7/26/15 (Part One): Doomed to Repeat

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Ashley Rickards, At the Devil's Door, atmospheric films, Bresha Webb, Bridger Nielson, Catalina Sandino Moreno, cinema, Daniel Roebuck, demonic possession, film reviews, films, flashbacks, haunted houses, horror, horror films, Jan Broberg, Kent Faulcon, Michael Massee, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Naya Rivera, Nicholas McCarthy, Nick Eversman, Oculus, Olivia Crocicchia, real estate agent, Ronen Landa, Satanic rituals, selling your soul, sisters, suicide, supernatural, The Pact, twist ending, writer-director, Wyatt Russell

Writer-director Nicholas McCarthy’s full-length debut, The Pact (2012), might not have been a perfect film but it was still a pretty darn good one: nicely atmospheric, evocative, methodically paced and possessed of a genuinely surprising (if sorta nonsensical) twist ending, The Pact was a suitably eerie little haunted house chiller and certainly boded well for the rest of McCarthy’s burgeoning career. If nothing else, The Pact showcased an exciting, new filmmaker who wasn’t afraid to let his film play out at its own, languorous pace, sort of a less exceptional cousin to Mike Flanagan’s leisurely paced Oculus (2013).

Now, two years down the road, McCarthy has reunited with many of the principal crew behind his debut, including cinematographer Bridger Nielson and composer Ronen Landa, to fashion his sophomore film, At the Devil’s Door (2014). In a twist that no one (including yours truly) saw coming, At the Devil’s Door is so similar to The Pact, in both look, structure and narrative that it feels, for all intents and purposes, as if McCarthy has drawn this from the exact same inspirational well that yielded his debut. An evil presence in a house? Check. Dysfunctional sisters as the main protagonists? Check. An austere, serious feel that emphasizes mood over generic jump scares and ultra-violence? You get the point. Uncanny similarities aside, there’s really only one important question to answer: does At the Devil’s Door do what it sets out to do? Let’s find out.

We begin with teenaged Hannah (Ashley Rickards), whose just met a hunky guy, Calvin (Nick Eversman) while vacationing in California. Calvin seems cool and all but Hannah should probably have been a little more worried when he cajoled her into selling her soul to Satan, via his creepy Uncle Mike (Michael Massee), for the whopping sum of $500. She’s not, however, and she returns home to face lots of creepy shit, a mysterious virgin pregnancy and the unsettling notion that “something” has taken up residence inside her body.

Afterwards, we’re introduced to driven real estate agent, Leigh (Catalina Sandino Moreno), and her younger artist sister, Vera (Glee’s Naya Rivera). Like the sisters in McCarthy’s debut, Leigh and Vera have enough outstanding issues to fill the Grand Canyon. As it so happens, Leigh has been contacted by a rather odd couple, Chuck (Daniel Roebuck) and Royanna (Jan Broberg), to sell their house…the very same house that we see Hannah inhabiting at the beginning. While checking the place out, Leigh happens to spy a mysterious young woman, clad in a bright, red rain coat. Chuck and Royanna think that the young lady might be their runaway daughter, Charlene: dutiful Leigh is only too happy to help them find some answers.

When something untoward happens to Leigh, however, Vera must now begin her own investigation into what’s going on. As creepy figures pop up in mirrors and underneath the kitchen sink, Vera gets ever closer to the truth about what happened to Hannah, Charlene and, by extension, her own sister. Will Vera be able to undo the evil that was perpetrated at that lonely, California crossroad or will her and her loved ones become just another cog in a dastardly game of demonic possession, maternal love and obsession?

First, the good news. Thanks to the return of The Pact’s creative personnel, At the Devil’s Door looks and sounds just as good as McCarthy’s debut. Nielson has a real skill with framing shots for maximum effect and there are some moments here (the amazing shot where Leigh lies in the foreground while something truly monstrous “molts” out of someone in the background is but one example) that are just as good as what came before. Hand-in-hand with Nielson’s visuals, Ronen Landa’s score is nicely evocative and, usually, used to good, subtle effect. As with the debut, At the Devil’s Door certainly reminds of something like Oculus and that’s a compliment in every sense of the word.

Performance-wise, no one here is as good as Caity Lotz or Casper van Dien were in The Pact but they’re all suitably solid, nonetheless. Particularly surprising is Rivera, who manages to handily shed all remnants of her TV personality and gifts us with a performance that’s a nice combination of intensity, awkwardness, inner turmoil and steely resolve. It’s not the kind of performance that wins awards but it is the kind that should ensure plenty of casting agents will be calling her up in the near future. Most importantly, Rivera’s performance never feels off, unlike the occasionally tone-deaf work of her screen sister, as portrayed by Moreno.

The bad news, as hinted above, is that At the Devil’s Door breaks absolutely no new ground for McCarthy as either a director or a writer: in every way, this is a retelling (albeit one with major narrative differences) of The Pact. We have the same pacing, the same narrative structure (we begin with one sister before ending up with the other sister), the same moldy mirror gags (McCarthy seems to love these as much as I dislike them), the same scenes where a malevolent, invisible presence tosses our protagonists around like rag dolls. Indeed, by utilizing the same behind-the-camera crew, At the Devil’s Door ends up seeming more of a natural sequel to The Pact then its actual sequel, The Pact 2 (2014), does.

This sense of similarity wouldn’t be so off-putting if McCarthy opted to do anything different with the material but, alas, the sense of “same-old, same-old” is almost overpowering. By opening with the bit where Hannah sells her soul, any true sense of mystery is eliminated almost before the film has rolled out its opening credits. While the finale still offers up a twist (albeit another one as old as the hills), any audience member who pays attention should be able to plot each and every beat here: there are no real surprises, especially if one is familiar with practically any other demonic possession film under the sun.

With only two full-lengths under his belt, I’m definitely not ready to write McCarthy off yet, even if I might not be as eager to check out his new films as I might have been before. If nothing else, there’s certainly something laudable about his commitment to produce atmospheric, lush films, especially ones which feature strong female protagonists (still a major Achilles’ heel for the horror industry). To be honest, without The Pact in the picture, At the Devil’s Door would have probably hit me a lot harder. As it stands, however, McCarthy’s latest is just more of the same: that’s okay but more than a little disappointing. Here’s to hoping the writer-director steps out of his comfort zone on his next go round.

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1/1/15 (Part One): Hollywood Meat Grinder

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Adam Bricker, Alexandra Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Astraeus, casting couch, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Dennis Widmyer, Fabianne Therese, fame, Fautian deals, film reviews, films, Hollywood, horror, horror movies, insanity, Kevin Kolsch, Los Angeles, Louis Dezseran, Marc Senter, Maria Olsen, Movies, Natalie Castillo, Nick Simmons, Noah Segan, occult, Pat Healy, Sarah Walker, Satanism, selling your soul, Shane Coffey, starlets, Starry Eyes, The Fly

Just how far would you go to be a star? For some folks, the idea of fame doesn’t have much appeal: they’re more than happy to conduct their business from the sidelines, keeping cool while someone else burns under the spotlight. For others, however, the pursuit of fame is all-encompassing, a never-ending quest for that fabled brass ring, that opportunity to stand on the world stage, hold their heads up high and shout, “Here I am,” to bask in adulation, admiration and envy from the masses. We live in an era where people can become famous, if only briefly, for seemingly capricious reasons: one person uploads a YouTube video and receives a million views…their next-door-neighbor does the same thing and hears crickets. Despite how important fame is for so many people, there is no such thing as a “sure thing,” no unbeatable formula to becoming a star.

But what if there was? What if there was some way to ensure your celebrity, some sure-fire way to “jump the line,” as it were, and go straight to the “adoring fans” stage? If fame is so important, would you give up everything in your life – your friends, your family, any interests – in order to guarantee your 15 minutes in the spotlight? Just how much would you be willing to give up to be a star? Your morality? Your dignity? Your soul? These are the questions that get asked in Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Starry Eyes (2014), a Faustian tale of one young starlet’s search for fame and the hideous price that she pays to finally see her name on the big marquee. The answers won’t surprise horror fans but they might give budding ingenues pause for thought as they continue their own quests for immortality and fame. Spoiler alert: these things never go as planned.

Our wannabe starlet is Sarah Walker (Alexandra Essoe), a bright-eyed, hopeful and rather naive young actress who spends her days wearing hot-pants at Big Tators (think a sleazier version of Hooters) and her evenings going to one audition after the other, all in pursuit of that fabled “big break.” Her manager, Carl (Pat Healey), is a chauvinistic jerk, her “friends” are a bunch of catty, privileged and unbelievably shallow assholes (all of whom are, likewise, hunting for fame and fortune) and the limelight seems impossibly far away. All of this seems to change, however, when Sarah receives a call to audition for mysterious production company Astraeus Pictures’ newest film, The Silver Scream. Could this finally be the break that she’s so desperately looking for?

After a terrible audition, Sarah heads right to the bathroom and promptly throws the kind of fit usually reserved for young children or mental patients: screaming, sobbing, tearing huge chunks of hair out of her head and throwing herself about, Sarah is interrupted by one of Astraeus’ casting agents. Perhaps they’ve missed something “special” after all: Sarah is invited back, with one caveat – she has to throw the same fit for the casting agents. She does and is rewarded with yet another call-back. As Sarah continues to meet with the representatives from Astraeus Pictures, the auditions get stranger and stranger, culminating in a meeting with The Producer (Louis Dezseran) where all of the cards are laid on the table: the coveted lead role is Sarah’s…provided she takes her spot on the casting couch, that is.

Mortified by the “offer,” Sarah rushes out and resigns herself to becoming a star “the right way.” Her roommate, Tracy (Amanda Fuller), seconds Sarah’s outrage: none of them would ever sink that low, so there’s no reason Sarah should, either. After realizing that she’ll never break into their tight-knit clique, however, Sarah begins to reevaluate the offer from Astraeus: she calls them back and is offered one more chance to “meet” with The Producer. As Sarah will find out, however, everything has a price and she will have to trade in one small thing in her pursuit for fame: her basic humanity.

Expertly crafted, Starry Eyes is the kind of well-made, full-throttle B-movie that used to choke video store shelves in the ’80s horror boom: the kicker, of course, is that the film is from 2014, not 1983, making it yet another in the boom of modern genre films that explicitly reference other eras. Despite being part of a larger stylistic trend, however, Starry Eyes holds its own: in many ways, it’s much closer to Ti West’s excellent The House of the Devil (2009) in that the film always “feels” like a period piece, without seeming like slavish imitation. Chalk it up to a mix of Adam Bricker’s cinematography, the film’s themes or its structure but Starry Eyes is one of the most authentic “non-authentic” genre films I’ve seen in some time.

At its heart, however, Kolsch and Widmyer’s film isn’t much more than another variation on the age-old Faust story, albeit one that manages to throw elements of Cronenberg’s gooey The Fly (1986) and the batshit Jeff Lieberman oddity Blue Sunshine (1978) into the mix. Despite a suitably unpredictable (and ridiculously gory) climax, Starry Eyes hits each and every expected beat for this type of story: someone makes a Faustian deal to acquire fame/fortune/power/knowledge, comes to regret their decision after the real “cost” is revealed. As far as the film goes, that’s pretty much it: the “Hollywood starlet/casting couch” aspect doesn’t mix things up much, although everything is wrapped-up in a suitably cohesive way by the conclusion.

If co-writers/directors Kolsch and Widmyer don’t do much new or unique with the formula, however, they also don’t make any obvious missteps. The film looks and sounds great, for one thing, and the frequent digressions into more visual stylistic tics are highly effective: there’s a really well-done drug-trip scene and the finale is wonderfully creepy and atmospheric, sort of a split between the aforementioned Blue Sunshine and one of Val Lewton’s classics. The filmmaking duo has style to spare and there’s a sense of economy to the film that quite nice: it feels like its own small, self-contained world, which is a nice change of pace in this day and age of “everything’s connected.” The acting is decent enough, with veteran character actor Healey bringing a little nuance to his performance as Carl (he could have just been a complete scuzzball but you actually end up feeling for him, a little) and Essoe doing good (if occasionally one-note) work as the aspiring starlet. I found myself actively hating all of Sarah’s friends, however, which probably had as much to do with the script establishing them as worthless twits as it did with the actual performances. That being said, it was impossible for me to get invested in any of their fates, which robbed the finale of some of its awful power: suffice to say, my mourning period was non-existent.

From a horror standpoint, Starry Eyes is exceptionally solid: despite the story’s inherent familiarity, there’s a reason why Faust has always played so well on the big screen and Kolsch and Widmyer manage to wring every last drop of dread and inevitability out of the scenario. The practical effects are actually quite exceptional, with some truly ghastly body horror stuff in the final reel and the single most intense head-smashing scene I’ve ever seen, including the infamous fire extinguisher scene from Irreversible (2002). I’m not normally one to dwell on gore in films (by this point in my life, you could say that I’m a little jaded) but that head-pounding setpiece really is a showstopper, in every sense of the word, and proof positive that the filmmakers have no problem going to some very extreme places.

All in all, I really liked Starry Eyes, even though there wasn’t anything particularly special about it. In certain ways, it reminded me of another retro-minded film, Almost Human (2013): while, likewise, well-made and massively entertaining, it was really nothing more than an enjoyable, direct-to-video B-movie. Perhaps my affinity for and slight (very slight) disregard of Starry Eyes come from the same place: I grew up on movies just like these, good but not amazing horror and genre films that were massively entertaining but largely disposable. If anything, I wish that there were a lot more films like this: I certainly wouldn’t object to a glut of well-made, effective genre films, even if none of them are mind-blowing or game-changing. Without a doubt, Starry Eyes is effective and extremely atmospheric: it compares favorably with the best horror films of the year on quality alone, even if it never takes that “big step” that would vault it above the competition. I liked it enough to anticipate Kolsch and Widmyer’s next project: if they keep mining this same vein of retro-minded horror, I have a feeling that they’ll come up with a real firecracker next time.