Oh, Brain...

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.

We're All Mad Here

After yesterday's Christ-awful terrible cinematic abortion that was See No Evil 2, I felt like we deserved something really, really good today, and boy-howdy, do we have that...

TELEVISION:


American Horror Story
Season 2: Asylum - 2012
Created by Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy

I really enjoyed Murder House, the self-contained first season of American Horror Story.  It was a ghost story (my favorite flavor of scare), bursting at the seams with ghosts and interesting character relations, but there were definitely some nagging narrative weaknesses that suggested either incomplete planning or late-season scheduling conflicts.

The second season's story, Asylum, fixes what was broken and improves everything that wasn't, resulting in one of the finest and most compelling horror stories ever created.  The show's team actually courts disaster by filling it with SO MUCH that it should trip over its own subplots and varied ingredients, and yet it pulls it off masterfully.

Roughly spanning the 60s (with trips back and forth through time) in the asylum at Briarcliff Manor, we have at least three serial killers, two axe murderers, a mad scientist Nazi war criminal, the twisted victims of said mad science,  a sadistic nun, a demon possessed nun, the Angel of Death, and, oh yeah, space aliens.  That's just the boogeymen (and women, to be fair).  To each of those spooks, there's at least one human story attached, and usually more.  Those stories then entwine with one another, creating a tangled web of "I HAVE TO FIND OUT, BUT DON"T LET IT END!" storytelling.

Honestly, this is one of the single best narrative arcs in television history.  Yeah I said it, and I meant it.

Several cast members from season one are back in new roles.  The most fascinating of these is perennial show-stealer Jessica Lange in a radically different and vastly more complex role.  She plays the tough-as-nails Sister Jude, the nun charged with running the asylum, who has turned it into her personal domain.  Lange has played no shortage of Southern belles throughout her career (including season one), so it's a real delight to see her take on the role of a hard-bitten New England nun with a secret past.  As strong as she is as Sister Jude, she really takes it a few more levels up when she ceases to be Sister Jude and suffers her comeuppance.  This was a remarkably complex character whom we despise and then pity, and ultimately mourn. Okay; Jessica Lange.  Now I get it.

It's virtually impossible to summarize the story (stories) without falling into the trap of a breathless "And then that happened, and then she said, and then -- OH YEAH, I forgot to tell you about..." recounting.  Virtually every character has their own story, and roles to play in other characters' stories.  Every time I start to say "In addition to Sister Jude, there's one other key lead" I realize there was another.  Then when I'm prepared to commit to three leads, I recall another major arc that may not have been key, but certainly was significant.  The strength of this storytelling and juggling of characters compels me to mock the failure of Lost to do the same, despite pretending that it did.  Dear producers; Do this.  Not that.

Realistically speaking, there were indeed three primary characters and their analogous structural story lines.  In addition to Sister Jude, there's the brave and bold reporter, Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), unjustly imprisoned at Briarcliff for attempting to expose its corruption, and Kit Walker (Evan Peters) who is also unjustly imprisoned there, believed to be the serial killer Bloody Face.  Shockingly, his alibi that he'd been abducted by aliens doesn't help his case.  Both of their stories are strongly rooted in issues of social justice, which apply strongly to their unjust imprisonment.  Like the best of horror, Asylum deals not only in imagined evils, but in genuine evils, and addresses the human condition through one of our most damning and damaging traits; our fear.

Performances are uniformly good-to-outstanding.  I can't think of a single character that I ever wanted to get off the screen so I could see someone else, and I frequently wanted more or just about everyone.  Perhaps the most tantalizingly brief appearance was the few episodes we got with Ian McShane as the hilarious and menacing Santa Claus killer.

I freely admit that the relatively "up" ending went a long way toward formalizing my enjoyment of Asylum as a whole.  So many characters went through their own personal Hells that it was gratifying to see their struggles pay off.  Not that anyone exactly lived all that "happily ever after" and a lot of good people died along the way.  The end felt both authentically human as well as satisfying the narrative.  We don't see that often on television or (even less so) in horror.  Hell, after Glee, I wouldn't have even guessed that Ryan Murphy was capable of either.

If you have any interest in quality television and/or quality horror... [Shalit] ...you'd have to be completely CRAZY... to miss American Horror Story's Asylum. [/Shalit]

The House Has Hot and Cold Running Ghosts

What would horror be without the occasional surprise now and then?  I'm changing things up a little today by discussing a TV show rather than a film, but then this TV show is at least as good as most horror movies, and quite a bit better than the majority.

TELEVISION:

American Horror Story
Season 1: Murder House - 2011
Created by Brad Falchuk & Ryan Murphy

I'm coming to this one a little late, but then I freely admit that I have gotten to a place in my media life where I can barely stand to watch shows on a weekly basis.  Binge viewing is really the only way to watch the serial narrative anymore.  Obviously it satisfies the "what happens next?" impulse that networks rely upon to emotionally hold viewers hostage, but I find that I simply get more out of the narrative when I'm able to follow it more consistently and deliberately.  American Horror Story has really built up its viewership (and laurels) over the past three seasons, and I finally reached the point where I was ready to invest in a new series.  Each season is an independent narrative, so I am approaching them independently in my consideration.

Season One tells the story of Murder House, an LA mansion built in the 20s and site of more murders than any one person realizes (well, maybe one person).  The story pays homage to the entire haunted house genre, without ever being overly similar to any one story.  Per the conventions of the genre, the story begins with a family moving into the house.  In this case, they are the Harmons; Tom (Dylan McDermott), Vivien (Connie Britton) and Violet (Taissa Farmiga), who bring plenty of their own emotional ghosts with them.  While they had been informed in advance that the previous owners had died in an apparent murder/suicide, and we as viewers were aware from the opening scene that a couple of redheaded brats died there in the 70s, numerous other restless spirits make themselves known -- or not-so-known -- in short order.

Also making themselves known are Constance (Jessica Lange), an omnipresent and socially inappropriate neighbor and her daughter Adelaide, whom we saw as a child in the opening scene, warning the twins of their impending doom.  Constance and Adelaide let themselves into the house so often and so casually that it took a few episodes before I was sure that they weren't ghosts themselves.  Constance clearly knows more than she's telling anyone, and several of the ghosts clearly know Constance.

The first five-or-so episodes hit the viewer pretty hard with a rapid-fire onslaught of supernatural shenanigans.  By the third episode, I couldn't fathom how the family could possibly survive all the way to the end of the series at the pace things were going, and I was partly right about that.  The pace slows down significantly once the initial rush of fear dies down.  The story bogs down somewhat as tensions between characters play out, and the character roster deepens with the revelation of more of the house's history.  By the time the Black Dahlia joins the gang, she feels entirely unnecessary (hot ghost-on-ghost action notwithstanding).  There are so many dynamics between so many characters, both living and dead, that few of them seem to be allowed to play out in fulfilling ways -- especially when so many of them hate Constance, who the producers clearly adore..

There's another pacing issue that surrounds Connie Britton's character, Vivien.  She serves as one of the primary conduits for the narrative.  She's the one with the most logical arc of disbelief to gradual understanding of her situation.  It's Vivien who actually investigates the house's history and recognizes an earlier visitor in an old photo.  She's also just the most likeable.  Violet, their sullen teen daughter is a close second, but her unwillingness to share information of react quite believably when presented with the facts weakens her position.  So Vivien is, by default, not to mention by degree of victimization, our best defined protagonist.  Then she all-but-disappears for a few episodes and it really chokes the narrative.  I get the distinct feeling that Britton may have had a scheduling conflict, because the change in structure just doesn't make sense from a narrative standpoint.

Things do pick up pace as we get closer to the end, and Violet does carry a lot more of the load, but only after a draggy spot where the structure seems to have crumbled a bit.  In fact, the pace accelerates toward the end with more and more revelations and death, but then it comes to an almost screeching halt as the final episode slowly unspools its post-climax denouement.  In this more leisurely paced aftermath, there is a lot of room for questions to come up about inconsistency and illogic.  The show's self-established rules for ghosts don't always apply the same way to all characters, or even to single characters over the span of the season.  At one point, one of the ghosts is motivated to have the house sold so that her body can be dug up from the back yard, thus freeing her, and yet most of the ghosts are not buried on the grounds and are just as trapped.  While they enjoy varying degrees of ability to manifest themselves and interact directly with the living, not one of them ever burns the house down, which seemed the logical conclusion.  In one scene, a ghost stops a loved one from committing suicide, yet is nowhere to be found in the very next scene when others ghosts decide to go ahead and kill off the very same living person.

These inconsistencies are clearly cases of the details taking a backseat to the intended story, and I get that.  I just wish that the writers had been afforded a little extra time to smooth these things out ahead of time.  Murder House clearly emphasizes character and overall narrative arc over things like obedience to their own rules and the momentum of the individual episode.  I'm actually okay with that.  The level of fear that one expects from a two hour horror movie simply would not work across a 12-episode season, and it becomes necessary to vary it a lot more.  After the initial rush, Murder House becomes much more dependent on interpersonal tension and creepiness than instant scares or growing dread.  They do, in fact, do "creepy" really damned well, and there is a greater sense of sadness in loss than almost any horror movie I can think of.  It plays to the strengths of the television format rather than simply trying to make a really long movie, and that's bound to take some rethinking and repurposing of the conventions we've been so trained to expect from the genre.

Horror needed American Horror Story.