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.

7/8/15: If These Walls Could Talk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10/15/14: All in the Family

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31 Days of Halloween, adoption, Andres Muschietti, based on a short, childhood fears, children in peril, cinema, co-writers, Daniel Kash, David Fox, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, fairy tales, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Guillermo del Toro, horror, horror movies, Isabelle Nelisse, Jane Moffat, Jessica Chastain, Mama, Megan Charpentier, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, sisters, The Woman in Black, writer-director

For the majority of its run-time, writer-director Andres Muschietti’s Mama (2013) is a moody, atmospheric and fairly slick little chiller that handily recalls such recent films as Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010) and The Woman in Black (2012). Relying more on suspense and fantastic visuals than creative bloodshed or mass chaos, there’s something decidedly old-fashioned, yet intensely endearing, about the film’s rather modest aims. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, for the most part, but it’s an incredibly easy film to get along with.

At the climax, however, Muschietti tries something a little bold and stretches for a pretty emotional, almost melodramatic, finale. While this tactic could have resulted in something with all the consistency of sodden cardboard, it actually ends up working spectacularly well, imbuing the film with a warm, authentically emotional and subtly powerful finale. If the final moments can color our ultimate impression of a film (how many otherwise quality movies have been all but ruined by terrible endings?), then Mama’s finale helps boost the movie up into a slightly loftier collection of peers.

Muschietti’s feature-length debut is actually an expansion of his earlier short (also called Mama), which garnered quite a bit of attention, particularly from genre superhero Guillermo del Toro. Suitably impressed with Muschietti’s ability to combine atmospheric chills, creepy visuals and genuine emotional impact, del Toro jumped on as executive producer, leading to the full-length expansion that we’re currently discussing. There’s always an inherent danger to expanding a short into a feature: one merely has to look at the vast majority of SNL “features” to fully see how difficult it can be to stretch 5 minutes of material across 90 minutes of dead air. In this case, however, Muschietti has succeeded in expanding out his original idea without making the whole exercise seem unnecessary and academic.

Beginning with a haltingly handwritten “Once upon a time…” scrawled in white over a black screen, Mama has all of the nightmare unreality and sense of fantasy of the best fairy tales. We follow an obviously distraught man as he packs up his two young daughters (leaving their pet dog behind, which strikes a subtly ominous tone from the get-go) and races out for an isolated cabin in the woods. His behavior is erratic and frightening and there’s nothing about this that seems to spell a happy (or long) life for either young girl. Once at the cabin, however, the father is attacked and dragged off by some kind of unseen something, leaving his daughters on their own in the middle of nowhere.

Jumping ahead five years, we learn that the girls’ uncle, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), has been looking for them ever since, despite the nagging notion that five years is an awful long time for a couple of young kids to be missing. As luck would have it, Lucas’ friend, Burnsie (David Fox), manages to stumble into the hidden cabin in the woods and finds the young girls alive and well, if filthy and seemingly feral. With the aid of his punk-rocker girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) and the kindly Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), Lucas attempts to reintegrate the girls back into the civilized world.

The girls, however, are acting a bit odd, to say the very least. For one thing, they won’t stop talking about the mysterious “Mama” that (supposedly) cared for them in the cabin for the past five years. Burnsie and Lucas find no sign of anyone, however, leading them to believe that the girls have retreated into their imaginations in order to deal with the trauma of their father’s actions. Even more unnerving, however, are the quiet little conversations that Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) appear to have with no one in particular. As these behaviors continue, Lucas and Annabel begin to feel the influence of a powerful, potentially malevolent force.

When Lucas is inexplicably shoved down the stairs by an unseen force, Annabel is forced to care for the kids on her own, while her boyfriend lies unconscious in the hospital. Despite her steadfast refusal to devote herself to kids or “settling down,” Annabel comes to care for Victoria and Lilly, vowing to protect them at all costs. Something else feels protective towards the children, however, something primal, evil and relentless. It would seem that someone else was looking after the girls, after all…and Mama has no intention of letting her “babies” go without one helluva fight.

Similar to Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and The Woman in Black, Mama puts atmosphere before action and setpieces, which tends to give the whole affair a more muted, subtle feel. This isn’t to say that the film doesn’t feature more “modern” scare moments (ie: the “screeching jump-scare sound of death”) but it is to say that these moments are easily the film’s weakest. When allowed to spool out slow and creepy, however, Mama proves to be a real winner. There one scene, in particular, which showcases the film’s aesthetic to great effect: as Annabel and Victoria play in one room, Lilly plays with an unseen Mama in the other. The shot is devised as a “natural” split screen, with the door frame dividing the screen in half. It’s a cleverly staged moment, to be sure, but it’s also a fantastically effective one: I’m willing to wager that more than one viewer will experience a bit of the ol’ goose-flesh during that particular moment.

As mentioned earlier, the film is aided considerably by a nicely realized, very emotional finale. Without giving anything way, suffice to say that Muschietti manages to temper the character of Mama with enough melancholy to put her evil into a different perspective, allowing for a climax that’s equal parts sad, lovely and very satisfying. There’s nothing especially upbeat about Mama but it also refuses to traffic in easy “sorrow-porn,” either.

Craftwise, the film has a consistently polished look that works quite nicely, especially during the aforementioned finale. The special effects scenes, while obviously CGI, are fairly well-integrated into the film, allowing everything to feel a bit more organic than in the similar Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (which often felt perilously close to slipping into CGI-silliness). The acting is good, although I must admit to being less than impressed with Chastain’s performance: her character vacillates between whiny and ridiculously self-assured and there were plenty of moments where I found myself unable to fully invest in her character. By contrast, Charpentier and Nelisse are rather amazing as the young girls: child actors can be notoriously hit-and-miss but there’s nothing about either one of their performances that took me out of the film, especially once things start to ramp up in the final third.

While there’s nothing especially gritty about Mama, it stands as an exceptionally well-made, effective and moving bit of fairy-tale influenced horror. From the outstanding opening credit sequence (creepy kids’ drawings that tell the film’s story in shorthand) to the knockout finale, Mama is a consistent pleasure. It may not be the most original film in the world (astute viewers should probably be able to get the general drift by at least the midpoint of the film, if not sooner) but it’s also the furthest thing from anonymous dreck as one can get. If you’re a fan of slicker, more commercial fare (the movie is rated PG-13 which, for the most part, means absolutely nothing nowadays), you could definitely do a whole lot worse than pulling yourself up to Mama’s table.

10/10/14 (Part Two): Vampires Are For Lovin’

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31 Days of Halloween, Anna Mouglalis, cinema, erotic films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Jim Jarmusch, John Cassavetes, Josephine de La Baume, Kiss of the Damned, lovers, Michael Rapaport, Milo Ventimiglia, Movies, passionate love affairs, Riley Keough, romances, Roxane Mesquida, sisters, stylish films, The House of the Devil, vampires, vampires vs humans, voice-over narration, writer-director, Xan Cassavetes

When done well (ie: subtly), modern homages to previous generations of films can be fun and entertaining little morsels, helping to remind modern audiences of by-gone eras of cinema that may have fallen by the wayside in the present. Ti West’s The House of the Devil (2009) was a nearly perfect throwback to ’70s-era “Satanic panic” films, while Jason Eisener’s Hobo With a Shotgun (2011) was the single best grindhouse/classic Troma film that never saw the light of day. These films are successful because they’re able to accurately recapture the particular feel of these types of films without slavishly recreating and copying their individual high points: they might not be wholly original but they’re not necessarily stuck in FanServiceLand, either.

On the other hand, homages that end up as mere carbon copies of older films are significantly less interesting, if not necessarily any less fun to watch: Scott Sander’s blaxploitation goof, Black Dynamite (2009), ended up feeling decidedly slight and pandering by the end, despite having a surplus of energy and some genuinely fun setpieces. At times, it almost seemed as if Sanders and crew were trying to recall specific movies rather than an overall vibe, which has always struck me as unnecessarily reductive. The best homages should remind you of a specific era but shouldn’t, as far as I’m concerned, remind you of a specific film: that gets into territory that’s dangerously close to “re-imaginings” and remakes.

Writer-director Xan Cassavetes, daughter of renowned independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, takes a bit of both approaches with her feature-film debut, Kiss of the Damned (2012). For most of its running time, the film does an admirable job of recalling the gauzy era of ’60s-’70s-era Euro-vampire flicks, the kind of films made famous by exploitation auteurs like Jean Rollin and Jess Franco. There’s the same attractive, if hazy, cinematography…the emphasis on doomed romance and orgasmic, sweaty, passionate lovemaking…the pulsating electronic score…the emphasis on mood and atmosphere over narrative linearity…the leisurely, almost lazy, pacing. At times, however, Kiss of the Damned feels distinctly light-weight and rather unnecessary: it often seems as if Cassavetes is merely conducting a style experiment, similar to the one that Gus van Sant did with his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (1998). It also doesn’t help that Kiss of the Damned bears more than a passing similarity to Jim Jarmusch’s extraordinary new vampire film, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), right down to the reappearance of a “bad” sister. Had Jarmusch’s film not been so impressive, it’s quite possible that Cassavetes’ film would have hit me a little harder.

The film begins with our two lovers, Djuna (Josephine de La Baume) and Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia, from TV’s Heroes), as the meet for the first time at a video store. Djuna is a vampire, Paolo is broodingly handsome…it’s obviously love at first sight. Paolo rushes after Djuna when she leaves and ends up coming back with her to her massive mansion in the countryside. Things are looking pretty good for ol’ Paolo until the fun stops: just as Djuna seems to really be getting into it, she fearfully tosses a very confused Paolo out on his keister. Smitten, Paolo heads back to Djuna’s place the next night but she won’t even let him in: instead, the pair end up passionately making out through the latched door (they both must be equipped with lips like anteaters), sighing and blushing as if their very hearts will burst from the intensity of it all.

By the third night, Paolo gets Djuna to let him in and she fills him in on the story: she’s actually a vampire and has a tendency to go “full-Drac” when she’s in the mood (shades of the Schrader version of Cat People (1982)): she can’t see Paolo anymore because she loves him too much (already?) and doesn’t want to devour him in the throes of passion. Sensing a bit of a brush-off, Paolo calls foul but Djuna is determined to prove it to him. To that end, she has Paolo chain her to the bed (for his safety) and the two go at it like determined rabbits. Turns out that Djuna isn’t pulling Paolo’s chain, however: as she gets more and more frisky, her fangs grow and her eyes turn a brilliant turquoise. Seeing this, Paolo does the only thing sensible and unchains Djuna, more than willing to give himself to her, completely. Dog will hunt and vamps will bite, of course, so in no time, Djuna is riding Paolo to ecstasy as she bloodily rips open his jugular vein.

From this point, the film becomes a tad familiar: Djuna needs to school Paolo in the ways of his new lifestyle and the two continue to develop and strengthen their relationship. Djuna even takes Paolo to meet her friends, always a bit of a stumbling block in any fledgling romance, especially when your friends are all vampires and your new sweetheart is a blood-sucking newbie. All looks good for our lovers but things are never as simple as they seem and trouble rears its pixieish little head in the form of Djuna’s sister, Mimi (Roxane Mesquida). Mimi, for lack of a better word, is a real shithead: she’s selfish, immature, violent, sneaky, spiteful and vindictive: in other words, she’s the perfect foil for a pair of wannabe star-crossed lovers like Djuna and Paolo. While our gentle vamps feast on woodland deer for their blood source, Mimi pretty much eats anything that moves, man, woman or child (one of the film’s most impressive setpieces involves Mimi taking home a couple for a threesome and then hunting them in the woods like little animals).

Djuna tries to keep her little sister in check, even going so far as to appeal to her “landlord,” Xenia (Anna Mouglalis), who seems to be some sort of leader for the local vampire community. No one really seems to listen, however, except for Paolo, and Djuna becomes more and more desperate as Mimi’s blood-lust gets stronger and stronger. As Djuna and Paolo fight for their love, Mimi does everything she can to tear apart the couple, setting everyone involved on a crash-course with an unsuspecting human population who are much closer to their eventual extinction than they could possibly imagine.

As mentioned above, Kiss of the Damned is absolutely a case of style over substance, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: after all, the films that Cassavetes references, such as Rollin’s The Shiver of the Vampire (1971) and Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1971), were also classic examples of style over substance. For most of its running time, Kiss of the Damned is quite lovely to look at, although the image can, on occasion, get a bit too blown out. There are some really nice shots on display here, as well, such as the meticulously framed images looking up from the bottom of Djuna’s baroque staircase. The score is particularly good, easily holding its own with historical scores from that era. The acting, like the filmcraft, is also pretty consistent: while some of the performances can lean towards over-the-top or slightly hammy, this is no different from performances in the original films. Euro-horror films of the ’60s and ’70s were not normally known for their realistic, award-winning acting: if anything, the best of these film featured performances that did their best not to trip up the film, which is sometimes the most that you can hope for.

My biggest issue with the film, despite a few specific criticisms (character motivations often seemed spurious, even for this type of film and the problem of Mimi is resolved in a way that is pretty much the definition of deus ex machina, although it does allow for a pretty great resolution to the film) is that there’s not enough individual personality here. Unlike something like Hobo With a Shotgun or The House of the Devil, I was never able to fully suspend my disbelief with the film: it always felt, at least in the back of my head, as if the filmmakers were simply checking specific beats off a sheet. Due to this, it was often difficult for me to engage the film in anything more than an academic way: it was easy to critique the film’s craft (which is pretty damn good, might I say) but more difficult to pull anything thought-provoking out of the film, itself.

Part of the issue seems to be that Paolo and Djuna’s various relationship travails never really seem to faze either of them that much: he ends up cheating on her (in a very confused bit) but it’s no big deal…she kills his friend but he shrugs it off. Too often, the pair don’t feel like a real couple but more like a fairytale, sitcom couple: we know that they’ll have mild issues for about 22 minutes but everything will be wrapped up with a bow in time for next week’s episode. While Djuna and Paolo do have a few more travails than that, mind you, the film still ends up feeling rather anti-climatic, especially with the script’s tendency to write itself into corners and then just whisk the affected parties away to safety.

Ultimately, Kiss of the Damned is a good, if less than revelatory, film, although it does make a pretty swell double-feature with Only Lovers Alive. I really admired a lot of what Cassavetes was doing here and her heart is definitely in the right place: with a more original story and more faith in her own vision, it’s not hard for me to see the film as nothing more than a stepping-stone to bigger and better things. Xan is, quite obviously, a very talented filmmaker and I can’t wait to really see her cut loose: I’m willing to wager that she’s got a film in her at least as good as Gloria (1980), if not The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). Fans of steamy vampire films should definitely find much to enjoy here and even Michael Rapaport fans get a little love, although his performance is pretty much a glorified cameo. When Kiss of the Damned works, it works quite well, weaving an atmospheric, casually beautiful spiderweb that can’t help but ensnare its audience. When the film is just there, however, it feels so slight that one harsh breath might send the whole thing fluttering into the night sky like ashes. Cassavetes’ debut might remind audiences of the glory days of Euro-horror but I’m pretty sure it won’t make them forget any of those classics anytime soon.

7/29/14 (Part One): A Totally Wack Experience

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Andrea Runge, ax murders, bad movies, based on a true story, Billy Campbell, Christina Ricci, Clea DuVall, dysfunctional family, famous trials, Gregg Henry, historical drama, Lifetime Channel, Lizzie Borden, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax, murder, Nick Gomez, patricide, period-piece, set in the 1890s, Shawn Doyle, sisters, Stephen McHattie, true crime, TV movie

You’d think that making a film about the murder trial of Lizzie Borden would be kind of a no-brainer: after all, this is a case about a young woman from 1890s Massachusetts who was accused, tried and acquitted of butchering her father and step-mother with an ax. The case is so famous that it even inspired a children’s’ playground rhyme (“Lizzie Borden took an ax / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one.”). In certain ways, the media frenzy surrounding the case could be seen as a precursor to modern-day murder trials like Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias: young women who were all considered unlikely murder suspects thanks to their ages, looks and social statuses.

You would think that making a film about a fascinating, real-life case like this would be simple: judging by Nick Gomez’s truly terrible Lizzie Borden Took An Ax (2014), however, you would be wrong…dead wrong, as it were. While the film comes with a fairly huge handicap (it was a “Lifetime Channel original film”, which carries about as much artistic weight as do the terms “Syfy original” or “Asylum exclusive”), the problems (almost too numerous to count) go far and beyond the film’s place of birth. Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is a film that manages to get almost nothing right, managing to be simultaneously over-wrought, lackadaisical, over-the-top and duller than dishwater: no mean feat considering that the film whiplashes tone so often that one could get seriously motion-sick trying to keep up.

The film begins by sketching out (very skimpily) our major players: we meet the obnoxious Lizzie (Christina Ricci), a sort of 1890s take on Macaulay Culkin’s version of Michael Alig from Party Monster (2003); her supportive but numbingly milquetoast sister, Emma (Clea Duvall); her strict, closed-off father (Stephen McHattie), who’s interest in Lizzie appears to border on the incestuous; and Lizzie’s much hated stepmother (Sara Botsford). As far as characterization goes, that’s just about it. We do get a throwaway bit where a couple of town guys argue with Lizzie’s father, Andrew, about being shorted on payment for services rendered but this is never explored any further: I’d be shocked if the information was ever supposed to be more than a MacGuffin. With these characters, what you see is what you get.

So what do we get? Well, we get a ridiculously modern, stomping hybrid of hip-hop and blues for the musical score, which goes superbly with all of the ridiculous slo-mo shots: there are so many “badass” moments where characters stride in slo-mo down the street, accompanied by the over-the-top score, that I briefly wondered if this was the first ever historical drama completely informed by modern super hero movies. We get a performance from Ricci that ranges wildly between “just rolled out of bed stoned” to “every vein standing out in relief,” although the key connecting tissue is that no part of her performance ever feels accurate or real: it’s difficult to tell whether the odd characterization is Ricci or director Gomez’s fault but either option seems entirely valid. Stephen McHattie, who’s normally an incredibly reliable presence in indie genre films like Pontypool (2008) just looks confused here, as does Clea Duvall: both actors have the bearing of performers who are receiving their scripts a page at a time, just as lost as the audience.

While the story doesn’t veer far from the historical details of the murder, the script (which is as reliably awful as the rest of the film) still manages to throw in a raft of completely unnecessary, underdeveloped bullshit: we get another murder, which may or may not be related, although the film doesn’t care enough to explore it further; we get the suitably ridiculous portrayal of Lizzie as a modern-day party-girl magically transported to turn-of-the-20th-century Massachusetts; a stupid “insane roommate” subplot between Lizzie and her sister (the musical stingers and Ricci’s “crazy eyes” are straight out of Single White Female (1992) and enough over-acting to shame an ancient Greek theater troupe.

Picking a single low-point for the film is almost impossible but one of my favorites has to be the astoundingly stupid scene where Lizzie sneaks out to go to a party. The scene is shot exactly like a similar scene in a modern “wild youth” film might be staged: red-lit, thumping music, wild teens drinking…except it’s a period-piece, so all this takes place while the aforementioned “wild youth” are dressed in their best 1890s finery, dancing politely with each other. We get it: kids have always been kids. This doesn’t make it any less of a stupid affectation, however, although it goes hand-in-hand with that ridiculous musical score.

Essentially, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is completely DOA, flatlining way before we limp in to the inane “twist”ending (spoiler alert: Lizzie did it, after all…duh). Truth be told, there’s virtually nothing to recommend about this film: the cast is pretty bad, including the more established actors like Ricci and McHattie; everything about the storyline is obvious and telegraphed; the score is ludicrous; the acting is too over-the-top, which turns the pulpy dialogue into something resembling film noir for idiots; the courtroom/trial stuff is simultaneously cheesy and boring…truth be told, the only miraculous thing about Gomez’s film is how it manages to be so bad without ever skipping over the line into “so-bad-it’s-good” territory.

If one is so inclined, however, there’s a pretty vicious drinking game that can be applied to the film. To whit: every time you get a gratuitous shot of McHattie’s ax-ruined face, take a drink. Since this happens at a ratio of at least once a minute for the first 30 minutes or so (including a hilarious bit where his face is covered…only for the cloth to be dramatically whipped away, revealing that damn bloody face again…take that!), you’ll either be toes-up drunk by the mid-point or completely unconscious: either way, you win.