Leftover Candy

I managed to watch and write about AT LEAST one horror movie or TV show every day for the month of October, but would you believe there are still some others that I didn't get around to writing about?  Well here they are, like your day-after tummy ache.

FILM:


The Babadook - 2014
Written & Directed by Jennifer Kent

Oh BABY!  What an excellent find for my actual Halloween night movie.

Amelia is a widowed mother trying to raise a smart, creative, albeit undeniably weird son who has not yet learned to manage his fear and anger.  Her son, Robbie is deeply concerned with threats to home and family, likely due to the fact that his father died in a car accident while driving his mother to the hospital to deliver him.  This makes him unnervingly clingy with Amelia, and also compels him to create and build oddball weapons like a catapult backpack (thus breaking a window).  Amelia feels like she's at her wits' end.  Robbie's weirdness has begun to isolate her from the friends she'd ordinarily rely upon for support.

One evening at bedtime, Robbie pulls a book off the shelf that Amelia has never seen before, a strange and seemingly handmade pop-up book called Mister Babadook.  The book tells the story of a monster who comes into your home and will not leave, ultimately bringing death.  Robbie is both fascinated and terrified by it, and Amelia cannot get it away from him fast enough.  First she hides it, but he finds it.  Then she tears it to bits and throws it away, but it comes back, pieced back together.  Robbie becomes increasingly freaked out about the Babadook coming to kill them, and his anxiety transfers to her and the lack of sleep spreads her even thinner.

Not since The Shining have I seen a movie that so successfully treads the path between psychological and supernatural horror, and this might even do a better job of blurring the two.  The question of whether the Babadook is a real thing or simply the product of Amelia's beleaguered and exhausted mind remains fully alive all the way until the end, and even now I still wonder.  The fear of what Amelia fears and what she might do are authentically terrifying.  In the meantime, the world actually behaves much as the world actually does, with social workers showing up to check on Robbie, thus introducing another threat to home and family.  I think a LOT of parents will be able to relate to the horror of Amelia's desire to protect her son crossed with the uncertain feelings that come when your kid JUST WON'T STOP even when you feel you've got nothing left.

This is a GREAT and genuinely chilling horror movie.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown - 2014
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
based on the 1976 film by Earl E Smith
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

This is a slasher, but it's a slasher with some of the self-awareness and cleverness of Scream minus much of the wit and humor.  It's a more earnest mystery in which the town of Texarkana is subjected to a series of slasher-style murders that parallel a case from the 40s and a film about the case from the 70s.  Too much of the story is dependent on us believing that Addison Timlin's character is an outcast in town (evidently because she reads), but at least there IS a story rather than just a bunch of running around getting stabbed.  It really makes an effort at illustrating the way fear can grip a community and even tries to give the protagonist a character that extends beyond being afraid and screaming all the time.  And the gore still manages to be gory!  It is, after all, still a slasher, but I found it to be an entirely tolerable entry in a field predominantly occupied with ugly, mindless garbage.

Summer Of Blood - 2014
Written & Directed by Onur Turkel

If you can make it past the first half an hour or so of the lead character Erik's unrelentingly awful personality, you might find this a mildly rewarding vampire tale, but that's a REALLY BIG "IF."  I stopped the movie twice, he was so freaking unbearable.  I almost couldn't go on.  He's an emotionally crippled 40 year old who uses unfunny humor to deflect E-VER-Y-THING away from himself while simultaneously making everything ABOUT himself.  When his girlfriend of three years (which frankly, strains all belief) proposes over dinner, he can't even treat her with the dignity of addressing the subject head-on.  When he finds a man on the street with his throat torn open, he can't stop babbling to the guy about bullshit long enough to call 9-1-1.  He's a hollow, self-centered hipster douchebag asshole.  Naturally it's set in Brooklyn.  Maybe if you're the kind of person who can tolerate the uncomfortable humor of The Office you'll be better equipped to tolerate Erik, but it was psychologically agonizing for me.

Until he meets a vampire who tells him to shut up for a minute.  The vampire takes him to the core of his self-loathing, then releases him from this life of suffering.  ...Into a whole new undeath of suffering!  The second half of the film plays with the concept of vampirism in some interesting ways, and it's both satisfying to watch Erik suffer as well as seeing him become more human in his post-human condition.  There IS something here, but the buy-in may be too much for some viewers to handle.

Mercy - 2014
Written by Matt Greenburg
from a Story by Stephen King
Directed by Peter Cornwell

At the intersection of late life dementia and the corrupting influence of witchcraft, there is grandma Mercy.  Throughout the movie, her grandson tries to help her, suffering as she is in her drug-induced haze, uncovering family secrets and local legends about witches, only to discover too late that they are one in the same.  There's an idea here, but the execution is so lackluster and unengaging, the climax so lacking in character, that it's really irrelevant what the idea was.  It's been squandered to the point of nonrecognition, just like grandma Mercy.

Hour of the Wolf - 1968
Written & Directed by Ingmar Bergen

Just in case you were wondering, no, this is not a werewolf movie.  I know I was thrown by that.  But it does qualify as horror in a creeping dread, losing one's mind, Ingmar Bergman kind of way.  An artist (Max von Sydow) and his wife (Liv Ullmann) move to a remote island where they can be alone so the taciturn artist can paint.  Despite their apparent isolation, the nearby town seems to be haunted with elements of his past centering around a lost and scandalous love which is perhaps more likely what he's really fleeing.  It's VERY slow and observes no obligation to explain itself, but it builds a deep sensation of "WTF" until its disturbingly bizarre climax.  At least ONE person here is insane, and it might be you.

TELEVISION:


American Horror Story
Season Three: Coven - 2013
Created by Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy

I liked Season One a lot, despite some structural flaws.  I LOVED Season Two which avoided those flaws and excelled in its structure and characterizations.  I knew that a lot of people had really been daffy for Coven so I was looking forward to it.  But it mostly left me flat.

Coven centers around a school for witches in New Orleans as they enter into a time of transition where one Supreme witch will fall and another will rise.  And that's really about it.  Structurally, it's much more soap operatic than either season prior.  The characters aren't as well developed, thus their personal stories have much less driving motive, and are poorly differentiated.  Basically it's a big ol' back-stabathon with literal back-stabbing and the characters are frequently resurrected from their stabbed backs.

Jessica Lange is back to playing a bitchy Southern belle, which is how a lot of people like her but I find terribly tedious.  I was never clear on whether the school for witches was an actual school of if that was just their cover for a place to hang out because not once did any teaching ever occur until everyone had to get up to speed for the big showdown.  There were exactly TWO plot threads that I found to be worthwhile.  One, concerned Kathy Bates as Marie Laveau, a thoroughly evil witch from before the Civil War, cursed with immortality and newly exhumed into a world where a black man is president (in other words, your standard Tea Party voter) and her relationship with Gabourey Sidibe as Queenie, more-or-less well-meaning (but not above her own back-stabbery) young black witch from Detroit.  They had a great dynamic and an interesting story between them that was largely separate from other goings-on.  The other was the relationship between Lange's Fiona Goode and the newly reconstituted ghost of the Axeman of New Orleans, whose spirit has lingered in the coven's house since they stopped his murder spree in 1919.  The whole affair is creepy and unseemly and leads to a sweet piece of cosmic justice in the end.  Danny Huston, as the Axeman, really makes this subplot worthwhile.  Again, it's largely isolated from the rest of the story and allows for some authentic moments of character.  I also liked the character of Misty Day, but she really got shorted on the story side of things.  The actress, Lily Rabe really deserves a more complete story arc in one of these seasons.

By and large, it ends up being a big soap opera where survival of the bitchiest wins the day.  If I wanted to watch that, I'd watch... I don't know because I don't want to watch that.  Is there something that combines Dynasty with Designing Women?  Real Housewitches of New Orleans?  Feh.

It's Not What It Looks Like...

 

FILM:
Best Man Down - 2012
Written & Directed by Ted Koland



Best Man Down is not what it appears to be, and that's both its blessing and its curse.

It was evidently promoted (a misleading term in its own right) as a comedy, which it absolutely is not.  You would further believe it to be a comedy from the presence of Justin Long (Waiting..., Dodgeball, Zack & Miri Make a Porno) and Tyler Labine (Reaper, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil), but you would believe incorrectly.

While the film benefits from this misdirection in setting up certain expectations from Labine's character, Lumpy, and then allowing the characters and the viewers to learn from this mistake, not all viewers like to be challenged, and tend to blame filmmakers rather than accept that they may have been wrong.  For example, the correspondent reviewer on RogerEbert.com prefers to blame the film for all the things it's not rather than updating their expectations once the film demonstrates that it's something else -- which is a damned shame, because that was one of Ebert's greatest gifts as a reviewer.

Lumpy (Labine) is the best man at Scott and Kristin's wedding (Long and Jess Weixler, respectively), despite the fact that Scott and Lumpy have drifted out of each other's lives as adulthood has gotten more adult.  Naturally the one getting married is eyeball deep in discussions of responsibility and the burden of expectations.  The opening sets Lumpy up as your basic "big fat party guy."  He gets way too drunk and embarrasses himself not so much as the couple; specifically the overly-anxious bride who accepts/invents a large part of those burdensome expectations. 

Up until now, you could continue to be forgiven for thinking this was going to be a comedy.  Then Lumpy dies, in fairly dark fashion.  If it had been a comedy, there would be a dozen different ways to play this scene, but writer and first-time director Ted Koland chooses none of them and I believe that's purposeful.  It should be uncomfortable when the best man dies at the wedding, and it should leave an emotional taint on the memory.

Scott feels responsible for taking care of Lumpy's arrangements, and it's only much later that we learn that Lumpy had any family at all.  While the question could be raised as to why the family didn't take care of things, there would appear to be clues to explain Scott's willingness to take it on himself.  It was Scott that cut Lumpy off at the bar and sent him off to bed, and he feels guilty about that; rational or not.  This is compounded by the sense of guilt for growing apart and "succeeding" in the adult sense while Lumpy seemed to backslide, despite the fact that he borrowed money from Lumpy, which creates an even deeper sense of guilt.

So Scott and Kristin postpone their honeymoon to take care of the funeral, and to track down one of the few names in Lumpy's cell phone.  In doing so, they discover that Lumpy was not exactly who they thought he was, although they're not always sure they want to find out what there is to know.  Again, the appearance of things can be misleading, and one's own expectations can color their vision in ways that says more about the expectations than the individual.

The perverse burden of expectations is examined further through the characters of Scott & Kristin's relatives.  They're surrounded with self-centered demands and myopic notions of right and wrong, and while they accept and endure these expectations, they make themselves crazy and expect the worst of others.  Scott is so on-edge that he got himself fired from his grown-up job, unbeknownst to Kristin who has a nice little anti-anxiety med dependency going just to cope. 

They initially expect that the name "Ramsey" in Lumpy's phone refers to a classmate from law school... then learn that he had quit school the previous year.  Then they think it might be a girlfriend... and discover that it's a 15 year old girl from a small town.  This does not reassure them.

Meanwhile, throughout the film, we've been getting glimpses of Ramsey (Addison Timlin) and her life.  Her mom is a flake, because of/resulting in her relationship with her dirtbag meth-head boyfriend.  The boyfriend, having so little "self" upon which to base his impression of himself, attempts to mimic his idea of what a "Man" should be by dominating the women in his life, and dragging the clearly-2-to-3-times-his-IQ Ramsey down to his loser level by bullying her into shoplifting cold medicine for meth.  The film sidesteps darker implications, or leaves it up to the audience to fill in.  Those familiar with the realities of rural and small-town America may tend to color-in these pages with darker crayons than others.

We're also treated to a flashback that explains how Lumpy and Ramsey happened to meet, but this too leaves us uncertain about the nature of their relationship.  Like the characters, and much of the rest of the film, I think it depends on what expectations the individual viewer brings to the proceedings that determines how they will interpret this before the "big reveal" at the funeral.  It's not necessarily the most effectively managed mystery, but it makes for a good story as Scott and Kristin find their expectations challenged, and their eyes opened.

Going into the movie, I had few expectations, and most of those were wrong.  Once it began to reveal itself, I found elements that I strongly related to, and those played a large part for me in my ability to understand and connect to characters and events.  As a result, I ended up being deeply affected by the story, the narrative of discovery, and the characters of Lumpy and Ramsey in particular.  Your mileage may vary, but I think it will get you there, if you let it.  I was also able to allow the film to show me what it was, rather than remaining stuck in any preconceived notion of my own, and that, after all, was the complete and absolute point of Best Man Down.