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

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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.

5/3/14: From Siberia with Shrug

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abandoned research facilities, Blair Witch, Branko Tomovic, Charlotte Riley, cinema, creepy buildings, Darkest Secrets, Dervla Kirwan, drama, Entity, film reviews, films, found-footage, found-footage films, horror, horror film, horror films, Movies, Oliver Jackson, psychics, Rupert Hill, Siberia, Steve Stone, writer-director, [REC]

I’ve always felt that a good location is the one thing that can turn an “okay” horror film into a “pretty good” horror film. There’s a lot of other ingredients that go into the cake, of course, but an interesting location is the one that usually seems like an afterthought. Too often, horror filmmakers (especially low-to-no budget filmmakers) put an undue focus on their makeup, effects and gore, which are usually the three areas that even films with decent budgets struggle against. The value of a good, unique, creepy location just can’t be discounted, however: I’ve seen at least two dozen films that were made highly watchable (and even quite enjoyable) thanks to an expertly used location. For example, Hollow (2011) is a fairly worthless wannabe chiller but it makes tremendous use of one of the single creepiest trees I’ve ever seen, granting the film more class than it really deserves. As far as horror films go, Chernobyl Diaries (2012) is a complete flop, yet the movie is filmed in an abandoned Russian air force base (subbing in for the irradiated city of Pripyat) and I get goose bumps just thinking about it. Sometimes, a really great location can help keep a film afloat, even if there’s always the feeling of wasted potential. Sometimes, however, even a really creepy location can’t save an inherently flawed film: Entity (2012), yet another found footage film, is flawed to the point of being essentially useless and squanders a genuinely eerie location with one massively clumsy story.

A small film crew, led by Kate (Charlotte Riley), are trooping through a forest in Siberia as part of a TV show called Darkest Secrets. With Kate are her crew members, Matt (Rupert Hill) and David (Oliver Jackson), as well as a psychic with a lazy eye named Ruth (Dervla Kirwan) and a local guide named Yuri (Branko Tomovic). They’re out there to discover the truth behind 34 bodies that were discovered there twelve years before; as they explore, their investigation brings them to a mysterious, ultra-creepy, abandoned research facility in the middle of the forest. Once there, the intrepid crews will have to deal with lots of…well, lots of something, but I’ll be honest: I was so often confused that I’m not sure what they’re dealing with. The only thing I am sure of is that the facility was used to test psychics, which means this may be some sort of X-Men tie-in: if so, it would definitely explain my confusion. If not…well…

Any plot summary of Entity will, most likely, seem confusing, with good reason: the film is highly confusing. The narrative is jumbled, character motivations frequently seem more whimsical than based on any reality (even within the framework of the story) and the shooting style (tight shots, frequently using a “night-vision-camera” effect, with extremely quick-cut editing, ala [REC]) just makes everything worse. All too often, some sort of chaotic activity would happen, characters would run around, regroup and the whole process would repeat itself. Were there any more than four characters on-screen at any given time, I would definitely have had trouble telling them apart: as it is, I can close my eyes and have absolutely no memory of what either Matt or David looked like: the only thing I can remember is Ruth’s damn lazy eye, which will haunt my dreams forever.

Entity is that rare film that manages to be both boring and overly fidgety, frequently throwing out that quick-cut POV footage to no good effect and possessing about zero forward momentum. This is also another of those found-footage films that feels compelled to constantly remind us of its conceit by way of exceptionally tedious picture grain, sound loss, rolling picture, etc. Like the very worst of these, Entity goes so overboard with the effect that it makes it seem as if the crew is shooting on a crappy thrift-store camera that’s been kicked into traffic a few too many times: with footage that bad, their show would be lucky to air on public access, much less any kind of legitimate network. This, of course, is lazy filmmaking at its worst, no different from using cheap stereotypes as a way to shorthand character development.

Speaking of character development: there is none. We know, essentially, the same thing about the characters on the way out as we knew on the way in, which is to say, not enough to give a shit. Kate is shrill and annoying, Matt and David are anonymous, Yuri is way too hyper and Ruth vacillates between looking confused, looking scared and trying to look scary: of the three emotions, confusion seems to be her most natural mode. Since we don’t know anything about the characters and none of them are charismatic or interesting on a service level, there’s absolutely no sense of urgency in the film: it’s hard to be worried about a character when you would kind like to wring their neck, yourself.

But about that aforementioned location: is it worth watching the film for? Absolutely not, unless you’re the same sort of stupid masochist I must be. The research facility is actually really scary, the kind of place that would seem to write its own horror film. And, to be honest, I bet that would be a pretty interesting film. What we get, however, is reheated mush, yet another “ghosts in a facility” tale that traffics in pale-skinned, dark-haired “creepy girls,” stereotypically “scary” faces and lots of stupid jump scares. By the time we get to the tired ending (ever get the feeling that the old-timey photograph bit in Kubrick’s version of The Shining influenced far more future filmmakers than it should have?), it’s impossible to care about any of it. When the “twist” ends up being no surprise whatsoever, you know that you’re in Middle-of-the-Road-Land, Population: Entity.