While her family life may not be the most conventional (her parents, Joseph (Glen Gould) and Anna (Roseanne Supernault), grow and sell marijuana with the help of Aila’s uncle, Burner (Brandon Oakes)), they seem like a loving family. After a night of drinking leads to a terrible tragedy, however, Aila’s life is torn asunder: with her brother dead, her father in prison and her mother a suicide victim, the poor girl’s life seems over before it begins.

Or it would, if Aila wasn’t such a completely kick-ass, resilient person. When we meet her seven years later, at the ripe-old age of 16 (played by the absolutely amazing Kawennahere Devery Jacobs), Aila is now running the grow operation on her own, with the able assistance of Burner and her friends, Sholo (Cody Bird) and Angus (Nathan Alexis). Completely self-assured and wise beyond her years, Aila is the glue that holds everything together, especially since her uncle is such a pothead wastoid. She’s a problem solver, a no-nonsense adult trapped in a teen’s body and she’s always quite the sight whenever she’s wearing her gas-mask and rolling her specialty blunts.

Along with running the operation, Aila and the others must also be wary of the odious, corrupt and infinitely shit-headed Indian agent, Popper (Mark Antony Krupa), who actually went to Catholic school with her now-imprisoned father. Popper runs the local “Indian Residential School,” a terrible place that’s more prison than educational establishment and where the kids are beaten and placed in solitary confinement at regular intervals. As we’re told at the beginning of the film, all Native American children between the ages of 5 and 16 are required to go to the school: truant officers (such as Popper) are authorized to use “whatever force is necessary” to get wayward kids back to school, including beating them senseless. The truant officers are also able to arrest, without warrant, any guardians who don’t make sure their kids go to school.

There’s always a loophole, however, especially when government officials are as evil and corrupt as the Indian agents: for a regular fee (a “truancy tax”), the truant officers will look the other way, allowing any kids who can pay the opportunity to run free. Thanks to her successful grow operation, Alia has always had plenty of money to pay the “taxes” for her and the others. When they end up losing all of their money in a trumped-up raid by Popper and his men, however, Alia is now facing the terrifying prospect of losing her freedom and individuality, all in one fell swoop. Things get even more chaotic when her father is finally released from prison and returns home, intent on being the father that he couldn’t be before. As he surveys the mass of drunk, stoned people crashing all over their house, however, the disappointment in Joseph’s voice is unmistakable: “How long has this been going on?,” he asks Alia. “About seven years,” she snaps back and the point is clear: if “dad” is expecting a Hallmark-style reunion, he better lose elsewhere.

With a host of outside forces closing in on her, Alia also must deal with her increasing nightmares, nightmares which feature her mother as a rotting zombie: since suicides are buried without grave markers, her mother is now “nameless” and stuck between the world of the dead and the world of the living. Facing pressure from all sides, Alia must do everything she can to avoid cracking and preserve the unity of her family. Popper won’t make any of it easy, however, which is just fine by her: as Alia learned long ago, sometimes the only thing you can do is put your head and charge forward, victory be damned. In the Kingdom of the Crow, no one is safe…least of all, the young.

Watching the film, I was frequently reminded of another showstopping dark-horse, Debra Granik’s stunning Winter’s Bone (2010), the film that first introduced the world to Jennifer Lawrence. Fitting, in a way, since Rhymes For Young Ghouls should serve to introduce us to yet another amazing young actor: Kawennahere Devery Jacobs. I don’t have praise enough for her performance but will say that I was completely and absolutely blown-away by her. If she’s not a huge star in 5 years or so, I’ll buy a haberdashery and eat every damn hat in the place.

Part of the sheer joy of the film is how completely unpredictable it is, so I’ll say as little about specifics as possible. Suffice to say that Barnaby’s killer script manages to seamlessly work in a heist subplot, as well as a beautifully-realized moment where Alia’s “grandmother” tells her a story and we see it visualized in a graphic-novel style. The film is in constant motion and is endlessly inventive, never dull or tedious. There’s also no sense of being force-fed emotional pabulum: the film deals with some very big issues (the stability of families; children caring for their parents; the suicide of a parent; institutionalized racism; class-warfare; traditional Native American ways versus the “modern world;” children working…it goes on and on, to be honest. Rhymes For Young Ghouls is one of the few films I’ve seen lately that actually feels important: these are issues that folks should be discussing and Barnaby’s film doesn’t shy from any of them.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Rhymes For Young Ghouls is nothing short of astounding. In fact, I daresay that a handful of sequences reminded me of nothing less than some of Scorcese’s best work: the opening slo-mo raid, in particular, was so fabulously “Scorcese” that I’m pretty sure I squealed in joy. There’s a synthesis of music and image that’s both flawless and extremely effective: one of the best, most subtle moments is the one where an angelic choir underscores a decidedly devious scene. Barnaby also traffics in a kind of magical-realism that can be pretty head-spinning: there were at least a few points in the film where I questioned the reality of what was happening, thanks to a combination of tricky camera-work and forced perspectives. Even divorced from its amazing cast and excellent script, Rhymes For Young Ghouls is one of the best looking, most well-realized film I’ve seen in ages.

At this point, all I can realistically continue to do is praise the film endlessly, so let me wrap it up thusly: Rhymes For Young Ghouls is a nearly perfect film, one that I absolutely can’t get out of my head after seeing it. While there are a handful of very minor issues spread throughout the film, overall, I absolutely adored it. This, as far as I’m concerned, is the reason we should all keep going to the movies and supporting strong, individualistic filmmakers. It’s almost impossible for me to believe that this is Barnaby’s debut, since it’s so self-assured and impressive. There’s not much time left in this year and I still have quite a few films to see but, if you’re a betting person, I’d wager money that you’ll see Rhymes For Young Ghouls on top of at least one of my lists. Watch the movie and I’m willing to bet that it’ll top your lists, too.

10/26/14 (Part Two): That Knock At the Door

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31 Days of Halloween, cinema, co-writers, couples, death of a child, dramas, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, flashbacks, forgiveness, Gabriel Cowan, gas masks, ghosts, guilt, Haunter, home invasion, horror films, indie films, isolated estates, isolation, John Suits, Milo Ventimiglia, Movies, multiple writers, Sara Paxton, Sarah Shahi, Static, The Others, Todd Levin, twist ending, William Mapother, writer-director

Jonathan (Milo Ventimiglia) and Addie (Sarah Shahi) can’t seem to buy a break. First, they lose their young son in some sort of undisclosed tragedy. The terrible event rocks the very foundations of their marriage, as often happens, but the bad times don’t stop there. There are also hints at problems with infidelity in the relationship, just as vague and ill-defined as the tragedy that stole away their child but definitely there. The couple have retreated to the isolation of a remote estate in order to work on their marriage, only to have their peace disrupted when a mysterious young woman (Sara Paxton), clad in a parka, pounds on their front door. It seems that the young woman is being pursued by a mysterious group of assailants, all wearing gas masks, apparently with the intent to cause her grievous injury. After the couple lets the frantic “guest” into their home, they find themselves under siege by the outside group, as a desperate struggle for survival unfolds. Talk about heapin’ on the misery!

For most of its run-time, Todd Levin’s Static (2012) (which features a whopping three screenwriters, including Levin) is a modest, somber little home invasion flick that breaks absolutely no new ground and does nothing particularly interesting with the sub-genre. At a certain point, however, the filmmakers throw in a twist that sends the film off in another direction entirely. From that point on, the film becomes a different, albeit equally familiar, type of movie, leading to a resolution that should be overly familiar to anyone who’s ever seen one of these types of films. I won’t spoil the “twist” but will note that its ultimate revelation made me sigh aloud: I’d recently seen another, much better, film that did basically the same thing and this was like trying to read the smudged Xerox of a fourth-generation photocopy.

The film is well-made and features a capable, if small, cast: for the majority of the film, the only actors that we see are Ventimiglia, Shahi and Paxton. Ventimiglia, who’s recently been making quite the name for himself in genre efforts like The Divide (2011) and Kiss of the Damned (2012), is his usual brand of emotionless cool mixed with the occasional fiery outburst, sort of a much less interesting variation on Mark Wahlberg. Shahi, for her part, gets a few nice emotional beats but there’s very little chemistry between her and Ventimiglia: we can buy that the couple have hit a rough patch in their marriage but there doesn’t appear to have been much spark there in the best of times, either. Paxton, know for genre fare like The Last House on the Left (2009), The Innkeepers (2011) and Shark Night 3D (2011), does fine with what she’s given but the character of Rachel really only exists as a punchline, as it were, to the film’s main “twist.” Beyond that plot mechanism, her character really doesn’t have much of a purpose, which sort of renders her a little moot.

All in all, Static is decent enough but wears out its welcome fairly quickly. The look of the “bad guys,” complete with gas masks, is a good one, although it still manages to unnecessarily reference the whole “masked people trying to break in” angle of films like Them (2006), You’re Next (2011) and The Purge (2013). For the most part, the film is a kitchen-sink drama about a marriage collapsing, intermittently “spiced” up with the home invasion angle. It’s a tactic that could have worked, ala You’re Next, but everything here just feels kind of cheap and reductive. Ultimately, Static is thoroughly competent, if somewhat depressingly so.