5/4/16: Art Imitating Strife

Tags

Alexandre Desplat, based on a play, Beau Willimon, campaign manager, cheating husbands, cinema, co-writers, dramas, Evan Rachel Wood, extramarital affairs, film reviews, films, George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Gregory Itzin, House of Cards, Jeffrey Wright, Jennifer Ehle, Marisa Tomei, Max Minghella, Michael Mantell, Movies, multiple writers, Paul Giamatti, Phedon Papamichael, Philip Seymour Hoffman, political campain, political scandals, political thriller, Presidential campaign, Ryan Gosling, U.S. politics, writer-director-actor

If you really think about it, apple pie and baseball aren’t the things that most folks would readily associate with the good old U.S. of A…at least, not for the past forty years or so. Truth be told, I’m not sure that either of those oldies-but-goodies would even make the top ten list these days. There is one thing, however, that I’m willing to wager would make just about everyone’s list, one particular aspect of this country that has come to define us for the past few decades more than any others: we are a nation living under the shadow of an absolutely insatiable political machine.

This is not, of course, to make the case for the United States being the most politically savvy country on this particular interstellar ball of rock, water and gas. Not at all. Rather, we are a country completely obsessed with the notion of politics not as a great unifier but as the ultimate divider. Americans have developed an “us against them” mentality that has turned political parties into virtual religions, each with their own zealous acolytes dedicated to spreading the “good word” and stomping out all rivals.  Politics and political campaigning have become such a part of our cultural DNA that they no longer have their own “seasons”: we seem to be inundated with political information, via the 24-hour-news-cycle, on a daily basis. Nowadays, we don’t have presidential election campaigns every four years: we have one, constant, political campaign that’s been running non-stop since the early ’80s.

As we find ourselves in the midst of one of the nastiest, most contentious, presidential campaigns that the country has ever known (by comparison, the George W. era almost seems quaint), it’s hard to turn in any particular direction without getting smacked in the face with some sort of hard-line rhetoric, political scandal or screaming pundit. As with any big societal issue, however, one expects pop culture to spring back with its own rejoinder, add its voice to the conversation. Where, then, are the big political films about this chaotic era? Where is the multiplex fare that makes voters go “hmm”?

Turns out, one of the better, more incisive and cutting films about this current mess we call American political campaigning already came out…back in 2011. With the foresight of a modern-day Nostradamus, House of Cards creator Beau Willimon (who had extensive experience working on Democratic political campaigns, including Howard Dean’s 2004 run for the White House) wrote a play, back in 2008, entitled Farragut North. Several years down the road, Farragut North would be adapted by Willimon and co-writer/director George Clooney as The Ides of March (2011). In the process, they would craft a political thriller that manages to be more prescient five years down the line than it was at the time it was actually released. How’s that for a neat card trick?

Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) is the kind of golden-boy politician who says all the right things, flashes a million-dollar-grin at the plebes and seems as far-removed from most career scumbags as humanly possible. He comes across as a pie-in-the-sky idealist (shades of ol’ Bernie) but that’s just the kind of difference that’s currently setting him up as the Democratic front-runner for the current primary season. You see, Morris’ only serious challenger, Senator Pullman (Michael Mantell), is one of those “business-as-usual” types (shades of ol’ Hillary) and it seems that the Democratic voter base is primed for a system overhaul. Public popularity aside, however, DNC management just doesn’t see the idealistic Morris as a viable alternative against whatever Republican gets the nomination: they’re rather go with the tried and tested Pullman rather than easy-target Morris (sound familiar?).

Despite his own party’s power games, however, Gov. Morris seems to be fairly well-regarded by all. Perhaps no one person idolizes him more, however, than his second-in-command staffer, Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling). To Stephen, Morris isn’t just his latest employer: he’s a force for good, an agent of change that will wipe all the bullshit away and start us out with a clean slate. Paul (the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) might be Morris’ campaign manager but no one is more of a zealous booster than ruthlessly loyal Stephen.

After a series of big wins (most instigated by Stephen’s sly political maneuvering and pitbull-with-lockjaw tenacity), Morris is looking increasingly like the shoe-in. When a misguided attempt to reach out to another senator (Jeffrey Wright) with a large delegate base ends up producing the exact opposite result, however, Stephen and Paul have to go into crisis-control mode. Senator Pullman’s sleazy campaign manager, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), makes overtures towards Stephen once it seems that the Morris campaign boat is headed straight for an iceberg: imagine a large rock sailing towards a pristine, crystal-clear picture window and you have the basic idea.

Besieged by all sides, both “friend” and “foe,” Stephen only has one clear compass left: his unwavering belief in and support of Morris and his campaign. When Stephen finds out something scandalous about Morris, however, something that threatens to tank his worship of the man in an instant, his whole world threatens to crumble around him. Will Stephen be able to separate the man from the message or is this just cosmic proof that every politician, at heart, is really a self-serving scumbag?

Right off the bat, The Ides of March should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s happened to catch any of Willimon’s House of Cards series. In tone, style, intent and message, there’s a whole lot of crossover here: hell, they even both deal with politics as filtered through the Democratic Party, a further similarity that’s too glaring to miss. Where House of Cards often falls into the trap of upping the melodrama to almost Shakespearian levels, however, The Ides of March is consistently more grounded and level-headed.

Like House of Cards, The Ides of March is a brisk, busy piece of work, stuffed to the brim with political minutae, realistic Machiavellian scheming and plenty of sturdy, if not overly showy, performances. There’s a sense of verisimilitude here that certainly speaks to Willimon’s extensive political background: like the best police or medical procedurals, you get the idea that Willimon knows what he’s talking about and that kind of trust goes a long way towards keeping you in the film’s clutches.

As usual, Clooney is a thoroughly charming, disarming presence: appropriately serious and imminently “presidential,” yet possessed of the ability to slip effortlessly into cold, reptilian evil, it’s a role that fits his style to a tee. For his part, Gosling does what he does best: cold, unemotional detachment broken, ever so often, by jagged spikes of pure, steely focus. While Gosling’s style tends to dampen nearly all of his big emotional moments (like it usually does), his performance is consistent, strong and essential to the film’s inner dynamic.

On the support side, we get something of a smorgasbord of small, indelible performances. Marisa Tomei is pitch-perfect as the journalist who considers loyalty to be a four-letter word. Hoffman and Giamatti don’t do much that we haven’t seen before but each actor manages to imbue a role that could’ve been nothing more than plot device with an underlying sense of sadness that’s both striking and subtle. Evan Rachel Wood’s Molly might be a bit of a thankless character (as are most of the female characters that aren’t played by Tomei, to be honest) but she brings a perfect blend of naivety and ambition to the role that helps to balance out the almost feral machinations of everyone around her.

In many ways, The Ides of March strikes me as a much better version of another recent political thriller, Austin Stark’s The Runner (2015). Where The Runner tended to wallow in the worst aspects of shows like House of Cards and Boss, however, The Ides of March takes a much calmer, more nuanced approach. It’s the difference between fire and ice, between a long, overwrought speech and a quick, cutting glance.

From a film-making perspective, The Ides of March is as sturdy as its performances. The script is strong, Clooney’s direction is typically self-assured and the film has a rich, burnished quality, thanks to cinematographer Phedon Papamichael’s stellar camerawork. If the score can, at times, get a little overblown (this is Alexandre Desplat, after all), it just as often falls away to complete silence, an impressive detail in a cinematic world where leading musical cues are as common-place as product placement. The name of the game here is “subtlety”: Clooney and Willimon aren’t as interested in spoon-feeding you the info as they are in handing you a fork and telling you to dig in.

Thematically, there’s a lot to process here but the basic take-away is actually pretty simple: be careful who you choose to elevate to godhood. No human is infallible and people, by their very nature, will let you down. Fall in love with a politician’s policies, with their strategies and their plans for the future. Believe wholeheartedly in the message but be very, very careful about the messenger. As the old saying goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The unspoken notion, of course, is that any and all power will corrupt, to some extent. As poor Stephen finds out, we’re all only human, when all is said and done, and humans have been doing some pretty terrible things ever since we climbed out of the primordial ooze. Spend a day watching campaign ads and you’ll realize that we’re still up to the same tricks.

11/30/15: Tubby Little Cubby All Stuffed With Fluff

Tags

A.A. Milne, animated films, Barbara Luddy, based on short stories, Buddy Baker, cartoons, childhood favorites, children's movies, Christopher Robin, cinema, classic films, Clint Howard, co-directors, Disney movies, Eeyore, favorite films, film reviews, films, friendships, Gopher, Hal Smith, Howard Morris, Hundred Acre Woods, John Fielder, John Lounsbury, Junius Matthews, Kanga, Movies, multiple writers, nostalgia, Owl, Paul Winchell, Piglet, Rabbit, Ralph Wright, Roo, Sebastian Cabot, Sterling Holloway, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Walt Disney, Winnie the Pooh, Wolfgang Reitherman

If nostalgia is a drug, then nostalgia for the beloved things of one’s childhood must be a triple-dipped, skull-peeling hit of the purest intoxicant in history. We tend to view our childhood favorites through the rosiest of spectacles for many reasons but I like to think that the most prominent is also the simplest: we hold the movies, TV shows, music, pop culture and culinary delights of our childhood up as examples of the pure, undiluted joy that comes from youth. Before we learned to be cynical, snarky and dismissive, before we developed “guilty pleasures” and ironically “liked” things, we were simpler, more naive and quite a bit easier to please. It’s a convenient lie that children are universally accepting of whatever crap is put in front of them: in reality, they’re just a lot less afraid to look like idiots.

Once one is removed from childhood nostalgia by some distance, however, re-examining those childhood loves can be a bit tricky. Fart jokes, inane songs and talking animals are pretty much par for the course with kids’ movies but, several decades down the line, those particular cinematic affectations are a bit more of an acquired taste. It’s tempting to look down at our childhood loves from a more “adult” perspective and laugh at our immaturity while still pining for those innocent, pure emotions of our youth. It’s tempting, of course, but it still does them a disservice. Rather than give these old favorites the equivalent of a golf handicap and a lifetime pass, is it actually possible to re-examine them and determine their respective merits?

As a youngster, I had a set group of rotating favorite films, many of which I would watch not only day after day but, at times, multiple times during the same day. Of these many childhood favorites, few resonated with me as much as Walt Disney’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). If I watched that remarkable little film once during my formative years, I probably watched it at least a hundred, if not a thousand, times. Thirty-some years later, however, would this little gem still mean as much? Is The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh nothing but a sad, wistful reminder of a simpler era or does it still possess the same ability to delight modern children as it did those of us who grew up in earlier eras? Is there really a place for the “tubby cubby” in our modern world?

For the uninitiated, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh details the travails of the titular stuffed bear and his woodland friends as they pass the time in their magical home, the Hundred Acres Wood. Created by British author A.A. Milne in the mid-1920s, Pooh and his friends would go on to capture the imagination of generations of children in the fifty-some years between their creation and the vibrant Disney adaptation that we currently discuss, becoming iconic childhood figures along the lines of Paddington Bear, Babar or Charles Schultz’s legendary Peanuts gang.

Characterized by a sweetly philosophical, gentle tone, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the very antithesis of frantic, overly manic kids’ movies, landing somewhere closer to a more subdued version of the aforementioned Peanuts. The adventures detailed here-in are about as far from the complicated machinations of modern animated films as possible: Pooh needs to find honey; Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s door and needs to get out; Owl’s tree falls down and he needs a new home; Tigger needs to find out what, exactly, he’s good at. No self-referential layers of meta-commentary here, nor allusions to popular culture of the era or anything transitory: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh deals with the most basic of emotions and tropes, such as the need to help others, the importance of sharing, the importance of friends, the bittersweet feeling of leaving your childhood loves behind as you get older. While many animated films claim to be for both parents and their children, that’s usually more perfunctory than anything else. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is one of the few children’s movies that is just as impactful to parents as it is to their progeny…even more, perhaps, similar to the recent Inside Out (2015).

There’s not a lot of chaos here, controlled or otherwise, but the film also doesn’t need it. It’s the difference between listening to an orchestra perform a classical piece or listening to a prog-thrash band ratchet through several time changes in the span of minutes: they both serve their purpose and there’s a time and place for both. A frantic, slapstick pace just doesn’t suit this kind of thoughtful, contemplative material. There’s a reason why Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh became a minor hit upon its release: Milne’s creations may be the single best example of Zen philosophy ever committed to film, animated or otherwise.

How does The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh hold up to other “Golden Era” Disney classics? Remarkably well, as it turns out. The voice-acting is superb across the board: I’ve never imagined Pooh as being voiced by anyone other than Sterling Holloway and I never shall. Likewise for Paul Winchell’s exuberant Tigger, John Fielder’s quivery-voiced Piglet, Junius Matthews’s blustery Owl and Howard Morris’ whistling Gopher. These are the definitive versions of these characters, as definitive as Lugosi’s Dracula or Karloff’s Monster. The songs are strong and, likewise, indelible: I don’t think I’ve ever got “Pooh’s Theme” out of my head since the first time I heard it and the “Heffalumps and Woozles” setpiece stands as my very favorite animated sequence ever, aside from “A Night on Bald Mountain.” And “The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers”? Try and get that little worm out of your brain.

The animation style ably mimics the actual illustrated stories, leading to some truly lovely images, not least of which are the many times when the stories bleed back onto the page (and vice versa). Aesthetically, The Many Adventures of Winnie Pooh is easily one of my favorite Disney films: something about the look and style proves as calming, today, as it did back when I was a child. It’s also a perfect example of “form” and “content” meeting in harmonious unity: despite being comprised of three separate stories, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has a flowing sense of continuity that’s practically fluid.

Needless to say, I loved the film as much upon my recent viewing as my prior ones. Stripping away all of my resident goodwill for the movie, however, there’s still that all important question: is The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh really a great film or does it just mean a lot to me? With as much impartiality as I can muster, I’m going to come down on the side of a genuinely great film.

For one thing, the film is actually a lot deeper than I gave it credit for when I was growing up. Upon this recent viewing, lots of little details and notions popped out at me that I never really considered before: Pooh is actually a really selfish, self-centered character and kind of a jerk, lovable demeanor or not; Eeyore is clinically depressed, yet completely accepted by his friends; the introduction of Tigger is framed like a horror movie (this was a big revelation, actually); there’s something strangely subversive about Rabbit drawing faces on Pooh’s butt in order to make his derriere fit the accommodations; Eeyore giving Piglet’s house to Owl is a really shitty move but Piglet going along with it is an act akin to sainthood or Communism, whichever you prefer. Like I said before, that’s a lot of subtext for a kids’ movie.

The single most important reason to ascribe greatness to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, however, is also the simplest: 38 years after its release, the film still feels fresh, timeless and like it has something to say. These notions of friendship, sacrifice, unity and melancholy resonate just as much today, if not more: as an adult, I’ve had a chance to live with all of these feelings and emotions for decades and, yet, I relived them all when I sat down to watch the film again. Any film that can consistently make you feel, year in and year out, decade in and decade out, is something special: in every sense of the word, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is special.

As mentioned in the beginning, nostalgia can be a hell of a drug: it can blind us to the inherent deficiencies of things we used to hold dear, reducing any attempt at critical analysis to a simple shrug and “Well, I liked it when I was a kid.” Not all of our past loves will pass the “smell test,” so to speak, especially if we’re being brutally honest with ourselves. When you find a childhood love that does, however, like The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, my advice is to hold on to it for dear life. A life without cherished memories like this, you see, is really no life at all.

 

11/11/15 (Part One): Let the Punishment Fit the Crime

Tags

Adam Sliwinski, Andy Thompson, Bernadette Saquibal, Canadian films, cinema, Claudia Morris, co-writers, crime and punishment, Cruel & Unusual, David Richmond-Peck, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Groundhog Day, husband-wife relationship, independent films, Kyle Cassie, low-budget films, Mark Korven, Mary Black, Merlin Dervisevic, Michael Eklund, Michael John Bateman, Michelle Harrison, Monsour Cataquiz, Movies, multiple writers, repentance, Richard Harmon, sci-fi, science-fiction, writer-director

When it comes to crime, what, exactly, is the most effective form of punishment? Incarceration is obviously a popular option, given the exponential increase of bodies in prisons (at least in the U.S. of A.) but how effective is it really? There’s also execution, of course, with all of the moral quandaries, philosophical issues and inability to correct mistakes that come with that particular path in the woods.

While incarceration and execution can have varying degrees of effectiveness as far as recidivism goes (execution, in particular, makes it difficult for criminals to re-offend unless, of course, they happen to be Horace Pinker), is there actually a form of punishment that could make a criminal truly regret their transgressions? Is there some way to make a murderer feel sorrow for their actions, a way to make a monster realize their own monstrosity?

Writer/director Merlin Dervicevic takes a look at one potential (albeit far-fetched) form of punishment/rehabilitation with the low-budget, Canadian export Cruel & Unusual (2014). In this modest little film (confined to a couple of interior locations and a few exterior locales, with a small cast), Dervicevic and co-writer Claudia Morris posit a scenario that’s part Cube (1997), part Groundhog Day (1993) and never less than engrossing. While Cruel & Unusual is far from a perfect film, it manages to be effortlessly thought-provoking, which is far more important.

When we first meet schlubby, unassuming Edgar (David Richmond-Peck), he seems like the kind of stock, cinematic character who’s only one small step away from a crippling midlife crisis: he frequently argues with his “out-of-his league wife,” Maylon (Bernadette Saquibal), and accuses her of sleeping with his boss; Maylon’s son, Gogan (Monsour Cataquiz), is a holy terror at school and a tremendous discipline problem; and Edgar’s blue-collar brother, Lance (Kyle Cassie), constantly drops by unexpected and seems to show an unhealthy interest in Maylon.

Just when it seems as if we’ve stepped into a particularly depressing domestic drama, however, Cruel & Unusual drops the other shoe: after walking into a room in his house, Edgar emerges in some sort of anonymous-looking facility. He has a strange tattoo on his arm and quickly finds himself in a room full of assorted strangers, sort of like an AA meeting but even grimmer. As Edgar soon discovers, this is some sort of alternate form of punishment: not only has he has been accused of killing Maylon, Edgar is also informed that he, himself, is now dead.

As per the rules of the facility (explicated by literal talking heads on high school AV-type rolling TV carts), Edgar and the other “prisoners” must constantly relive the days of their crimes, bearing witness to their actions over and over until they finally realize the gravity of their sins and are properly repentant. The crimes run the gamut from murder to suicide (those who kill themselves are derogatorily labeled “suies” and looked down upon by everyone else) but the process is the same: face your shame, over and over, until you’re finally “rehabilitated” and allowed to “move on.”

The only problem, of course, is that Edgar didn’t kill Maylon…at least, he doesn’t think he did. As our bespectacled protagonist tries to desperately prove his innocence and escape from the facility, he meets a trio of like-minded fellow prisoners: William (Richard Harmon), who cold-bloodily killed his parents; Julien (Michael Eklund), who drowned his own children during a custody dispute with his ex-wife; and Doris (Michelle Harrison), who hung herself from a tree and let her young children discover her swinging body.

Seeking answers, Edgar repeatedly delves back into that fateful day, replaying the scenario between him and Maylon over and over, trying to get some sense of the truth behind it all. As new layers are unwrapped and new information is learned, however, Edgar will come to understand the terrible truth about the day he and Maylon died, a truth that will either set him free…or damn him forever.

Despite an incredibly familiar set-up and execution, Cruel & Unusual still managed to pull the rug out from underneath me in the final third, making this one of the better, more capable sleepers I’ve seen in some time. Similar to Circle (2015) in that it takes a very basic sci-fi concept and then proceeds to fill in the outlines with some exceptionally thoughtful examinations on morality and humanity, Dervicevic’s film is never particularly flashy, yet still manages to pack a hefty punch.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the film’s final reel is not only “quite good” but “damn good,” sending the movie out in the best possible way, with a genuinely emotional, gut-punch of a final revelation/conclusion. Prior to the finale, Cruel & Unusual is undoubtedly well-made, if familiar: the acting is solid, the score is nicely evocative and the cinematography helps to establish the mood quickly and economically. Had the film maintained this level of quality throughout, I’d still have no problem recommending it, albeit more as a pleasant time-waster than anything else. The finale is so smart and impactful, however, that it manages to cast everything that came before it in a different, better light: Cruel & Unusual is proof positive that it (almost) always pays to see a movie through to the bitter end.

With its themes of self-sacrifice, acceptance, repentance and letting go, Dervicevic’s Cruel & Unusual ends up being my favorite kind of modern sci-fi film: smart, subtle, low-key, full of piss and vinegar and ready to take on our preconceived notions of how a polite society really acts. This doesn’t belong in the storied company of recent mindblowers like Automata (2015), Ex Machina (2015) or Circle (2015) but there’s nothing wrong with that, either: they can’t all be headliners, after all, and Cruel & Unusual proves that the openers can be just as interesting and revelatory, in their own ways.

8/13/15: More Human Than the Humans

Tags

Alejandro Martínez, Antonio Banderas, Arthur C. Clarke, Automata, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Blade Runner, clocksmith, co-writers, David Ryall, Dylan McDermott, dystopia, dystopian future, end of humanity, future of mankind, Gabe Ibáñez, gorgeous cinematography, grim future, husband-wife relationship, Igor Legarreta, insurance investigator, Jacq Vaucan, Javier Bardem, Javier Sánchez Donate, Kes Bonnet, man vs machine, Melanie Griffith, multiple writers, near future, nuclear batteries, Patrick Salvador, Philip K. Dick, radiation, Robert Forster, robots, sci-fi, science-fiction, self-aware robots, solar storms, thought-provoking, Tim McInnerny, wasteland, writer-director, Zacarías M. de la Riva

At what point, exactly, does a robot cease to exist as merely a “machine” and become something more? It’s a question that’s been an integral part of science fiction practically from the genre’s creation, a question that’s been examined by literary luminaries like Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke, across works as unforgettable as “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, “I, Robot” and “2001.” The questions are always the same fundamental ones: What is the primary difference between intelligent machines and humans? Can a machine ever “become” human or, at the least, human-like? Do robots possess the capacity for emotions? Can you program “sadness,” “anger,” “hatred” or “love”? If robots were capable of self-awareness, would this be the tipping point?

Cinema, for its part, has been asking the same questions for almost as long as we’ve had movies: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) is probably the first example of a cinematic tradition that’s been going on for almost a century, a tradition that includes such diverse films as Forbidden Planet (1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Westworld (1972), The Black Hole (1979), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), Short Circuit (1986), RoboCop (1987), Cherry 2000 (1987), A.I. (2001), I, Robot (2004), WALL-E (2008), Moon (2009) and Chappie (2015). One of the newest inclusions into this amazingly eclectic group, Spanish writer-director Gabe Ibáñez’s Automata (2014), also ends up being one of the better ones: barring a few missteps and unnecessary clutter, Automata is a gorgeously filmed, thought-provoking look at what separates us from the machines…and why they just might be better at “living” than we’ll ever be.

The year is 2044 and the Earth has been decimated by solar storms that have, in effect, turned the whole planet into a radioactive wasteland. 99% of the population has died, leaving the survivors to take shelter in the few remaining cities, the equivalent of ants scurrying to get away from the magnifying glass. Since atmospheric disturbances have wrecked holy hell with radio transmissions, electrical grids and the like, technology has regressed to your typical dystopic state of being: in other words, humanity is completely and irreversibly fucked, our future sizzling away like so much fat in the fire.

Into this rather terrible situation comes the ubiquitous ROC Corporation (think RoboCop’s Omni Corp and you’re in the right neighborhood), creator of the “primitive” Automata Pilgrim 7000s, a type of robot which does everything from building the walls and coverings which protect the last cities to helping take care of kids, cooking meals and fighting wars (despite our truncated timeline, humans still need to kill each other, apparently, which always seems to be our one constant). By the time the film opens, there are millions of Automatas running around, each one governed by two very fundamental protocols: robots may not harm any form of life (including themselves) and they are forbidden from altering themselves or other robots. Like the Prime Directives in RoboCop, these are unbreakable, unalterable and, obviously, in place to help preserve humanity’s increasingly precarious place in the pecking order.

Our “Deckard” in this particular instance is Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas), one of ROC Corp’s ubiquitous insurance investigators. Jacq’s job is to run around and look into any and all insurance claims levied against his employers: when we first meet him, he’s looking into the case of an Automata that’s been accused of brushing a family dog to death. Jacq is completely burnt-out (no pun intended) at his job and dreams only of moving his pregnant wife, Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), to the seashore, if such a thing still exists in this brave new world.

As befits the “one last case” trope, Jacq is called on to investigate one of ROC Corp’s Automata that has been unceremoniously shot in the face by wastoid police officer Sean Wallance (Dylan McDermott). It seems that the “dead” robot had been modified in some pretty significant ways: not only was it capable of “self-repair” (a big no-no) but it also seemed to be smuggling illegal parts (an even bigger no-no). Jacq’s boss, Mr. Bold (Robert Forster), gives him the news that he’s been impatiently waiting for: find someone, anyone, to blame for the modified robot and Jacq will earn a one-way ticket to his dream destination (provided, of course, that it’s real and not an actual dream destination).

From here, Jacq dives into the deep end of the case, tracking the robot’s “clocksmith” all the way from the city’s stereotypically dystopic slums to a creepy android sex parlor and, finally, into the radioactive wastelands colloquially dubbed “The Sandbox.” As Jacq learns more and more about the modified Automata and its ultimate purpose, he also uncovers hints of a wide-ranging conspiracy, a conspiracy that could affect the very future of mankind. With no one but a group of Automata to guide him, Jacq must confront the truth behind the robots, a truth that will eventually lead him to a godlike being and, just perhaps, the long-rumored ocean that he’s always yearned to see. What separates us from the machines? As Vaucan will find out, quite a bit less than we might think.

Right off the bat, Ibáñez’s Automata is an absolutely stunning piece of film-craft: to not put too fine a point on it, the production design (courtesy of Patrick Salvador), cinematography (beautifully handled by Alejandro Martínez) and general mise en scene (Kes Bonnet handled the art design) are nearly flawless. For a film with an estimated budget of $7 million, Automata looks like it cost roughly fives times that. Using a mix of CGI backgrounds and actual animatronics for the Automata, the film is completely immersive and, to be honest, looks just as good as any of the accepted modern sci-fi prestige pictures: again, it’s hard to not belabor the point but Automata blew me away early and managed to keep impressing me for the entirety of its nearly two-hour run-time. If the film has any issues (and it has a couple), they have nothing whatsoever to do with the look, ambiance or general production.

Performance-wise, Automata’s cast is exceptionally solid: Banderas is fantastic as the world-weary investigator, McDermott turns in one of his patented “loose cannon” performances, Forster is suitably paternal as Jacq’s kind-hearted boss and Tim McInnerny makes a great villain as ultra-slimy “company man,” Vernon Conway. Sørensen does a fine job with what she’s given, although her character doesn’t really come into her own until the film’s final third. There’s also a really nice, subtle vocal performance by Javier Bardem as the godlike Automata: he brings a perfect combination of intelligence, gravitas and parental concern to the performance and is definitely one of the film’s highlights, even if he doesn’t get much screen-time.

In fact, the only performance that doesn’t quite connect is Melanie Griffith’s take on Dr. Dupre: even though the actress gives it her all, her performance is never quite as realistic as the others’. Too often, it feels like she’s attempting to make sense of nonsensical dialogue and she never really sells the character: the scenes between her and Banderas have an awkward quality that’s rather off-putting. Ironically, Griffith is much more convincing in her dual-performance as the voice of Cleo, the sexbot: her vocal performance is much more subtle and nuanced than her “full” performance.

One of the most impressive aspects of Automata is how it references and takes elements from other classic sci-fi films, yet manages to make them seem wholly organic. In many ways, the film throws Blade Runner and Westworld into a blender and seasons the concoction with various elements from films like Alien and RoboCop: the Automata “weep” white tears, ala Alien…the godlike robot has a weary intelligence and understanding of humanity’s place in the universe, ala Blade Runner’s Roy Batty…there are sex-bots, like in Cherry 2000 (Griffith’s vocal performance as Cleo is also a great reference to her role in the ’80s film)…the giant hologram ads that “roam” the city are reminiscent of Blade Runner’s chaotic culture-shock…they all add up to make Automata seem like a part of a much bigger universe, a much further-reaching combined aesthetic.

Unlike many multiplex sci-fi thrillers, Automata is an endlessly intelligent film, one that’s not afraid to offer its complex science and mythology with a minimum of hand-holding. The film might open with the equivalent of an info dump but, in a way, that’s also to be expected: when you have a lot of details to impart and a limited time to impart them, sometimes the best way is also the bluntest way. At times, Automata threatens to become too complex and confusing, especially once we get into the robots’ “mind kernals” and their attempts at “self-improvement” and evolution. This, of course, is always the danger one assumes when dealing with a genuinely smart film: it makes demands of the audience and, if you aren’t willing to stay engaged, you’ll most likely be left behind.

In fact, if I had any real issues with Ibáñez’s film (he co-wrote the script with Igor Legarreta and Javier Sánchez Donate), they all lie with the unfortunately hackneyed, old-as-the-hills “corporate conspiracy” that lurks at the heart of the film. Without that silly, action-oriented facet, Automata would be a much slower, more thought-provoking film, much closer to the grandiose vision of Blade Runner than it ultimately is. We’ve already been shown such wonders by the time that an anonymous group of authority figures determine that Jacq “knows too much” that it feels like a serious cop-out: for all of the film’s grand vision and intelligence, the climax still devolves into one of those de rigueur “final shootouts,” as Jacq battles Vernon for ultimate supremacy. The conspiracy angle also introduces at least two subplots too many, subplots which help to drag the film down rather than propel it forward.

Ultimately, however, my quibbles with Automata are minor: this is first-class, grade-A filmmaking all the way, the kind of intelligent sci-fi film that should make any fan of the genre sit up and take notice. While Ibáñez and his extraordinarily talented cast and crew don’t blaze the kind of bold, new trails that pioneers like 2001 and Blade Runner did, they still turn in a film that stands, head and shoulders, above similar pretenders. There is genuine beauty here, along with a tremendously powerful emotional core and some truly unforgettable images: the scene where the Automatas create life is one of the single, greatest nods to Frankenstein that I’ve ever seen and would be a crowning showpiece in any film. As only his second full-length directorial effort, Automata showcases Gabe Ibáñez as a truly formidable new talent, a visionary who will practically demand my attention, from this point on.

If you’re a fan of good filmmaking, I heartily suggest that you follow along, too. I’m not sure if Ibáñez is the next Ridley Scott or merely the next Alex Proyas: either way, I have a feeling that he’s got plenty of amazing things to show us.

8/10/15: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

Tags

Adam Butcher, Alexander Conti, alpha males, Andre Chemetoff, Arnold Pinnock, Balmorhea, Bryan Murphy, bullies, Canadian films, cinema, co-writers, correctional officers, Dewshane Williams, Dog Pound, drama, emotional abuse, English-language debut, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, first-time actors, guard-prisoner relationships, hunger strike, independent films, indie dramas, inmates, Jane Wheeler, Jeff McEnery, Jeremie Delon, juvenile detention facility, juvenile offenders, K'Naan, Kim Chapiron, Lawrence Bayne, Lynne Adams, male friendships, Mateo Morales, mental abuse, Michael Morang, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple writers, Nikkfurie, non-professional actors, pecking order, physical abuse, power dynamics, power struggles, prison films, prison rape, prison riot, rape, remakes, Scum, Shane Kippel, Sheitan, Slim Twig, suicide, Taylor Poulin, Trent McMullen, William Ellis, writer-director, youth in trouble

Humans are amazingly resilient animals. We can endure any number of extreme climates, fight back against overwhelming odds and turn veritable wastelands into virtual paradises. We can ponder questions both basic and metaphysical, learn to do just about anything we set our minds to and wrestle the world at large into submission by sheer force of our nearly boundless will. Humans can do all of this (and more) with surprisingly little: all we really need is air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and a little something to keep the elements off of our heads.

While these biological necessities go without saying, humans also need something that’s a little harder to categorize, a little more difficult to study in a lab. We also need hope. Hope that bad situations can become better, hope that we can achieve our dreams by working hard, hope that we can not only survive, on a day-to-day basis, but find some measure of personal happiness and satisfaction. Humans need hope just as much as we need sustenance and oxygen: without either one, we’re just empty husks of decaying meat, carcasses too stubborn to know that we’re already dead.

There is no hope in French writer-director Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound (2010), although that’s not really surprising: after all, there was precious little hope in his shocking debut, Sheitan (2006), either. As a filmmaker, Chapiron possesses an almost supernatural ability to submerge his characters (and his audience) into such unrelentingly dark, tragic and terrible situations that the very concept of hope is both elusive and rather laughable. We know that Chapiron’s characters are all doomed from the very first frame: that they often don’t recognize this futility makes their inevitable struggles even more sad. These characters aren’t waving their arms for rescue: they’re thrashing around, frantically, as their increasingly tired bodies drift further and further from the shore, closer to their ultimate ends than they are to any new beginnings.

Essentially a remake of the grim and unrelenting British prison film, Scum (1979), Chapiron’s English-language debut (the film is Canadian but set in Montana) concerns the Enola Vale Youth Correctional Facility and the various individuals who are imprisoned there, as well as the ones doing the imprisoning. We’re quickly introduced to three inmates who will become our entry-way into this particular world: 16-year-old Ecstasy dealer/born victim, Davis (Shane Kippel); 15-year-old repeat offender/car-jacker Angel (Mateo Morales) and 17-year-old hot-head/nominal protagonist, Butch (Adam Butcher).

After being thrown into the facility (Butch has been transferred to Enola Vale after laying a ferocious beat-down on an abusive guard at his previous facility), the trio are quickly brought up to speed by Superintendent Sands (Trent McMullen) and the boys’ immediate authority figure, CO Goodyear (Lawrence Bayne). The rules are easy: do everything you’re told, behave yourself and walk the straight and narrow. The boys who manage to do that become “trustees” and earn more responsibilities, perks and freedom, along with signifying black shirts. The ones who don’t follow the rules get orange jump suits and a one-way ticket to “Special Unit” or, in extreme cases, solitary confinement.

As with any prison film (or actual prison, for that matter), day-to-day life in Dog Pound revolves around a strictly observed pecking order: the alpha dog gets to call the shots and dispense the punishment in whatever way he sees fit. In this particular case, the alpha dog is one seriously scary bully by the name of Banks (first-time actor/former prisoner Taylor Poulin, in a genuinely frightening performance), a character who takes an immediate dislike to both Davis and Butch, albeit for different reasons.

In Davis, Banks and his cronies, Looney (comedian Jeff McEnery) and Eckersley (Bryan Murphy, another first-time actor), see the quintessential weak link, the eternal victim that’s as vital to any bully as oxygen is to those aforementioned humans. They steal his new boots, envy his short sentence, submit him to constant abuse and, in a particularly devastating moment, subject him to a particularly violent sexual assault. Davis is the naive lamb, the chosen sacrifice for those too hard and jaded to feel anything besides hatred and the need to dominant. He’s the face of every petty drug offender tossed into the correctional system, the minnows that feed the sharks.

With Butch, the bullies see something altogether different: a genuine threat to their established social order. In order to maintain his position at the top, Banks must bend Butch to his will, show the pugilistic teen that he may have been able to take out a CO but he’ll never stand against Banks and his minions. While destroying Davis is “pure entertainment” for Banks and his crew, taking Butch down is something much more important: it’s a matter of survival, plain and simple.

As Davis, Butch and, to a much lesser extent, Angel (Morales ends up with the least screen-time, overall, leaving his character rather under-developed) try to negotiate these increasingly choppy waters, CO Goodyear tries to reach the youths through a combination of “tough love” and an unyielding need to do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t the most pleasant thing. He’s not a perfect man, by any stretch of the imagination: over-worked, under-paid, given to sporadic moments of anger and too thin-stretched to ever affect much change, Goodyear, at the very least, tries. That all of his goodwill becomes undone in one tragic, accidental moment is, unfortunately, to be expected: there is no hope for anyone at Enola Vale, whether they’re behind the bars or in front of them.

This, ultimately, is both the film’s source of strength and its ultimate weakness: since there is no hope for anyone, Dog Pound is an unflinching, full-throttle descent into a literal hell on earth. The camera doesn’t cut away, we get no reprieve from anything that has happened or is about to happen. Even when the characters find some tiny measures of individual happiness, such as when Davis regales the other boys with made-up stories about outrageous sexual dalliances and becomes, if only momentarily, the closest thing he’ll get to “respected,” there’s always the notion that more misery, tragedy and gloom lies just around the corner.

In one of the film’s most subtle, if icky, moments, Butch immobilizes a wandering cockroach by spitting on it until the crawling critter is stuck fast in a globular prison of phlegm and saliva. The insect twitches and moves, compulsively, doing its best to break free, to pull itself from its sticky bonds and scurry off into the safety of the nearest dark corner. By the morning, however, the cockroach is still in the exact same position, drowned in a tiny pool of Butch’s spit. Despite what it might have thought, the roach never had a chance: it was dead the minute Butch’s spit nailed it to the floor, whether it knew it or not. In Dog Pound, the differences between the youthful offenders and the dead roach are many but the similarities? Infinite.

Despite its constantly dreary subject matter, Dog Pound is beautifully made and exquisitely acted, no small feat considering the non-professional status of a good half-dozen of its cast members (many of whom, like Poulin, are actually youth offenders, themselves). Andre Chemetoff’s cinematography captures the inherent grit and claustrophobic quality of the facility perfectly, while the subtle, moody score (featuring the work of instrumental ensemble Balmorhea, among others) counters the often sudden, stunning violence to masterful effect. As with Sheitan, it’s obvious that Chapiron is a filmmaker in full command of every aspect of his craft.

For all of this, however, Dog Pound is still pretty difficult to recommend. The reason, of course, goes back to the point I’ve been hammering this whole time: there is absolutely no hope to be found here, in any way, shape or form. This isn’t to say that every – or even any – film needs to end happily: this is to say that Dog Pound makes a particular point of pounding each and every character so deep into the ground that there’s no possible outcome but the one we get. Each and every victory is false, any and all attempts at understanding or evolution are met with the harshest possible retributions. There is no need for comic relief here, no hope of any of the protagonists coming out on top of their individual struggles. If there is any kind of message to Dog Pound, it’s as basic, cynical and bleak as possible: if you end up in this situation, you are completely, totally and irreparably fucked.

As an example of “feel-bad cinema,” Dog Pound is nearly peerless: this is the kind of film destined to ruin any good mood, turn any optimist into a card-carrying misanthrope. While the world around us can be a harsh, grim place, the world inside Enola Vale is nothing but gray: a million little variations of the shade, infecting every single person that steps behind its walls.

It’s tempting to say that Dog Pound is the kind of film that could change anyone’s opinion about the correctional system (or, at the very least, the youth correctional system) but that just isn’t true: the guards don’t shoulder an inordinate amount of the blame here any more than the inmates do. This is not a tale of power-mad authority figures trying to beat their wards into submission, nor is it a story about hard-working correctional officers dealing with the soul-killing every-day business of keeping individuals locked away from society.

At its heart, Dog Pound is a story about average people making (and continuing to make) terrible decisions, the kind of decisions that can bring nothing but pain to all around them. This is a film about wasted youth, about squandered loyalty and altruistic intent blown to pieces about the terrible reality of the human condition. This is a tragedy, in every sense of the word. This is a hopeless film about hopeless people in a hopeless place, crafted by a singularly unique, uncompromising filmmaker. If you can stomach it, Dog Pound will rip your beating heart from your chest and smash it to smithereens on the floor. There is truth to be found here, some fractured beauty and hints at what could have been, under far different circumstances.

There’s a lot to find and appreciate in Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound but hope? That, my friends, is one commodity that’s in perilously short supply.

7/26/15 (Part Two): Run to the Light

Tags

Anna Paquin, auteur theory, Carles Cases, cinema, Craig Stevenson, darkness, dead children, dysfunctional family, father-son relationships, Fele Martínez, Fermí Reixach, Fernando de Felipe, Film auteurs, film reviews, filmed in Spain, films, Giancarlo Giannini, haunted houses, horror, horror films, human sacrifice, Huntington's Disease, husband-wife relationship, Iain Glen, isolated estates, Jaume Balagueró, Lena Olin, Luis de la Madrid, Miguel Tejada-Flores, missing children, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, multiple writers, possession, set in Spain, sins of the fathers, sins of the past, solar eclipse, Spanish-American films, Stephan Enquist, The Nameless, writer-director, Xavi Giménez, [REC], [REC] 2, [REC] 4

Back in 2007, before found-footage/first-person-POV horror films had become as standard a fixture in the industry as zombies were before them, Spanish writer-director Jaume Balagueró unleashed a feral little film known as [REC] (2007) on a largely unwitting populace. While the film would go on to produce three sequels (two of which were also directed by Balagueró) and an awful American remake (Quarantine (2008) is, without a doubt, one of the most unrelentingly shitty films I’ve personally sat through), I was taken enough with Balagueró’s style to check out his entire filmography.

Beginning with his feature-length debut, The Nameless (1999), and continuing through Fragile (2005), his short film To Let (2006) and the [REC] series, Balagueró’s films have been darkly stylish, atmospheric fables that combine the stresses of familial interaction with the traditional tropes of haunted house films. In Balagueró’s hands, the sins of the parents always come home to roost on their children, every dark, sinister room holds a secret and mysterious figures have an alarming tendency to slink around while the hapless protagonists are looking in the other direction. In many ways, Darkness (2002) is a synthesis of his myriad themes and influences, all top-lined by an all-star cast that includes Anna Paquin, Lena Olin, Iain Glen and Craig Stevenson. Primo Balagueró? For better and worse: absolutely.

Darkness details the adventures of a small family of American ex-pats who’ve been uprooted from their home and moved back to the father’s childhood stomping grounds in Spain. As horror movie families are wont to be, our happy clan is more than a little dysfunctional: father Mark (Iain Glen) suffers from Huntington’s Disease and has a tendency to either fly into manic episodes or collapse into painful-looking seizures; mother Maria (Lena Olin) seems distracted to the point of completely ignoring her children; teenaged Regina (Anna Paquin) is as overjoyed as any kid would be who has to leave all of their friends behind and move to a foreign country just as she’s about to begin her senior year of school; and young Paul (Stephan Enquist) keeps getting his colored pencils stolen by spooky ghost children. You know…the usual stuff.

As their new home, a sprawling, isolated country manor that practically screams “Here there be ghosts” begins to reveal certain creepy, sinister happenings at an alarming rate, Mark begins to channel ol’ Jack Torrance, leading Regina to fear for the safety of her brother, especially after he begins to develop unexplained bruises and injuries. While investigating the convoluted history of her family’s new abode with her new friend, Carlos (Fele Martínez), Regina begins to unravel a strange story that spans back 40 years and involves her father, his father (Giancarlo Giannini), a complete solar eclipse, insane cult members, murdered children and the end of the world. Will Regina be able to save her family from the grip of ultimate evil or will all of her best efforts, inadvertently, bring about the very apocalypse that she so desperately wants to avoid?

When Balagueró eases back on the narrative clutter, needless back-and-forth and pointless quick-cut editing, Darkness is actually a pretty decent “old dark house” film, albeit one with a “twist” that puts it firmly in the camp of someone like Adrian Garcia Bogliano (there are more than a few similarities to his Penumbra (2011), not the least of which is the eclipse element). The problem, as it turns out, is that the writer-director over-seasons this particular dish something fierce: the final 20 minutes are so cluttered, confusing, noisy and melodramatic as to be almost completely off-putting, despite the genuinely intriguing core story.

There’s just too much of everything: too much explanation, too much confusion, too many vague motivations, too much unrealistic interaction, too many noisy jump-scares and musical cues…stripped of all its bulky “clothing,” Darkness would be a much scrawnier film, to be sure, but it would also be one that could stand better on its own two feet. As it is, the narrative (and film) is too overladen to ever move far in any direction. It’s difficult to get fully invested in a story where new elements seem to pop up at random (the bit about the snake and the egg makes no sense, no matter how I try), while old standards like “characterization” leave and return like a wandering sleepwalker.

Lest I heap too much abuse on the cluttered narrative and stylistic issues (when the quick-cut editing falls by the wayside, cinematographer Xavi Giménez produces some suitably attractive, evocative images), Darkness is also plagued by some seriously odd, uneven performances. While Paquin has a few moments that strain credibility (her occasionally halting line delivery is a real head-scratcher), Glen is all over the place and Olin, despite her legendary status, is almost completely worthless. The character of Maria never makes a lot of sense, to begin with, but Olin’s totally “checked-out” performance does no one any favors. Each and every moment of her screentime is painful (for various reasons) and I never could see through to her character’s actual motivations: was Maria crazy? Did she hate her kids? Her husband? Did she actually care about any of it? Each and every reaction and bit of dialogue is so laissez-faire and noncommittal that Maria always seems superfluous to the larger story.

Glen, for his part, goes the full “Nicholson” here (as we all know, you never, ever go full Nicholson), which turns the film’s back-half into something of a poverty-row re-imagining of The Shining (1980): as Mark bellows, huffs, screams, rages and attacks doors with aplomb, in frantic pursuit of his wife and young son, it’s hard not to think back on the far-superior older film. Glen has moments that are nicely realized (unlike poor Olin) but he’s never a particularly believable character, which really hurts any identification we might have with him. On a lesser note, Mark’s Huntington’s Disease never seems to function as anything more than a plot device, leading him to act in whatever manner the narrative calls for at that time. For all the difference it makes, Mark could have been a recovering alcoholic, a schizophrenic or just really angry…like many of the film’s elements, the disease seems as arbitrary as anything else.

Despite my frustrations with Darkness, it’s still impossible to deny that Balagueró has some genuine skill, both as a writer and a director (here, he co-scripts with Fernando de Felipe). When the film is allowed to work on its own merits, there’s some undeniable power to be found: amidst the chaos and noise of the film’s climax, there’s some really interesting observations about familial duty, fate, the nature of reality and weird dooms-day cults. More’s the pity, then, that the whole thing collapses into a soggy mess of evil doppelgängers, frantic action, ridiculous proclamations (“Regina is in her house…in Hell!!!”) and haunted house conceits that would have been moldy decades ago (the scene where a character is pursued down a hallway by extinguishing lights is so well-worn that it’s threadbare).

As it stands, Darkness is an interesting enough part of Balagueró’s oeuvre, even if it never comes close to either its predecessor or the [REC] films that would follow. Think of it as a transitional film, a bridge between his more atmospheric chillers and the action-packed fare that would follow, that first tentative moment where one transitions from walking to running. While his future ended up suitably bright, there will always be a little Darkness in Balagueró’s rear-view mirror, for better or worse.

7/15/15 (Part One): Peachfuzz Still Loves You, Little Buckaroo

Tags

awkward films, Best of 2015, cinema, co-writers, confessions, Creep, dark comedies, disturbing films, feature-film debut, Film, film reviews, found-footage, found-footage films, Funny Games, horror, horror films, insanity, isolated estates, lake house, Man Bites Dog, Mark Duplass, Movies, multiple writers, obsession, Patrick Brice, Peachfuzz, psychopaths, small cast, The Puffy Chair, trilogy, unsettling, videographer for hire, writer-director-actor

Suppose that you’re a freelance videographer and you’ve just stumbled upon one of those “too-good-to-be-true”-type Craigslist ads: you know, the ones that promise lots of money for what seems like a surprisingly small amount of work? In this case, the job offers a cool grand for just a few hour’s work…not too shabby, eh? When you get to the address, you find out that it’s in a really picturesque, isolated mountain town, at the top of a long, wending hill. Once there, you discover that your prospective employer is the dictionary definition of a meek, unassuming guy…basically, the kind of guy that no one would cross the street to avoid, although they might do so to steal his lunch money.

This guy, he seems like a nice enough dude but he has a few quirks: he really likes to hug, for one thing, and he has a rather unsettling propensity for jumping out from around corners and trying (and succeeding) to startle you. He also keeps a wolf Halloween mask in his closet, which he’s named “Peachfuzz” and written a jaunty tune about. No biggie, though: the guy’s house is really nice, modern, well-lit and comfy…no piles of bodies, bone chandeliers or Sawyer-approved home decor to be found here, doncha know! In every way, shape and form, this guy is the poster-boy for middle-of-the-road, plain-ol’-vanilla normalcy.

After talking to this friendly, unassuming fella, he makes a pretty good case for needing your services: turns out that he’s been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and he wants you to make a “My Life (1993)-esque” video document for his unborn son. He may not be around to raise him, but this dedicated soon-to-be-dad wants to leave his child with as much of his wisdom and attention as he can: get the life lessons out of the way right now, while he’s still around to give them, and leave his son a legacy for the future.

All well and good, no alarm bells whatsoever…if anything, this guy might be in the running for “Father of the Year,” unborn child or not. After paying you upfront (talk about a totally upstanding dude!), your humble host decides that it’s time to get down to business: you were paid to film, so film you will. The first thing on the agenda? This totally normal, average guy wants to walk his son through the mechanics of “tubby time,” so he strips naked and jumps in the bathtub, all while you keep filming. And then things get really weird.

This, in a nutshell, is Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass’ intensely awkward, genuinely disturbing Creep (2014), a two-person, found-footage examination of obsession, insanity, loneliness and the often terrifying “real faces” that supposedly normal folks hide from the world at large. Despite the inherent simplicity of the set-up and format (Brice and Duplass co-write the film, as well as starring in it, while Brice also served as the director…at no point do we ever get another actor on-screen aside from these two), Creep is endlessly engaging and so tightly plotted that it’s almost seamless. Creep is not only a first-rate found-footage film, it’s also one of the best, most unsettling films of the year.

The secret weapon here, as in many other indie productions, is wunderkind Mark Duplass. Although perhaps best known for his pioneering work in mumblecore and for his role on the relentlessly hilarious TV show The League, Duplass and his brother, Jay, have been involved with an almost dizzying variety of projects, either as writer, director, actor or all three: The Puffy Chair (2005), Baghead (2008), Cyrus (2010), Greenberg (2010), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), Your Sister’s Sister (2011), Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Mercy (2014), to name but a few.

In this case, Duplass has teamed with Patrick Brice, whose follow-up to Creep, The Overnight (2015), made big waves at various film festivals this year. Described as the first in a trilogy, Creep is as low-budget and bare-bones as it gets: in essence, the entire film consists of Duplass’ Josef creeping out Brice’s Aaron in every way imaginable, with the tension slowly ratcheting up until the entire film threatens to explode like a busted water heater. To make things even odder and more uncomfortable, Creep is also full of pitch-black, deadpan humor, much of which walks an incredibly thin line between making one burst out laughing (Josef’s “Charlie Day-worthy” Peachfuzz song is an easy highlight) and making one cringe down in their seat, attempting vainly to become invisible.

Perhaps the greatest triumph, here, above and beyond the masterfully economic production (“anyone” can do this…provided, of course, that they’re as talented as Brice and Duplass) is the way that the film sinks its hooks into us and refuses to let go. Unless you’re a complete horror neophyte, you’ll probably be able to predict where the film eventually ends up. The route to get there, however, is a particularly thorny one, full of red herrings, dead ends, misplaced assumptions and cinematic slight of hand: at one point, we seem to be witnessing the natural progression of what we assume will happen, only to have it be revealed as recorded footage from earlier. Brice and Duplass don’t engage in the same sort of meta-mind-fuckery that Haneke did in Funny Games (1997) but they’ve managed to set up show just one door down, which is a pretty neat trick all by itself.

Creep is a strange film, no two ways about it. It’s a surprisingly complex narrative for such a short, deceptively simple film: Brice and Duplass seem to be telling a pretty straight-forward genre story about a creepy guy (think Psycho (1960) stripped down to a two-person drama) but constantly throw in allusions, asides and nods to much bigger, darker things happening in the background. The film could be about the hidden dangers lurking behind any potentially smiling face but it could also be about the very nature of truth and perception, sort of a Schrodinger test to see if “absolute truth” exists outside of our individual understandings. It could be about loneliness and mental illness but it could also be about the horrifying randomness of the universe, the howlingly unknowable cosmic coin toss that puts some folks on the road to happiness while others end up mulch.

There are moments in the film (the harrowing bit involving Josef’s ringing cell phone, that amazing final long shot) that are as classically “horror” as the genre gets, while other scenes (tubby time, the unpleasant Peachfuzz story, the visit to the healing spring) would be odd fits in any film, regardless of the generic focus. Creep is such an amazing piece of work because it somehow makes all these disparate elements fit together in a wholly organic way: Brice and Duplass’ film could be about any or all of these things or it could be about none of them.

While Brice has a few off moments, acting-wise (some of his close-up asides to the camera feel more like delivering lines than just “being”), Duplass has such a singular focus that it’s difficult to see where the actor stops and the character begins. At times, I was reminded of Duplass’ archly awesome asshole from The League, a totally cool dude who fucks with people just to watch their reactions. At other times, however, that odd combo of sweetly goofy happiness and reptilian, dispassionate reserve would chill me straight to my blood cells: it’s always difficult to get under a lifelong horror fanatic’s skin, especially where more modern horrors are concerned…Creep makes it seem distressingly easy.

As the first film in a proposed trilogy, I’m deathly curious to see where Brice and Duplass go from here: while the film ends in a way that seems to “pan back” and give us a wider overview of the evil we’ve witnessed, I’d hate to think that Brice and Duplass might get lazy and just give us more of the same in future installments. As it stands, Creep was one of the most uncomfortable, unpleasant, powerful and astounding little films I managed to see this year: I’d love to be able to say the same thing about the next two, whenever Brice and Duplass decide to unleash them upon the world.

For now, however, I’m going to double-down on my long-standing paranoia regarding other people: the world might be full of totally nice, cool individuals, but as long as there are Josefs out there, I think I’ll be a little more comfortable behind my locked door, thank you very much. As for answering Craigslist ads? Fuggedaboudit.

 

7/13/15: Judas Strikes Back

Tags

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.

7/12/15: The Sleep of Reason

Tags

bad fathers, Benjamin Shielden, Catriona MacColl, cinema, co-writers, Dario Argento, dream imagery, dream research, dream-like, dysfunctional family, Emmanuel Bonami, family secrets, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, foreign films, French cinema, French films, Fu'ad Aït Aattou, Gala Besson, horror, horror films, horror-fantasy, Horsehead, Joe Sheridan, Karim Chériguène, keys, Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux, lucid dreaming, lush, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, multiple writers, Murray Head, Nightmare on Elm St., nightmares, Romain Basset, step-father, supernatural, surreal, Vernon Dobtcheff, Vincent Vieillard-Baron, visually stunning, writer-director

In many ways, writer-director Romain Basset’s feature debut, Horsehead (2014), is as strange a creation as its titular demonic figurehead: both too nonsensical to conform to standard cinematic narratives and not gonzo enough to properly pay homage to the surreal, Italo-gore films that are its obvious influence, the film is lush, visually stunning and stuck in a bit of a no-man’s-land. When the film’s visuals and atmosphere mesh, Basset comes dangerously close to approximating the fever dream insanity of vintage Argento: something like A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) jammed sideways into Inferno (1980), if you will. When the film leans hard into actual plot mechanics, however, it tends to collapse into a bit of a chaotic mess, favoring complex backstory over actual emotional impact.

Jessica (Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux), our plucky heroine, has been plagued by terrible nightmares of a terrifying, horse-headed demon for the majority of her life. After her grandmother Rose (Gala Besson) dies, Jessica returns to her childhood home for the funeral. Like many horror film heroes, Jessica has a difficult history with her stern, disapproving mother, Catelyn (Lucio Fulci mainstay Catriona MacColl), although she gets along great with her cheerful, ultra-supportive step-dad, Jim (Murray Head). Returning to her old stomping grounds for the first time in years, Jessica and her mom immediately get to butting heads, all while Jim and faithful servant, George (Vernon Dobtcheff), try to run interference.

Once she gets “home,” however, Jessica immediately starts to have strange dreams about her grandmother, dreams in which a younger version of Rose frantically looks for some sort of key. A sinister preacher (Fu’ad Aït Aattou) also pops up in her dreams and he seems to be pursuing Rose, for some undisclosed reason: we know he’s evil, however, because he has one of those patented “totally, completely evil” voices…always a handy indicator. She also continues to see the menacing Horsehead, the towering, monstrous presence from her youth that’s pursued her in her slumber for decades.

Using a handy bottle of ether and some of that “take control of your dreams” advice that all the kids on Elm Street receive, Jessica proceeds to explore the phantasmagoric world of her dreams, attempting to figure out the connection between the creepy priest, Horsehead, her grandmother and that damned missing key. Jessica will have to be careful, however: if Horsehead gets a hold of her while she’s dreaming, it might spell the end of her in the “real world,” as well.

Similar to Rob Zombie’s recent The Lords of Salem (2012), Basset’s Horsehead is a very clear nod to the classic ’80s horror fare of Italian gore-maestros like Argento and Fulci: hell, he even casts MacColl, the star of such Fulci standards as City of the Living Dead (1980), House By the Cemetery (1981) and The Beyond (1981), as Jessica’s mother. With its dreamlike atmosphere, brightly colored lighting and emphasis on visuals over logic, it’s pretty easy to draw a through-line straight into the heart of Basset’s little opus. If you’re going to wear your influences on your sleeve, however, there are certainly worse ones you could pick than Argento or Fulci.

When the emphasis stays on the visuals and vibe, Horsehead works remarkably well: cinematographer Vincent Vieillard-Baron, on only his second full-length feature, produces some staggeringly strange, beautiful imagery, much of which is on a par with the best of Luciano Tovoli’s work in films like Suspiria (1977) and Tenebre (1982). The figure of Horsehead is a genuinely creepy image and certain scenes, like Jessica’s climatic battle with the dream demon, approach del Toro and Tarsem Singh’s level of fastidious attention to detail. Horsehead looks consistently great, with a truly cool sense of Gothic grandeur that befits the more fairy-tale-like aspects of the narrative.

Basset gets good work from a dependable cast: it’s always good to see MacColl and she brings quite a bit of edge to her portrayal of Jessica’s troubled mother, while Pointeaux is a likable, (mostly) reasonable protagonist. As befits the film’s spiritual forebears, some of the performances are a little more over-the-top than others: Fu’ad Aït Aattou’s evil priest and Joe Sheridan’s oddly lecherous doctor are pure comic book, while veteran actor Dobtcheff doesn’t get a whole lot to do as the seemingly superfluous butler/caretaker.

In another parallel with the aforementioned Zombie film, however, Basset’s movie starts to unravel whenever we get thrust down into the actual nitty-grit of the plot. To not put too fine a point on it, Horsehead makes very little sense, even when all of the cards have been laid on the table by the film’s conclusion. This, of course, was a pretty common issue with the films that directly influenced Horsehead: no one ever went into a Fulci or Argento film to focus on the plots, most of which only existed as a rough framework to hang numerous setpieces from. The difference, of course, is that both Fulci and Argento seemed perfectly aware of this and were more than happy to play to their strengths: Basset, unfortunately, tries to have his cake and eat it, too, by turning his film into an extremely plot-heavy, if thoroughly surreal, exercise in combining style and substance.

By the time that Jessica figures out what’s happening, the film has become a morass of missing keys, symbolic imagery, musty old “family secrets” and philosophical concepts masquerading as spook-show imagery. Immaculate conception, stillborn twins, abusive fathers and imaginary churches all make an appearance, although it’s all so much nonsense, at least as far as the actual impact on the story goes. By the time that Jessica is advised to “follow the wolf, not the horse,” I found myself more bemused than anything.

One of the odder aspects of Horsehead ends up being the many parallels between the Nightmare on Elm Street series. From Jessica learning to take control of her dreams, to the “sins of the parents” themes, to Catelyn’s attempt to stop Jessica’s lucid dreaming via some sort of “anti-dreaming” drug, there are times when it definitely feels as if Basset (who co-scripted with Karim Chériguène) is actively trying to kickstart his own version of Wes Craven’s little empire: even the final shot seems to set up a direct, more action-packed sequel, which doesn’t sit comfortably with the film’s headier aspirations.

Despite some fundamental problems, however, Horsehead is still an intriguing, if frustrating, film. Whenever the dream sequences are in full force, it’s hard to deny the intoxicating power of Basset’s imagination: like Singh, he knows how to blend the horrific and fantastic in equal measures, often within the same frame. It’s also encouraging to note that he’s taking inspiration from horror’s forefathers but using it to create his own, new mythology: I’ll take that over another remake/reimagining any day of the week.

For his first full-length, Romain Basset shows a tremendous amount of promise: if he’s able to completely jettison his more traditional narrative impulses and just go with the power of his imagery, I have a feeling that he just might be able to get in the same head=space as his Italian horror heroes. Horsehead isn’t quite a thoroughbred but it’s a damn strong runner: that wins races, too.

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

Tags

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.