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]

Ghoul, Interrupted

or One Slew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

FILM:
The Ward (2010)
Written by Michael & Shawn Rasmussen, Directed by: John Carpenter



My recent interest in horror movies has inevitably led my path to cross with that of John Carpenter.  Now, I was pretty familiar with his more action-oriented work product, but as he's arguably neck-and-neck with Wes Craven in terms of influence on the horror genre, it was inevitable that I'd end up watching his classic work from the 70s and 80s.  Carpenter kind of fell out of favor after that, which is a shame, because I found The Ward to be one of the most satisfying horror movies I've ever seen.

The movie doesn't exactly throw you into the action as much as wake you up to find that you're already hurtling through a plate glass window.  The classic horror opening -- a teen girl in terror meets an unfortunate end -- is so abbreviated that it leaves one struggling to catch up from "go."  This is immediately followed by another teen girl in terror.  She sets fire to a farm house and is gathered up by the police in short order.


Before she -- or we -- know it, she's the newest resident of the North Bend Mental Hospital of North Bend, Oregon... and it's 1966.  At this point, I must admit, I was feeling highly skeptical.  A lot was going on and none of it was making a hell of a lot of sense.  As it turns out, this is all as it should be.

As the girl, Kristen, explores the secrets of the ward, and the mysteries about herself, we discover the answers along with her.  She shares the ward with four other girls, a frequently absent or inconveniently present staff, and a very vengeful ghost. The other girls each have specifically individuated personalities (or personality archetypes anyway), which is more than can be said for a lot of genre movies.  The staff is menacing and controlling, except for the times when they appear to be gone altogether.  I had to mutter an "Oh come ON..." when the action led Kristen through a kitchenette with an unsecured meat slicer on the counter (mercifully NOT an implement of death here).  As the story progresses, the staff appear to be covering up the ghost's deadly deeds, building upon the mystery of just what is going on.

Act 1 works on blending familiar ghost story and mental patient tropes.  Act 2 becomes a somewhat standard one-by-one reduction of cast members with asylum-themed gore.  More questions are raised; not the least of which is, "Is anyone RUNNING this place?"

It's in Act 3 that The Ward reveals all its been holding back.  As the ghost story unfolded, I became more and more skeptical.  It seemed fairly rote.  The part that keeps it interesting is the ongoing question of what others know, and when they seem to know it.  Everyone is holding information back from Kristen, and the way that information is revealed constitutes the backbone of the narrative, rather than a mere arbitrary series of deaths (as in Carpenter's Halloween).  In Act 3 there was a major confrontation with the ghost and... something that should not happen in a ghost story.  This had me rolling my eyes and ready to write the whole thing off.  Then came the big reveal.  Now, I often pick up on third act reveals in the first five minutes of a movie (sometimes just from the poster), but I didn't see this one coming until maybe 5 minutes beforehand because Carpenter knows the song so well and wasted so few notes in the introduction.

There was, of course, a SUPER obvious horror movie final minute, but as a horror movie, it was obligated to offer nothing less.  So often, the last minute of a horror movie sneaks in one last "Gotcha!" just for the sake of making you jump, which can betray the narrative arc.  This one makes sense...ish in the context of the story.

The performances were above average for the genre and did a lot to sell the story, although I was never quite able to accept Amber Heard (Kristen) as a citizen of the 60s.  The crimping iron was overplayed in the effort to make her look raggedy.  I was also left wanting more screen time for Jared Harris as the resident shrink.  He has a remarkable ability to be likeable and unsettling all at once, which keeps one guessing about his motives, even as one wants to trust him.

I don't know that I was ever scared by The Ward, but I remained intrigued from start to finish, and I felt that my patience as a viewer was rewarded in a way that so many movies simply do not deliver these days.