I've been negligent in posting even though I've been watching a movie every night. The first 20 films will be off of my DVR, while the last 11 will be from Netflix US, HBO Go, Max Go, Showtime Anytime, Amazon Instant Video, Starz Play, or Encore Play.
1.
Sinister (2012)
Sinister makes an incredible first impression by showing the hanging of four hooded figures that clearly comprise a family. As soon as Ethan Hawkes Ellison Oswalt and Juliet Rylances Tracy move into their new spacious suburban home, we see through the kitchen window that the hanging tree is in their backyard.
Sinister sprinkles its powerful footage of families dying throughout the years to spice up whats otherwise a pretty standard horror film, full of things barely glimpsed in darkness and creaking wooden ceilings. The interest comes from the implied shared history of the Oswalt family. Its clear Ellison has dragged his family through some troubles as he pursued his true crime writing career. Tracy hints that he drinks heavily when he writes because what he unearths during his investigations disturb him. His daughter, who is implied to be a burgeoning artist, complains about being uprooted once again; its problematic when youve moved around enough that you cant remember where the bathroom in your new house is. And Ellison and Tracys son suffers night terrors that are attributed to stress and worsen as the Ellisons troubles accumulate.
The memetic transmission at the center of
Sinister reminded me of
The Ring, and its a subtle jab at the horror film viewer. We see horrific violence and cruelty portrayed in any number of horror films. At some point, what we see will accumulate in our memories and possibly begin to haunt us. We can compartmentalize and know the separation between reality and fiction, but it doesnt detract from the reality that time and resources were spent on recreating or inventing these portrayals of violence and cruelty. Ellison opened the door to his troubles because he moved into this house and watched the 8mm snuff films he found in the attic. John Trent was driven insane after reading
In the Mouth of Madness. We are warned about what we allow into our brains.
2.
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
I appreciated what director E. Elias Merhige and writer Steven Katz tried to do here. By recreating the shooting of Nosferatu, Merhige and Katz explore the obsessions with artistic creation and legacies while crafting a vampire movie. Embedding the trials and tribulations of creating art into the story of a legendary monster struggling to survive in the modern world by repressing his true nature tied the idea of the monster and the artist together. Indeed, John Malkovichs Murnau is more of a monster than Willems Dafoes Schreck as Count Orlock; hes willing to sacrifice anything for art, and hes completely uninterested in other people. His art justifies his actions.
Id categorize this as movie closer to satires about the struggles of writers and directors in Hollywood like
The Player,
Sullivans Travels, or
Barton Fink than vampire movies like Tod Brownings
Dracula,
Daybreakers (which also stars Willem Dafoe), or Neil Jordans
Interview with the Vampire. After Schreck consumes the cinematographer and muses aloud, I do not think we need
the writer, one wonders if this wouldnt be the first time that a diva star actor or actress would consume and destroy a cinematographer or writer. Murnaus pursuit of the real by offering Greta, played by Catherine McCormack, to quench Schrecks desire is reminiscent of directors who desperately try to recreate or capture real moments or method actors who undergo physical transformations in order to more fully inhabit the characters they portray. In presenting art, the pursuit of the real is all-consuming.
Schreck laments that hes a creature whos probably lived too long but who is still defined by his appetites. For a centuries-old creature who seemed to have lived in solitude for ages, subsisting by never satiated by rodents and small prey, how far could Schreck leave his need to consume blood behind? Reformed vampires in popular culture, combined with the fact that the sheer passage of time has worn away the menace and horror the vampire presents, present Schreck as an almost comical, doddering old man who happens to live on blood. When Schreck answers questions from members of the film crew while seeming to remain in character to them, Schreck reveals that the passage of years hasnt worn away the psychic and physical horror of his existence. For Schreck, he can only laugh and move on to the next source of blood.
3.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose made a strong first impression with its cast. It seemed that Tom Wilkinson and Laura Linney were a bit over-qualified to star in an exorcism movie, even in 2005. Wilkinson could still point to his Academy Award nomination for his performance in
In the Bedroom, while Linney could cite her Academy Award nominations for her performance in
You Can Count on Me and
Kinsey.
It seems strange to use a tool of reason (a fairly tepid courtroom procedural) to decide an issue of faith (a death of a young woman who claimed to be possessed by multiple demons). Ultimately, the film tries to seem ambivalent about what happened by finding the priest guilty of the charges laid against by man but absolving him of further punishment because
why exactly? Did the jury believe his story about demonic possession? Did the jury find him sympathetic? Clearly, the defenses argument didnt generate sufficient doubt, since the jury found him guilty of negligent homicide. So, why did the jury recommend that he be sentenced to time served? And can a Roman Catholic priest who believes in demonic possession and the might of God that powers exorcism truly find a jury of his peers in the secular world?
Jennifer Carpenters performance was physically demanding and committed; unfortunately, the character of Emily Rose doesnt get developed very much. Watching Carpenter contort and scream was fun the first couple of times, but other films, such as
The Last Exorcism, have featured even more impressive performances by young, flexible actresses.
The prosecutions case is compelling, but the prosecutors increasingly bilious tone over the course of the trial (and the movie) is off-putting. I understand that he would feel that the defenses case would seem to be a mockery of his own faith and of the power of the court, but I cant see how it would serve his case to harass the priest while hes on the witness stand, which would undermine his case in the eyes of the jury and play to the defenses tactic of making the priest seem sympathetic.
The film leaves it to the viewer to sort out his or her feelings about what actually happened to Emily Rose. I appreciate that the film doesnt want to commit to one side or the other, but those scenes are the films meat. While explanations are offered for Emily Roses behaviors and medical problems, no explanations are offered for why Linneys characters front door is mysteriously unlocked at 3 a.m. or why her watch would stop at 3 a.m. during the course of the trial. It tries to tip its hand with creepy events happen to the characters at 3 a.m., but it then pulls back and pretends that it is still offering an even case for the rational and the supernatural.
4.
Would You Rather (2012)
The guy who played Abe on
Mad Men (Charlie Hofheimer), Crabman from
My Name Is Earl (Eddie Steeples), the guy who played DAngelo Barksdale on
The Wire (Lawrence Gilliard, Jr.), John Heard, recent Academy Award nominee June Squibb, Brittany Snow, Jeffrey Combs, and Sasha Grey make up an eclectic cast for
Would You Rather, an interesting bottle horror film thats ultimately let down by its ending.
The metanarrative presented by the film is curious from the start; by placing a copyright notice from the Lambrick Foundation, which sponsors the clinics and the deadly game that are shown in the film, a level of reality and remove is stripped away from the film. Its never commented upon, and the film doesnt play like a documentary, so it invites the viewer to question what the purpose of playing this metanarrative game is. Did the fictional Lambrick Foundation produce the film to advertise how it tries to help people (by inviting them to participate in a deadly game of Would you rather) to viewers and potential participants? Its a wink and a tease, but nothing about the film is equipped to give more than that winking tease.
That the Lambrick Foundation is represented by Shepard Lambrick, played by Jeffrey Combs, also raises the question of whether this deadly form of
noblesse oblige is a type of family tradition. We hear that Shepards son, Julian, hasnt been quite right since his mother died, but we have no baseline against which to compare his wrongness. We only see that Julian is a sarcastic, disobedient psychopath. Is Shepard using this to bond to his son, or is this the family tradition that he is trying to pass on to his son? And its curious that Shepard allows for great acts of violence, but Julians act of sexual violence against Iris is met with disappointment and disapproval by Bevans, Shepards butler and surrogate in that scene.
Its also worth examining whether Shepard is drawing his pleasure from seeing the games participants desperation or seeing them make decisive steps to improve their lives. He offers them a promise of drastically improving their lives if they participate in the game. Is his joy born from cruelty, or is it from his twisted sense of
noblesse oblige that compels him to give his wealth back to society at a significant cost to the recipient?
It should also be noted that Shepard and Julian might be the most traditional family unit presented by the film. Snows Iris has to take care of her ill brother because they are orphans, which places the sister in the role of the mother. Peter, played by Robb Wells, lost his family due to his alcoholism. Amy, played by Sasha Grey, lost her daughter at the hands of her husband. Lucas, played by Enver Gjokaj, mentions three sisters, but he can provide no more details before hes interrupted.
The film comes very close to actually being good, but its dragged down by its ending, which feels like a sucker punch twist. There isnt sufficient context for that characters final decision to make sense on initial viewing; maybe it makes more sense in hindsight or on a second viewing, but there isnt enough here to warrant a second viewing. There are some dialogue fragments that hint at the conclusion, but the ending feels artificially constructed to shock.
