Category Archives: Review

Three from the Woods – Just Before Dawn, The Town that Dreaded Sundown, Eaten Alive!

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So, I try to ensure a degree of variety here. Two weeks ago, I published my silly poems – which was a lot of work and a lot of fun, but not really scary. Last week, I wrote about yet another Polish film which has a relationship to the genre, but however excellent of a film it is, it’s not quite what one would generally think of as a horror flick. So this week, I felt it was time for something kinda grotty, something that could be described as nothing less than horrific. I even found myself with a bit of time on my hands and was able to check out a few flicks I’d been meaning to get around to for a while. In the end though, while I appreciated everything I watched, I’m not sure if I have enough of a take on any of them to fill a whole post, so this week, let’s take a short look at three weird, violent little filmic oddities, all of which might convince you to stay out of the woods, avoid secluded lovers lanes, and maybe just steer clear of Texas entirely.

Just Before Dawn (1981)

I was prompted to give this one a chance by the main character of Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart is a Chainsaw, who waxes enthusiastic about it and its final girl, Constance, and I’m glad I did as there is a lot here to love (and some other stuff to wade through until you get where you’re going).

It’s a pretty standard backwoods slasher setup: a group of young people head into the deep woods of Oregon despite the warnings of the quirky forest ranger (an enjoyably odd George Kennedy) for a weekend of drinking, skinny dipping, and carrying on. They don’t all come out again. Along the way, there’s some pretty languid pacing, surprisingly bloodless kill scenes, strange tonal shifts (from pastoral, to a bit goofy, to rather intensely brutal), and a “twist” that doesn’t feel all that shocking when it’s revealed.

However, it also features Mike Kellin (Mel from Sleepaway Camp) as a drunken voice of doom, an effective score by Brad Fiedel (composer for Terminator and Fright Night, among others), a beautiful location, well filmed and well utilized in service to the horror set pieces, and a twist which, while admittedly not very surprising, does set up solid tension based in dramatic irony as the only characters who had learned this information are dead, and those remaining are led to a false sense of safety.

In fact, pacing issues aside, Just Before Dawn offers a lot of really playful and potent teases – letting the audience see something or know something while (very obviously, but no less entertainingly) contriving reasons for the characters not to. Early on, the kids (let’s call them kids anyway) are all driving through the woods in a camper. One girl re-angles the rearview mirror so that she can do her makeup; the driver objects, but she’s like, ‘come on – there’s no traffic – what do you need it for?’ A moment later, we can see the killer (who had recently leapt aboard) climb across the back, clearly visible in the rear window, but unseen by all of the kids. A particularly fun scene later hinges on a character having lost his glasses and mistaking the figure moving towards him. These gags are hardly subtle, but the audience is invited in on the joke and there is a fun game of suspense in how it all plays out.

And finally, as this film came so strongly recommended by a fictional character obsessed with final girls (I’m sure I’ll write about My Heart is a Chainsaw sometime soon – for now, let’s just say it’s worth your time), it has a greatly interesting presentation of one. Constance (Deborah Benson) comes across as some kind of thesis statement on the idea of the final girl, which is notable as the director, Jeff Liebermann, didn’t seem to list slashers as his primary influence, but rather claimed inspiration in Deliverance and the work of Ingmar Bergman. She starts off as a very reasonable character – possibly the only one who’s actually dressed appropriately for hiking and camping – who has experience in the great outdoors and is mildly irritated by the goofball irresponsibility of her boyfriend and compatriots. She might have some wine, but she doesn’t overindulge, and if anyone’s going to pull off their top and jump into the water, it’s probably not her. So far, so standard fare.

But then something kind of interesting happens. Some of the boys who had gone to the camper for more wine play a prank on those who’ve stayed behind to make camp. Just out of sight, in the woods, in the dark, they make some noises, scaring the others by the fire (who had all ignored the drunk guy ranting that he’d been chased by “demons” and come here anyway). Though her friend Megan picks up a knife and is ready to stab at one of the boys as he jumps out of the shadows, Constance freezes up – and over the course of the next day or so, really reacts against her failure to take action. She’s so capable – she knows how to survive in the woods, but when there was a threat, she felt helpless. And so, she begins a transformation, borrowing Megan’s makeup and clothes, making herself into less of a ‘responsible-boring’ type and more into an impulsive, proactive, powerful woman. In all honesty, perhaps the director simply wanted to get her into skimpier clothing, but from a contemporary perspective, in light of what became the standard patterns of the sub-genre, this really subverts expectations in an intriguing way. Either way, this change coincides with her need to rise and do battle with the killer.

And what a battle! I mean really – it’s not very long and it doesn’t really have much in the way of gore, but it is just jaw dropping in its intensity (and without wanting to spoil the big finish, pun intended). I find it an interesting spin on the still being established tropes (filmed in 1980) that the ‘final girl’ first visually turns herself into a character who might be expected to die first (the over sexualized girl) and that while no killer in this film wears a mask, in effect, she does. The makeup that she keeps applying gives her a totally different face, and it seems that it is only once this mask is complete that she has finished her metamorphosis into the kind of person who could take down the killer in such brutal, spectacular, screaming fashion.

It probably could have gotten there faster (though I suppose it’s thematically appropriate to sometimes feel like it’s wandering aimlessly in the forest), but the destination is 100% worth it.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

This second film is rather a curiosity.  If Just Before Dawn has some shifts of tone, this swings so wildly back and forth that it feels like at least three different movies. One is a procedural true crime docu-drama about a police hunt for a serial killer in Texarcana in the 40s. The next is a really savage proto-slasher with increasingly weird and genuinely scary scenes of stalking and assault. Finally, somehow it’s like the Keystone Cops are on the scene, with zany slapstick sequences set to banjo music. This is one odd duck.

Directed by Charles B. Pierce (who also portrays Patrolman Benson, A.K.A. “sparkplug,” the main source of police themed comic-relief), the procedural elements here suggest a precursor to Fincher’s Zodiac. Loosely based on a true story, the film focuses on the police investigating a killer who targets couples in secluded areas (lover’s lanes and such) and toys with the police, taking pleasure in the media circus and public terror in response to his crimes. The structure is somewhat non-narrative, rather approximating a kid of reportage as we shift from killing to killing, interspersed with the police’s attempts to build a profile of the killer and follow the extremely limited clues they have to work with. By the end, the killer’s identity, motives, and whereabouts are still undetermined (true to the historical record, though most of the film apparently plays fast and loose with the facts), suggesting that though these attacks had all happened about 30 years earlier, the killer was still walking the streets of Texarcana, free and at any point could kill again. He could be sitting behind you in this very cinema as you are watching this film right now!

The less said about the comic elements, the better. While not quite as off putting as the bumbling police in, say, Craven’s Last House on the Left (which along with Just Before Dawn also claimed a Bergman film as an influence), the inclusion of the cop-comedy is unfortunate. It’s not even terribly done per se, but it feels like the procedural and the proto-slasher really could have successfully co-existed in one film, but the utter goofiness of this slapstick really undercuts both of them. Still, I suppose the oddness of its presence is one of the weird little details that make this flick rather memorable.

But, of course, in terms of the focus of this blog, it is the scenes with the killer that are most significant. Released in 1976, two years before Halloween would kick off the slasher boom, the killer here matches so many of what would become the conventions. He is masked (a sack with eye holes, suggesting both the Klan and a menacing killer scarecrow, or a precursor to the Jason of Friday the 13th, Pt. II), silent except for heavy breathing, a stalker in the shadows who kills for reasons totally obscure to both the audience and his victims, and grows more creative in how he carries out his crimes.  At first, his primary weapon seems to be a simply a silenced pistol, but as the film progresses, he improvises, using what is at hand, such as a pitchfork, or in one rather disconcertingly off-beat kill, a bladed trombone. He is scary and the scenes of him hunting and setting upon his prey are tense, visceral, and frightening.

Again, this is a weird, idiosyncratic little picture. It is filmed beautifully, but some performances and choices seem amateurish. It adopts a tone of Dragnet-esque “just the facts,” down to the voiceover narration, but also features sequences of both such over-the-top silliness and atmospheric horror that sap its pretense of factual reporting of any authority. It’s kind of hard to guess who they thought they were making this film for; but that is also, of course, its charm. There is no clean, successful formula at work here. The film is what it is. Part of that is an engaging study of police process. Another part is honestly pretty stupid. And finally, about a third of it is a really great scary movie.

Eaten Alive (1976)

At the end of The Town that Dreaded Sundown, the killer disappears into Texas swampland. So it is fitting that today’s final film, from the same year, takes place in those same Texas swamps and is also loosely based on another historical serial killer, this time Joe Ball, A.K.A. the Bluebeard of South Texas, A.K.A. the Alligator Man. Beyond that point of connection, it seems that more than the rural settings or early slasher vibes, the main thread running through these three films is their unbridled tonal fluctuations. Tobe Hooper’s 1976 follow up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an absolutely bizarre nightmare that weirdly bridges the grindhouse and the arthouse.

The story, if you will, centers on a series of people unlucky enough to stay at the Starlight Hotel, someplace in a swampy stretch of Texas. The place is run by Judd (Neville Brand, who delivers a spirited, committed, pungent performance) , a mumbling, threatening, utterly unhinged nut job who’s seemingly in the habit of murdering everyone under his roof and feeding the bodies to his pet crocodile. First we meet Clara, a young runaway who has just been kicked out of the local brothel. Seeking refuge, she comes to exactly the wrong place and is never heard from again. Then a young couple shows up with the family dog. Once Snoopy ends up inside the same reptile as Clara, Angie (the young daughter, played by Kyle Richards a couple years before Halloween) freaks out and her parents check in to calm her down. It’s not long before the father is Croc food, the mother, Faye (Marilyn Burns, returning from Texas Chainsaw to scream her lungs out again), is tied to a bed with tape round her mouth and young Angie is being chased through the crawlspace by Judd with a scythe. A local sleazebag (a young Robert Englund) and his girlfriend check in to pay by the hour; unsurprisingly he gets eaten. Finally, Clara’s father and sister, Libby, show up looking for her. He doesn’t make it, but once she rescues Annie and Faye, the three of them escape into the swamp where Judd unsurprisingly is eaten alive!

So that is the series of events, roughly as they occur, but it does the film a strange injustice to suggest that this all somehow forms anything as pedestrian as a “plot.” It rarely feels like there is much connection between events from one moment to the next, suggesting either inept editing or a thoroughly intentional nightmare logic. As opposed to Chainsaw, this was all filmed on a soundstage and it makes no effort to mask that fact, rather embracing artifice throughout. This is true from the deep, rich theatrical colors of the lighting, to some eccentric acting choices, to an absolutely abrasive sound design. This film seems to have no interest in following any rules of “good film making.” This may sound like a criticism, and I suppose anyone with little tolerance for such things should be forewarned, but I think it is all part of what makes this one noteworthy. This is a unique, strange, utterly non-formulaic, very personal exercise in horror. It may be rooted in a kind of amateurish failure, but it feels like genuine experimentation and expression.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its vacillating tone (again, a running thread through these three movies). Many of the scenes take on a cartoonish vibe, supported by the color palette and some broadly stylized performances. There is an unreality permeating it all which can be really unsettling, but also funny and engrossing.  There are times that I found myself just in shock, wondering what on earth this thing was.  But in that cartoonish grotesquerie, the film establishes a madcap hellscape – a horrible place filled with terrible people who are all at best “off,” and at worst, monsters.

And then, just when the film is at the height of absurdity, of a kind of shrill, wild, laughable insanity, it can turn on a dime and be absolutely brutal. In the moments of actual violence, there is nothing light – there is no room to breathe, there is only a sustained scream of terror and mindless, uncontrolled wrath. It is genuinely intense, successfully scary, and bleak and dark as all get out.  It is clear that this was made by both the same creator as Chainsaw as well as its much zanier sequel which he would direct ten years later. More so than anything else he did in the 13 years between, I think this bridges the gap between those two totally different films.

I can see a lot of people not taking to this one. It would be easy to discount it as a failure on a wide variety of levels, but I suspect artistry in it, a mind at work, taking a dim view of humanity and the world, and painting a mad picture of the cruelty people are capable of and the petty, impulsive irrationality that drives them. It is not exactly a ‘fun’ picture, but in a peculiar way, it is satisfying, especially in its commitment to its own project, its own dark, loony vision. Sometimes you may hear it said that a certain film from the past ‘just couldn’t get made today’ and that might actually be true in this case, but it’s not about the exploitation elements of sex or violence. Rather, I think these days there might just be too much pressure to make a “well-made film,” which could quash the kind of creative self-expression so weirdly and gloriously on display here.

Polish Horror Series #4 – Demon

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It’s not a new question, but what exactly makes something a horror film? Does it need a supernatural monster? Do there have to be jump scares? Does it need to show us horror, make us feel horror, both, neither? Does it need to actually be scary, or if it rather has the feeling of a mournful, anxious, mad dream, can it make the cut? I tend to cast a wide net, and while there are some thrillers, for example, that I’m not particularly keen on looking at through a horror lens, who am I to object if someone else wants to do so?

Today’s film is one that I’ve been impressed by for years and which is I think sadly underseen. One could argue quite fairly that it isn’t a horror film at all, but I would disagree.  If anything, I think it has perhaps suffered from people coming to it expecting a certain kind of spooky possession flick (perhaps its name doesn’t help in this regard) and instead finding an art house drama, but I think the horror is there.  A horror of remembrance, of terrible guilt uncovered – of what exactly – it may not actually specify, but the degree to which pains have been taken to cover things up, to consciously forget an irreparable pain and loss, and make a life atop the bones is surely the stuff of horror. It may not scare, but it surely haunts.

Demon (2015)

Like a mix of Wyspiański’s Wesele and Ansky’s Dybbuk, with a dash of the Jedwabne Pogrom on top, Marcin Wrona’s final film (he sadly committed suicide while promoting it) is a delirious, surreal, lingering meditation on the sins of the fathers, on the weight of past wounds that can’t be healed, on the drive to forget and the need to cling to what has passed and cannot return. A young man, Peter/Piotr comes to a village in Poland from London to marry his girlfriend Żaneta and fix up the old house she has inherited from her grandfather.  The night before the wedding, working on the property, he uncovers a human skeleton, thus stirring up a painful mystery of the past – whose home had this been before and what happened to them? How exactly did Żaneta’s grandfather come to possess this land? What isn’t being talked about?

The next day, Piotr is behaving very strangely – throughout the ceremony and the party that follows, he keeps seeing a dark haired, possibly dead, young woman whom he calls “Hana” (having seen the name written on a doorframe in the grandfather’s house, tracking a child’s growth). He has fits which are diagnosed as epilepsy, tries to get information out of Żaneta’s father who rebuffs him, and inquires with the priest about seeing the spirits of the dead. Finally, in a climactic seizure, he is possessed by the ghost of Hana, a young Jewish girl who had lived in the house long ago.  Żaneta’s father does everything within his power to keep a veneer of normalcy on the proceedings and save face within his community, but when Piotr/Hana disappears and cannot be found, all descends into drunken chaos and the next morning brings a sense of broken devastation. Piotr’s car (its driver having never resurfaced) is deposited in the water of the quarry that Żaneta’s father operates, the house is demolished, and all is forgotten once more.

The sparseness of the story is a strength here. There is very little to the plot and yet, a sense of mystery prevails, adding to the emotionally conflicted atmosphere of the whole. While we generally follow Piotr throughout, we are not privy to his inner life, and when his behavior shifts, we are initially unsure of exactly why. Similarly, the world of the film is somewhat inscrutable. In its opening, as Piotr is taking a ferry to his destination, he sees a woman in her nightgown screaming inconsolably and trying to walk into the water, her arms restrained by others who try to pull her back on shore. Who is she? Why is she screaming? Is this another possession? Is it just the presence of grief? We don’t know, but it sets a tone for what follows.

But it isn’t only gloom and sadness at this wedding. There is also a strong element of the absurd, of a desperate mania suffusing the event. From the start, in the behavior of the guests, in the music, in the rituals of the wedding party, there is a folksiness that is, in the beginning, simply fun and lively, and oh so specific. This is not a general presentation of ‘wild party,’ but the idiosyncrasies of both culture and character give it all a real life which is both appealing and intimidating – Piotr is a complete outsider. He knows his bride and her brother (with whom he worked in London) and no one else, and under the best of circumstances, it could be daunting to come into this kind of insular, intense community, where he doesn’t quite speak the language (though as a foreigner living in Poland, I think he does very well, and I wonder what we are supposed to surmise of his family background).

And everyone in it is so well drawn, so present and physical and earthy – sometimes ridiculous, sometimes threatening – from the new father-in-law who does not approve of this too short courtship (and moves to immediately have the marriage annulled once, now possessed, Piotr is deemed defective), to the doctor who makes such a big deal of being sober, but is the town’s biggest drunk, with the heart of a morose poet, to the friend of Żaneta’s brother, who seems dangerously into her and has it in for Piotr immediately (it’s even possible that he kills him, but nothing is certain), to “the professor,” an old, Jewish school teacher, doddering in his age, but also carrying a gentle sadness, the only remaining Jewish person in this town, which is implied to have had a thriving Jewish community before the war.

As the evening develops, and Hana’s emotional and spiritual grip on Piotr takes hold, the winds rise, rain pours down, the vodka flows like a river, and the revelry of the whole mad town of guests builds to a fever pitch. Generally, many of them don’t even seem that interested in the wedding itself, and the fact that the groom is practically frothing at the mouth is only a temporary oddity—they are caught in their own tempest, their inebriation echoing the storm outside in a feedback loop of pathetic fallacy, echoing a drive to live now, forget the past, and deny tomorrow. It is animalistic and corporeal, edging past what might conceivably be deemed ‘fun.’ When the sun rises, after all is done, they stumble across the fields of the village, at one point crossing paths with (even literally bumping into) a funeral party, the solemnity of the latter in such stark contrast to the absent respect of the former. And isn’t the lack of respect for what has come before, for the dead, at the heart of the ghost story?

The films follows a rather odd trajectory, the second act building in emotional intensity as first Piotr loses himself, and then Hana, speaking through him, is confronted with the disappearance of all that she ever knew. And then suddenly, they are gone. Really and truly – we never see either of them again. Everything unravels, but not in the hot explosion the previous rising action would have suggested, but rather the listless, slurring, drunken blackout that everyone has coming. Some go searching for Piotr/Hana, and at night, the streets are filled with fog, illuminated by searchlights, and it is beautiful and sad. The professor reminisces aloud about all that is gone, the world and community of his youth. These ghosts now walk the streets-we don’t see them, but the presence of absence is felt. The following morning, Żaneta’s father implores the guests that “we must forget what we never saw” – that there was no wedding – (there literally is no groom, after all), they were never there, he was never there. This is all just a dream that all will soon wake from and then everything will be clear.  The accusing bones are once again covered with dirt; the world now is the only world that is and there is no reason to ever question how it came to be that way.

This is an interesting spin on the idea of the haunting. In an American context, we have endless tales of “Indian Burial Grounds,” of the original genocidal sin of America, the blood staining the land and dooming endless generations of nice enough, middle class white people to unpleasant interactions with newly acquired real estate which they never could have afforded if not for the stink lingering from past crimes and which they now can’t afford to leave, no matter how the walls may bleed or the flies may buzz.  In the European context, history is long, and regardless of where you step, you will find yourself on land that was, at some point, stolen bloodily from someone else. And yet, relatively recent history (WWII, the Holocaust, etc.) looms especially large, certainly in Poland, a country which felt the effects of this history as few places did. Trauma still inhabits the land, and even if those holding property now did nothing unethical to acquire it (though some did – without casting any aspersions on the whole, some individuals will always be selfish and cruel), the murders of former owners linger, haunt. And at the same time, there is a vibrant, modern life going on, which needs to thrive and can’t exist constantly beholden to the past, to sadness.

I think Demon dwells in these contradictions, in this tension between the forgetting which is necessary to live and laugh and move forward and the memory which is a vital responsibility, often shirked. It is not a scary movie, but I would consider it horror. More significantly, it’s a stunning little picture, and it’s a shame that Wrona will never make another.

Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Show!

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Somehow horror, a genre all about awful, terrible, really bad things, can create a genuinely warm sense of community. Weirdos who never quite fit in anywhere can find their tribe; artists come together to devote their full creative energies to something no one would ever want to experience; anyone with a camera, the passion, and a halfway good idea can get a few people together and bring their dream to life, or nightmare as the case might be. There are endless examples of modestly budgeted, or even really low budget flicks hitting it big, the idea and the artistry shining through and proving that well-heeled Hollywood holds no patent on talent, skill, or cinematic value. Films like Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, or The Evil Dead are recognized as classics of the form, catapulting their creators into horror icons, and they were all made on a shoestring.

While there are, of course, examples of non-horror low budget successes, it feels like this Mickey-Rooney-esque, “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” spirit is really a core feature of horror filmmaking. Whereas today’s film might not quite ascend to the heights of the above-listed Romero/Carpenter/Raimi opuses, it does serve as an inspiring example of that creative spirit, making do with the tools and people available to bring a dark vision to life.

La Casa Muda (2010)

This is quite the little success story.  Filmed in Uruguay for only $6,000 (for comparison, that’s 1/10 the budget of The Blair Witch Project) and only intended for local release, Gustavo Hernández’s La Casa Muda (The Silent House) went on to successfully tour the festival circuit and get a fair amount of worldwide acclaim as a solid, inventive scary movie with an effective gimmick, namely, a haunted house film in one continuous shot in real time, that isn’t found footage. This had only recently even become possible thanks to then recent advances in shooting digitally.  The result may sometimes be a little less than beautiful to behold (the flat sharpness of 2010 digital hasn’t aged well), but it’s still pretty effective in creating a sense of fear and delivering some jumps.  When you take into consideration the fact that this is an ultra-low budget movie made with 4 actors by a first time writer/director, it really stands as a tremendous accomplishment. One year after its release, it was already followed by an American re-make (which I haven’t seen and can’t comment on).

So, what is it about? That’s a rather good question, really.  On the surface, we have a young woman, Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her father, Wilson (Gustavo Alonso) who come to an old, boarded up, remote house to clean up the property so that Nestor (Abel Tripaldi), an old friend of Wilson’s, can sell it.  Nestor meets them there, shows them around, and tells them not to go upstairs because some tiles are loose and it’s not safe.  Then he takes off and the father and daughter go to sleep for the night with a plan to rise early and get to work.  But almost immediately, Laura starts to hear strange sounds and get creeped out.  Her father investigates upstairs (of course) and within minutes, she finds him, hands bound, and possibly dead. Terrified, she sneaks around the house, hiding from some unseen threat and examining small details that might give her some clue as to what’s going on.

From time to time, unsettlingly upbeat music plays unprompted on a small radio, a creepy little ghost girl appears, someone runs at Laura with a knife, and generally spooky haunted house shenanigans ensue.  Finally, Nestor returns, which leads us into a third act revelation which is either a shocking twist that changes everything or simply does not make a lick of sense. 

After finishing, I had to go back and re-watch the beginning and the end, seeking clues as to which it might be, and I’m still not certain.  Basically (and here lie spoilers), it seems that perhaps at some point in the past, Laura had lived in this house (but maybe it was another girl – maybe it was many different girls, none of whom were her – maybe, she was one of many girls in the house) with Nestor and her father, who were both having sex with her (or them).  She got pregnant and they killed her baby as it could have been the product of incest/evidence of what they had been doing.

Before making this discovery, Laura spends a lot of time wandering around the house, examining things when it seems that she should just get the hell out of dodge, but perhaps she has forgotten/blocked out her time here and finding all these little artifacts of her past is bringing it back.  Or maybe something ghostly is happening and she’s tapping into the trauma that had happened here to another girl/other girls.  I’m honestly not sure.

The big reveal happens when she finds a wall covered in photos of Nestor and Wilson with some scantily clad/naked/pregnant/no-longer-pregnant girl(s). BUT, was that her in the photos?  My facial recognition software couldn’t process it with multiple re-viewings (though it’s never been one of my strengths)—I thought there were at least 2 or 3 girls, and maybe none of them were her, or maybe all of them were her.  Anyway, eventually she kills Nestor. The end.

Ok, so for a while the story is so simple as to be non-existent, and later it’s so confusing as to lead to a lot of post film head scratching.  In the end, I think it probably just doesn’t work, but I can forgive the film in light of its successes.  And this is something I hold dear about horror; it is a constant opportunity for artists to focus on form, to show what they can do with visual/auditory storytelling, to create an effect for the viewer.  And Hernández does that.  This is a technically tight first outing, and an effective little horror flick.

There are a few solid moments of camera choreography that build suspense and deliver some real scares. Also, there is a fascinating sequence close to the turning point when Laura has temporarily escaped from the house and it seems that she is constantly running out of and then reappearing in the frame from an angle that you don’t expect her to, based on her previous trajectory. The sense is that she’s running away but can’t escape and is repeatedly returning to where she’d just left.  That wasn’t what was happening, but this nice little trick of the camera really created the impression. It’s something you might imagine in a highly edited sequence and pulling it off within the constraint of the unbroken shot is a feat.

The sound is also striking in its spare use.  With almost no dialogue, the viewer is attuned to every creak, ever breath (not the first time this has been done in a horror movie of course, but nonetheless potent). There is also a nice moment when she’s outside and the sound is all muffled—contrasting the crisp, clear ability to hear every scratch and step inside the house—as if the house brings things into focus for her and, having left it, she is lost – she can’t orient herself.

But of course, the most noteworthy aspect of the film is its continuous-shot-in-real-time maneuver. This has been done before, but rarely with the same flexibility employed here by Hernández . Obviously, in the past, working with big, heavy film cameras, there were restrictions that don’t hinder a lightweight digital camera and it was necessary to hide cuts so the film canister could be changed (as Hitchcock did in Rope). The possibility of digital film making defines many of the film’s successes and failures.

First off, while this quality of digital filming may have been a familiar look just 10 years ago, it already looks dated—so shallow and flat, so evenly sharp. Also, the obviously handheld camera suggests found footage and draws more attention to the camera itself than may have been desired. However, there is a reason that found footage has been so successful, that so many people respond to it: there is a thrill that comes from the limited perspective.  We know we can see only where the camera is looking, and when the camera turns away from where we expect a threat, or when a character temporarily fills the frame, obscuring what’s behind her (as is effectively done in an early scene), tension is compellingly built. Again, this trick is not new, but when it works, it works, and here, it works.

Finally, the single take delivers a really intriguing twist in the narrative. The whole idea of one sustained shot with no cuts in real time tells us that we are seeing everything with no trickery—that in digital high definition, we can see everything – nothing has been removed—and we follow Laura through almost every frame.  And yet, with the third act revelation, it seems that what we have seen was inaccurate—she has killed her father and Nestor, intentionally, fully knowing what she was doing, not just stabbing the wrong person when he runs at her in the dark.  She bound their hands and stabbed them until they were dead.  And we didn’t see it. We saw her scared, in a mysterious haunted house, worried about them, where they had gone, what had been done to them.  The only little ghost girl was in her mind. The camera has shown us everything with no chicanery, but it was still an unreliable narrator.  It’s either a brilliant move or a frustrating cheat, depending on how you feel about that particular epiphany. But, even if it’s a cheat, it’s a pretty fun idea, and it’s pulled off effectively.

Either way, kudos are certainly due to the small team that made this imperfect, but rather impressive little flick. It’s easy to point out the flaws of a thing, but a whole lot harder to make a thing, yourself. Hernandez et al. made a pretty great thing here. We should all be so successful.

One Exorcist Too Many

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So, I had all sorts of ambitious possible plans for this post: maybe watch a set of the Polish horrors I’ve collected that don’t have subtitles and give my first impressions based on my imperfect understanding of the language, perhaps dig into a series of short stories that had been instrumental in my getting into horror about 25 years ago and examine my particular journey, maybe explore the differences between some book and its filmic adaptation, but somehow I just haven’t had the power. Certain geo-political events occurring in the country next door have been weighing heavily on me and it’s been difficult to focus my mind towards personal projects such as this; it’s been difficult even just giving full attention to anything really.  The other day, I watched the first thirty minutes of three different films I’ve been really wanting to watch before giving up on each (two of them, I’m sure I’ll return to).

In a time like this, I think it’s rather hard to get into something new or challenging, and it can be a comfort to just return to something familiar, so finally, that’s what I did. Now, after last week’s explication of my dislike of the exorcism film, this movie may seem an odd choice, but it could be argued that today’s film was never actually intended to feature an exorcism, and while I’ve only seen it twice before, it’s richness of character offers a kind of idiosyncratic, puzzling, atmospheric, and weird warm blanket, so let’s take a look at…

The Exorcist III (1990)

William Peter Blatty’s follow up to The Exorcist is a deeply flawed, deeply compromised film. The initial concept is already pretty strange, it features some extraordinarily random elements that can really leave you scratching your head, and following an overwhelming degree of studio interference, its ending strikes a discordant tone with the rest of the film and forces the introduction of a character and storyline that have nothing at all to do with the film around them. In Blatty’s original book and script, there hadn’t been any exorcism at all. The studio saw the first cut and was like, “how can we sell a movie called Exorcist III without an exorcist or exorcism in it?” Blatty was like “Well, I didn’t write a movie called Exorcist III, I wrote a movie called Legion, but fine, I’ll add one” – 4 million dollars later – increasing the budget of the film by almost 50% – there is a really tacked on, totally out of place, special effect laden exorcism and an exorcist who doesn’t interact with a single other character, and just shows up out of nowhere to perform said tacked on exorcism. It is gloriously weird.

But the thing is that, in spite of all of this, it is still such a personal, specific, and unique production – and somehow it really works. It just has so much character and the characters (excluding Father Morning, the random exorcist) themselves get so much room to breathe, to feel, to have significant relationships with each other, that it grounds everything else that happens in the film, however odd it may be. It has endless atmosphere, from its muggy, spooky nighttime scenes on the streets of Georgetown, trees buffeted by the summer wind, to the cold, institutional vibe of the hospital setting in which so much of the film takes place. The story is interesting and different – a strange murder mystery more than a possession story (though possession is an important element). And it is scary, featuring what many consider the best jump scare in horror cinema (it is pretty great).

 In short, the story follows Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott), a friend of Father Karras (the exorcist who died at the end of the first movie). Fifteen years have passed since both his friend’s death and the execution of ‘the Gemini killer,’ a serial killer whose case he had worked years back. And now, a series of mysterious, religiously themed murders, bearing signs of the Gemini killer pull him into an emotional, personal investigation in which he seems to find his dead friend alive and possibly possessed by a serial killer in the mental wing of a local hospital. By the end of the film, dear friends have been murdered, his family has been threatened, and he has to make a terrible sacrifice. It is affecting and intense, and for all of the heightened drama, the performances are so nuanced and solid that it never becomes melodramatic – really, the emotion lands.

And this commitment to character is present from the get go. Much of the first act splits its time between Kinderman investigating the gruesome and mysterious murders and establishing and exploring his friendship with Father Dyer (Ed Flanders), another old friend of Father Karras’s. We see them meeting on the anniversary of Karras’s death, each convinced that it’s his duty to cheer up the other every year on this sad day. They go to a movie together and talk about candy. They go for a cup of coffee and debate how a good god could allow such suffering. Kinderman complains about his mother-in-law, specifically how he can’t go home because she has a carp swimming in the bathtub, and he hates it (making me wonder at her ethnicity as keeping a carp in the bath for the couple of days before Christmas is a very Polish tradition). The fact that this sometimes genuinely scary film allows so much time for such a quirky rant (he really hates the fish) speaks to its investment in character. And it pays dividends – I believe in these people and their very sweet love for one another, and I feel for them when truly horrific things happen. And the film is so patient in letting the actors really do their work.

That patience is also key in this film’s success as a scary movie. Blatty has a good eye and is willing to let the camera sit, utilizing the long hospital hallways to great effect. As mentioned above, there is at least one great scare here and it works because so much suspense can be built when you’re willing to have so little happen for a few minutes. I won’t describe it in detail as it was spoiled for me before I first saw it, but it is a study in great horror film-making. If you’ve already seen the movie, I recommend this fascinating break down from the Rue Morgue Magazine Youtube channel of why the scene plays so well.

While most of the interference from the studio sticks out like a sore, poorly thought out thumb, one thing really works. Originally, Blatty had cast Brad Dourif as “patient X” (who may be Father Karras and/or may be the Gemini killer) and he gives a blistering showcase of a performance, all of which was filmed for the original cut. However, the studio really wanted Jason Miller (who had played Karras in the first film) to have the role and ordered all of the scenes reshot with him instead. Sadly, Miller was struggling with alcohol at the time and had trouble with the long, intense monologues, so Blatty found a strange but effective solution – he used both. It is startling the first time we cut from Miller to Dourif, but after a moment, we adjust and we get the sense that Kinderman sees the possibility of both men before him. He sees his friend. He sees the killer. He doubts them both and they are both present. Even what is seen with his own eyes cannot be taken as objective truth. It is very, very strange, but the effect is uniquely compelling. And I think it may be the one improvement over Blatty’s original cut – it is good to see Miller’s face. It helps us to see the man, the old friend who is suffering here, who we know to be dead. And it is so important to use Dourif’s performance as it is award worthy in its histrionics.

In 2016, Shout Factory released a director’s cut of the film using newly rediscovered footage. They were able to reconstruct Blatty’s original vision, and by all accounts, it’s great. But I haven’t seen it. And while I would love to do so one of these days, on Friday, when I wanted some comfort food, it was such a pleasure to return to this deeply flawed version. Somehow its imperfections increase its charm. I feel I can see Blatty’s intentions beneath the studio mandated surface, and I somehow also really enjoy some of the strangeness resulting from those mandates. In what he had wanted to film, there is already some deeply weird stuff (I haven’t even mentioned the heavenly dream sequence with Fabio the angel, a Jesus statue whose eyes open in shock when it gets windy, the old lady crawling on the ceiling, or the head of the psychiatric department who is clearly crazy himself), and I feel the studio demands probably add to the oddity, thus contributing to the overall, distinctive surreality of the whole affair. I expect the director’s cut is a better film, but I kind of love this one, warts and all.

And following up on my previously discussed distaste for the possession-exorcism narrative (of which, The Exorcist is certainly the ur-example), besides the fact that the exorcism scene herein can be ignored as a totally alien addition, the possession story is so specific and has such a different character than that of any other possession film I’ve seen. Notably, the possessor is not a demon, but a man, though one who was a monster, and his interlocutor is not a man of god, not a priest or an exorcist, but rather a detective and a friend. Kinderman’s horror is not anything to do with the dawning realization of devilish evil – he knows evil already. He sees the horrors humans do to each other every day. He experiences them himself. We have little impression that he ever had a rosy view of humanity, whether in seeing children brutally murdered, or in seeing his own police officers half ass a particular investigation because the victim was a black boy. In the end, he manages to save his friend, but at a cost, and we never really see him turn to a higher power for help. There is a clear supernatural element to the possession, but this is a human story and it turns on human acts.

In its inherent humanity, in its total weirdness, in its expertly crafted tension and release, this is a film that it is easy to return to, to dwell in for a time, to have a laugh and shed a tear with. And for me, it really gave some comfort during a trying time.