How some films become cult classics is beyond me. It’s obvious that a film like “Rocky Horror Picture Show” was picked up by fans because of the obvious opportunities to participate in the fun. I never understood why “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” wasn’t a hit in the first place, but it makes perfect sense that it is revered now because it’s concept and execution are finally recognized. There however is little reason to believe that “My Bloody Valentine” from 1981 will ever be seen as a hidden gem. The remake from a dozen years ago was far superior in every way. How does that happen?
This Canadian film as little going for it, except the title. The production values on the movie are not great, the script is at times preposterous, and frankly the acting is atrocious. I know they were working on a small budget, and the actors are relatively inexperienced, but it never seems like they got a second take to fix things in their original line deliveries. Sometimes the presentation is so wooden you think the movie is a parody of horror slashers. It’s not a parody, it’s simply not a very good. Maybe the final song and the demented fade out account for whatever credence the film has.
This criticism should be seen as a reason not to see the film. I still enjoyed being in the theaters the other night, sort of experiencing a nostalgic rush of ’80s Horror. As long as you don’t mind a horror movie that is not particularly frightening, and is not very titillating, then you can enjoy this film. The main thing that it has going for it is that preposterous concept. A crazed miner, rescued from a cave in after surviving by cannibalizing other coworkers while awaiting rescue, became a spree killer. Now 20 years later, it seems that the spree killer has returned, provoked by the Valentine’s Day celebrations which ignored the lead up to the disaster two decades earlier. The pickaxe that is used to kill some of the victims is a good concept but it’s not visualized in a very interesting way. Which is why the movie fails to satisfy fans of gore. The kills are relatively tame, and most of them lack of jump scare to pull them off.
I can see what this movie wants to be, and I can also see where it misses the mark on a regular basis. The 2009 3D version at least had the good sense to include an eyeball impaled on the end of the pickaxe, in a 3-d effect. That’s a movie that knows what it’s supposed to be doing. So for nostalgia and for setting up the concept, “My Bloody Valentine” is adequate, the problem is it never gets to be insane until the last moment when the crazed killer is finally revealed and runs off screaming curses and a vow to kill again. That’s sort of the delivery which could have made this a lot more entertaining.
[The above trailer is the teaser that does not reveal too much. Avoid the second trailer entirely]
I’ve been looking forward to this film for a couple of months now, based on an early trailer which suggested it was a horror film involving a toxic relationship. I didn’t want to know too much about it, and that first trailer made me anticipate the film without giving anything away. Sadly, the night before we were supposed to see this movie we went to another film and there was a new trailer for “Companion”, and it gave away a major plot point. I am a little pissed. Overall I enjoyed this film very much but I know I would have enjoyed it much more if that twist had not been revealed to me less than 24 hours before I first saw the movie.
“Companion”, is in fact a type of horror film but it is also a social commentary, a science fiction story, and a dark comedy. Writing about this without giving away the plot twists is going to be complicated. I want people to go into this movie knowing less than I did so they’ll enjoy it more than I did. Let me just say, that there is indeed a toxic relationship in this film, but it is quite a bit different than any that you’ve seen in other movies. I’m not even going to mention some of the films I would compare it to because that would spoil some of the surprise. The plot takes us in several different directions, and those shifts in direction are result of actions that happen in the film that feel completely earned.
Self Generated Poster because the official poster gives away too much as well
The young actress who appears in this film, Sophie Thatcher, was also in the movie “Heretic” which I saw near the end of last year. She has a quality to her voice and mannerisms that come across as sincere and innocent, while at the same time being able to convey a steely resolve. I thought she was excellent in both films. Her co-star in this film is Jack Quaid, who I know mostly from the Prime video series “The Boys”. He also has an innocent quality, and a geeky charm, that is used quite deceptively in this story. Some of the turns that take place are surprising enough, but they are more surprising in the way that our characters have been set up.
This is something like a cabin in the woods scenario, where a group of friends is spending the weekend in an isolated location and bad things start to happen. Unlike a horror film though, the bad things happen because of deliberate choices made by our characters. Technology also plays a role in the story, and I was on edge from the very beginning when our main couple is riding in a car is completely autonomous. I see those types of vehicles here in Downtown Austin whenever I’m going to the Paramount Theater, and I actually saw one picking up a couple at Lawry’s when I was in LA at Christmas time. It’s going to be a long time before I am ever comfortable enough to step into a vehicle that is being driven by a computer rather than a human being. My reticence about embracing technology that can do these kinds of things is part of the reason that I’m willing to call this a horror film.
This will probably be the final film I see in January, and interestingly enough everyone I’ve posted on this year I have seen in a single week. It’s still early, but I’m happy to say “Companion” has been my favorite film of January. Go see it, but close your eyes and plug your ears if the trailer comes on at another film before you do.
Updating a classic monster to contemporary times sometimes requires a little creativity. The Wolfman from 1940, was a Universal horror movie that featured a Sad Sack leading character slowly being turned into a murderous animal. He had a fairly warm relationship with his father, he met a girl he was interested in, and he was way laid by a werewolf and thus began his own transformation. The formula for the movie today varies this a little bit. The main protagonist is still a bit of a sad sack, but he has a great relationship with his daughter, a strange relationship with his father, and is married to a woman that he loves but is growing distant from. His transformation doesn’t wait for a full moon, and it is a slow build. We don’t have to wait for a silver bullet, we just know that there are monsters out there and that our main characters are going to be threatened.
It’s a little bit odd that I saw this movie the night after I saw Flight Risk. Both movies are essentially three character stories, mainly set in one location. A lot of horror movies benefit from the simplicity of such a setting because it forces the directors to become creative how Danger can be just about anywhere. Director Leigh Whannel, is an Old Pro at making horror films, and does a pretty good job at tightening the screws up. Wolfman is a Slow Burn is but it is generally effective.
My reservations about the film are mostly due to the casting and performances. The lead actress, Julia Garner, who was so wonderful in the TV series Ozark, is miscast in this role. She seems to be too young for the kind of character she is supposed to be portraying. She is also not as emotionally engaged in the first part of the film if she needs to be to make the second part of the film work. She does fine with the fear elements of the script, but her characters connection with her husband feels detached and Lacks energy. I did think however she had a good moment when the family picks up a neighbor as they are trying to locate instead. That may have been her best scene in the film.
The husband , played by Christopher Abbott, is also so low-key that it takes us a while to recognize anything is really a danger to him. His physical transformation is put off for quite a while, and well there are animalistic characteristics, it is mostly his physical activity rather than his appearance that makes him wolf like. There are two or three really good bits of business that illustrate this transformation without his face growing hair. I don’t want to give too much away let’s just say when he investigates a noise upstairs in the house his discovery of its source is one of the best surprises in the film. The other element of the movie that works well in showing how he is losing his Humanity and ability to relate to his family, is the 180° camera move that changes perspectives from the husband to the wife and Back Again. The filters used, and the visual effects as well as the sound editing are very clever it explaining exactly what’s going on.
There are a few jump scares, and there is quite a bit of screaming and panic as dangerous characters Chase the family around The Farmhouse and barn that are the primary locations of the film. By the way the film is set in Oregon, produced in New Zealand, and largely shot in Ireland. I’m sure this hybrid of locations is a result of financing rather than artistic choices. I did mention that there are primarily three characters in the story, but they aren’t the only ones that do play A Part. Early on, we get a sequence that sets up our main character as a young boy, and tells us of the life he led with a paranoid prepper father. I suppose it is supposed to set up the characters actions later in the film, but I found the sequence to be the most suspenseful and interesting in the movie. Too bad it’s over in the first 10 minutes.
This is not a bad film, it’s just not as good as it ought to be. The characters are sympathetic but I never felt particularly engaged by them, with the exception of the relationship between the little girl and the story and her father. It’s just too bad that most of the suspense elements of the film focus on the mother’s actions, and it simply feels like any other horror chase film where the character is being pursued they can to improvise and get away from the monster that’s chasing them. The movie sets up the idea that there is a subtext, but never delivers on that. It stays at a very surface level, which is okay for a horror film, but keeps it from being particularly distinctive.
This movie is not good. There is something cringy about most of the Sony films that have tried to spin off Spider-Man characters into their own films. They just feel inauthentic entirely. The “Venom” films work in part because the film makers lean into the stupidity of the premise and they get that the films are commercial junk. “Kraven” is commercial junk that takes itself seriously an is laughable as a result. The opening sequences are really good, but then we get an origin story that is so preposterous, I was laughing at it as it was being played out.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson looks great in the part, it’s just that the part is ridiculous. The child of a Russian mob figure acquires supernatural powers from a dead animal at a safari hunt with the assistance of a voodoo elixir that comes to him through a civilized girl who is visiting her grandmother’s primitive culture. If chiseled abs were enough to make a movie work, then Taylor -Johnson would have this sewn up. You also need dialogue and story for a movie to work, this film has some very stupid dialogue and some equally stupid story telling.
By the time we get to the CGI climax, I just did not care anymore. The only person who gets out of this unscathed is Russell Crowe, who plays the mob boss father with a heavy accent and a sociopath personality. It’s as if he doesn’t give a crap and just leans into the dumb mess of a film he is in. The film is set up for a sequel, but with the box office returns, I don’t expect anyone is jumping abord for another film in this series.
I have fallen behind on films that I have seen in the theater here in December, so I am going to keep this short. There was not much to talk about anyway. I will probably turn my derision toward another film that came out more recently. Aaron, wipe your feet thoroughly before you try on James Bond’s shoes. I think you might be great for that series, but you stepped in some pooh here.
I quite liked “Smile” from two years ago. It was a horror film based on a contagion, very much like another horror film I enjoyed “It Follows“. Because these are modern films and the audience is primed for on screen horror and not just psychological horror, we will see some traumatic and nasty death scenes. The violence and gore provides the opportunity for make-up professionals to indulge in their darkest nightmares and then share them with us. “Smile 2” provides plenty of those moments and carries on a somewhat suspect theme from the first film which will come up in a moment.
The conceit of this sequel is that the contagion. which finally manifested as a monster at the end of the previous film, has entered into the life of a highly visible subject, pop star Skye Riley. I did not re-watch the original film before venturing out to see this new iteration. I have some vague memories of what the rules are for the parasite to be able to infect someone. This may be important at the climax of the film, but the multiple steps and preconditions are mostly ignored here so we get immediately to the central problem. Skye, who is played by actress-singer Naomi Scott, is recovering from a car accident that physically mangled her and killed her actor boyfriend. During the film, we get flashback episodes that reveal what was going on in her life at the time of the accident. There was drug use, and a break with her longtime friend Gemma. Skye appears to be on the road to recovery when her need for painkillers that violate her sobriety, brings her into contact with someone already infected.
Horror movies can succeed for a lot of reason, and one of them is that they grip us from the beginning. Although I have always maintained that “Jaws” is not a true horror film, it did do that very thing with the opening death of Chrissie. “Smile 2” manages this feat by playing out an opening where we see how the previous film has connected the malevolent force to a new set of characters. The tense confrontation between the police officer from the first film, and a couple of drug dealers is graphic and frightening. The payoff is also gruesome, although mostly unrelated to the process of being infected. If you have not seen the first film, you might be confused as to what is going on. Even if you are, I still think you will be hooked.
Movies like this are often faulted for using jump scares to goose the audience, and sometimes that is a legitimate criticism. It is an easy way to get a rise out of the paying customers. When used effectively however, a jump scare can make the film feel so much more lively. “Smile 2” has about five of these jump scares, two of which make the film story more effective and they exist for more reasons than just a quick “boo”. The most disturbing scenes however, play out a bit more slowly. There is a truly disturbing scene where Skye is threatened in her own apartment by someone she knows to be a deranged fan. The slow reveal of those moments contain some disgusting visual references that make the scenario even more horrifying.
[Warning] I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible in my posts, but there is something that I need to mention and it may reveal more about the plot than you want to know. I will not give away anything specific but I will remind people that you cannot trust what you see being played out on the screen. The characters may sometimes be visualizing their own nightmares, and those may not be the actual events. This is a key element in the ultimate plot, and it was one of the things that is both creative and frustrating about the movie. It is close to the “Wizard of Oz” than it is to “The Sixth Sense” and it may undermine your appreciation of the film, as it did for me.
The ultimate payoff in the movie is an interesting take of the premise, and it could lead to subsequent films that will be much broader in scope that the two films we have seen so far. Writer/Director Parker Finn has found a niche with this concept, I hope that it is nurtured and creative in subsequent films, but there are dangers as well. I was not expecting to enjoy this film as much as I did, and although I am a little nonplussed at the way the plot plays out, the movie did make me smile.
Suffering from the flaws of many horror films these days, “Heretic” still manages to be a fascinating variation on the premise. This is in large part due to the casting of Hugh Grant as the antagonist and the charming performances of the two lead actresses, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. This is basically a three person set piece, but the setting is an elaborately designed house with a subterranean structure that will add to the mystery and sense of dread that pervades the first half of the movie. The deceptively inviting bait includes the charming Mr. Reed, played by Grant, who at first seems the most innocuous of potential threats.
Thatcher and East play two Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, out for the day on their bicycles, looking to spread their faith. The opening section includes the uncomfortable cold calls and interactions with locals on the street. Sister Paxton, has no new converts and seems to be losing confidence, especially after she is humiliated by some teen girls that she had approached in a friendly manner. Sister Barnes is a little more pragmatic, and maybe weary of proselytizing, but both she and Sister Paxton seem committed to their beliefs, even as they discuss some world challenging truths around them. They are not just doing cold calls however, they have a list of homes that have indicated an interest in their faith, and one of those is the house off the beaten path of Mr. Reed. Set in an idyllic property, off the road, boarding a forested area, the Reed house looks friendly enough and when the mature, somewhat distracted Hugh Grant, answers the door in his patterned old style cardigan, the girls are nonplussed at his invitation to converse in the house. When they learn that his wife is supposedly baking in the kitchen, they accept the invite with very little trepidation.
This is all set up for the most interesting part of the film. Mr. Reed confronts the girls with a series of questions and challenging statements about faith and their beliefs in particular. As the purported wife does not appear, there is hesitation by the young women about proceeding. The dawning realization that they have been trapped in the house forces them to continue the facade of their visit. The carefully crafted politeness of the girls runs into the mildly rude but intellectual challenges of Mr. Reed. Grant is perfectly cast for this section of the film, he is clear in his beliefs but expresses them with the stuttering pace that he has been well known for in his other roles. He treats the girls like students in his own introduction to theology lecture, and paints a nasty image of organized religions based on their similar origin myths. His attempts to sow doubt in the girls seems plotted to force them to make a choice, which is ultimately meaningless in his eventual plans. His whole spiel is really just a cruel twist of a mental knife in the minds of the victims he is trying to create.
The living room and then the study of the Reed house, are decorated to invite confidence in the visitors, but as they move deeper into the house, the production design makes the floorplan more ominous. Once the girls pass the threshold into the basement structure, the film becomes a much more traditional film. Although there are a few twists thrown in to tie the escape section to the theological discussion in the early part of the film, those plot points make little sense. My friend Lisa Leaheey has said you can’t judge a horror film by it’s ending. If she is correct, we should disregard the last act of this movie, because it feels like an overworked attempt to vindicate what came earlier with a tradition horror element. I will say that I had an interpretation of the final resolution that was different from others, so maybe there is something here that is a little more challenging.
Because it is shooting high and tries to do something different, and it has three excellent performances, I am going to recommend the film. If you want a more complete and intelligent exit to the movie, you will be a little disappointed. I often find that I like movies in spite of their flaws and this would be one of those. I compared it to a film from two years ago, “Barbarian“. A terrific opening is squandered by conventional horror tropes in the second and third acts. “Heretic” is not quite as egregious in it’s failures, so in contrast it is the better film. I also think the difference is enough to recommend it.
[I have included the video of the podcast from the LAMBcast, which featured this film, in case you want to hear and see more.]
This is one of those films that I hope I’ll be able to draft tomorrow on my Lancaster show. We are having a draft of horror films made and released prior to 1973. Rosemary’s Baby from 1968 not only fulfills the requirement okay in the appropriate time, but also being a truly creepy horror film, and one that is extremely well made. It was produced surprisingly, by William Castle, who was Notorious for making the budget gimmick horror films, like The Tingler, 13 Ghosts, and the House on Haunted Hill. He snapped up the rights to make the movie, by buying a book for adaptation before anyone else could get to it. Unfortunately for him, he spent all of his money buying the rights, and had none left to make the movie, which forced him to seek financing, and resulted in a studio-based film, and the studio insisted on hiring their own director. Roman Polanski is notorious nowadays, but at the time he was one of the hot directors in Europe, and this is a movie that put him in the top ranks.
The film is a very literal story about the birth of Satan’s child. You can struggle to look for metaphor or allegory here, but when it comes to the main plot line, Satan rapes a young woman and she is forced to carry out a pregnancy it is going to result in the birth of what is likely to be the Antichrist. This movie came out 5 years before The Exorcist, and 8 years before The Omen. It has very few horror effects, there is one death on screen, and a couple that are implied which take place off screen. The makeup in the film is not full of Prosthetics and goo with blood, there’s only a hint of the devil’s actual appearance with some close-ups on demonic eyes. Most of the makeup involves showing star Mia Farrow as becoming somewhat emaciated in the early stages of her pregnancy. Instead of glowing like a pregnant woman would she seems to be disappearing, pound by pound.
Mia Farrow gives on heroic performance as Rosemary, loving wife of a struggling New York actor, who is befriended by some oddballs in the somewhat sketchy apartment building she and her husband have taken up Residence in. Early acquaintance, when Rosemary has met in the laundry room basement, ends up dead and that is the most gruesome scene in the film. The young woman was staying with the older couple who lives next door to Rosemary and her husband. And it seemed that they were helping her recover from a sorided life of drug use and promiscuity. We never really learn why she died, but it is strongly suggested that the appearance of Rosemary suddenly was a opportunity that was a lot more promising for the coven of witches that occupy the building. Yes that’s right, I said witches.
The older couple next door, take up a particular interest in Rosemary and her husband, and begin to insert themselves into the young couples lives. To some degree Rosemary is happy to have some company, but she does seem to recognize that her husband is taken an unhealthy interest in their neighbors life story. He frequently spends time with the older couple, well Rosemary tries to maintain some distance. Rosemary’s husband is played by the great John cassavetes, and at times he is a solicitous husband, but at other times he’s an insensitive prick. He and rosemary seem sexually compatible and happy, but he struggles with career uncertainty, and the fear that comes from where your next job is going to be coming from. Things get a little desperate when he loses a part in a play that could have brought him some much-needed attention. My cassavides himself, the actor resents having to work for money, particularly in television commercials. His luck suddenly changes when tragedy strikes the actor who had been cast in the role that he was up for, and the part defaults to him.
This is all my way up set up, because this is really a character based film more than a plot based movie. Rosemary is driven to preserve her marriage in the face of the economic uncertainty that the two of them are confronted by. She also is in the process of nesting, and the desire for a child feels very natural at this point in their relationship. Once it is discovered that Rosemary is pregnant, the old couple next door begins to offer assistance. Ruth Gordon is an eccentric woman who has what appear to be friendly intentions, and some odd cooking skills. Her husband insists that Rosemary see the obstetrician that he is friends with. So the story focuses on this vulnerable young woman, being prayed upon with affection by her husband and Neighbors, and she doesn’t realize how much she is being manipulated. The doctor she sees is played by Ralph Bellamy, and he seems the picture of a wise and comforting older doctor, full of credibility. He needs all of that credibility because he keeps dismissing the problems the Rosemary is facing in her pregnancy. It’s hard for us to imagine the pregnant woman will allow her health to deteriorate the way it did in the early stages of the pregnancy, without seeking some substantial Medical advice. The assurances of her doctor only carry weight because of his reputation. It takes the intervention of some of her younger friends to convince her that she needs to see the original doctor she visited with in order to get a second opinion. Conveniently at that point the negative symptoms she’s experiencing cease, and it seems that the doctor was right all along, which reinforces The credibility he had originally.
The whole movie is about atmosphere, and the old apartment building that’s a couple moves into is full of it before we even meet the characters that fill it up. There’s a long sense of dread in the last third of the film, but they’re also some comical moments with the witches coven struggling to deal with playing nursemaid to hell spawn. Mia farrow’s expression when she finally gets a chance to see her baby is one that is perfectly horrifying, and ultimately maternal which is the real horrific twist in the film. Roman Polanski Maybe a horrible human being but he was a hell of a director, and as noted in another film, this movie made him the biggest director in the world at the time.
One of the things I enjoy about social media (yes there are some things worthwhile there) is the opportunity to discover films that might otherwise have slipped under the radar. “The Babdook” was a film that never played in more than two theaters at a time on it’s original release. However, the word of mouth on the film back in 2014 was that it was terrifying. Those praises made it worthy for me to seek out when it became available for home viewing. I can say that it is in fact one of the few horror films that lives up to it’s hype. The set up of the story is maddening, but when the supernatural elements kick in, you are ready to believe in what follows.
Amelia is a widow with an incredibly challenging six year old son. Samuel is both very bright and enthusiastic, but he is also incredibly needy and like most children, self centered. From the beginning of the film, actress Essie Davis makes Amelia look worn out and fragile. Hers is one of the best depictions of physical and mental exhaustion I can remember seeing on screen. Samuel and his obsessions, keeps her constantly on edge, and her brittle protection of him is driving a wedge between her and almost everyone else she is connected with, even the friendly co-worker and her sister. The monster in the story is here well before the trigger mysteriously appears.
This is a psychological horror story, and at the end, there is a very valid question about where the “Babadook”, the monster of the tale, comes from. It is quite possible that everything that occurs is a manifestation of Amelia’s mind. The true source of her difficulties is the unresolved grief she has for her husband, who died in a car accident while driving her to the hospital to deliver Sam. The character is extremely sensitive about discussing her late husband, in part because it appears that Sam reminds her constantly about the loss. All of us have dark thoughts that creep into our heads now and then, but her character allows those thoughts to grow, in part because she is so exhausted from trying to manage Samuel. Even a temporary respite from the tension she lives under is interrupted by Sam.
There are some great uses of sound to create a aura of dread in the house that Sam and Amelia occupy. As almost every film fan knows, the less you see and the more you imagine, the greater the fear factor can be. Even when the title figure is manifested, he plays mostly in the shadows and our chances to see him are very brief and ambiguous. The horrifying foreshadowing in the book that she and Sam first discover the “Babadook”, lets us know how this terrible horror will manifest itself. [Potential Spoiler: Animal Lovers Beware]. The resolution of the film comes after a harrowing third act where the norms of parent child relations are stressed to the limit. It is not so much that Amelia has let the Babadook” in, as it is that she is letting her grief out in a very destructive manner.
I literally got chills at least three times in last nights screening. There are a few well done jump scares that fit with the story and are not simply cheap moments that the director is imposing to get a rise out of us. This is writer/director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature film. It is an accomplished piece of work that makes the most out of it’s limited setting and small number of characters. There are some emotionally deep themes in the film, and in the end it is uplifting, but you have to absorb some disturbing moments to get to that more positive resolution.
This is a Tenth Anniversary screening, and if it is playing in your local cinema, be sure to stick around for a ten to fifteen minute conversation between Kent and Alfonso Cuarón, as they talk about the themes and the process of writing the film.
Once again 1984 proves to be a wonderful year for terrific movies. The Alamo Drafthouse has been presenting a series in their time capsule, that focuses on 1984 in the month of July this year. After having a great experience at “Buckaroo Banzai” on Monday night, we ventured to a different location to catch up with the least John Carpenter-ish film that John Carpenter ever made. This science fiction romance includes an Academy Award nominated acting performance, and no dismemberment of any animals or human beings, although a car or two do get destroyed.
This was the adult version of E.T. , and it features a mature love story that plays out very patiently between an alien visitor and an American woman. Karen Allen, famous for the Indiana Jones movie, plays a woman grieving her recently lost husband, who’s marriage was only a couple of years old. We watch her torture herself by looking at old films of she and her husband and happier times, as she drinks herself into a position where she can finally sleep, we wonder how this is going to connect with the space vehicle that has crashed not too far from her home in Wisconsin. It turns out that the visitor from another world is going to use the DNA in the lock of hair that she has in a photo album to replicate itself in the form of her deceased husband. This would come as a shock to just about anybody, when she encounters this being as it is growing in her living room, and it when it turns around it is the exact image of her lost love, you would expect her to pass out immediately. It actually takes almost two more minutes for her to do so.
Once the premise has been set up the film becomes a chase movie, as the alien and the Earth woman travel from Wisconsin to a crater in Arizona where the alien is supposed to rendezvous with his partners on a different spacecraft. Of course the woman and the visitor are also pursued by agents of the U.S. government, who use the military in a ham-fisted way to locate the alien, and assess what thread it might present to our country. Trapped between the science and the military strategy, is a scientist from S.E.T.I. , the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, played by Charles Martin Smith. Jeff Bridges inhabits the body of our deceased carpenter, resurrected through advanced cloning, and his charming limited understanding of English vocabulary becomes one of the continuous humor tropes in the film. Bridges best actor nomination is almost certainly a result of the physicality that he brings to the character of Scott, the late husband of Karen Allen’s character.
It is a science fiction film, but the alien here is much different from the one that John Carpenter showed us in his previous film, “The Thing”. This character is more benevolent and, as embodied by Bridges, a hell of a lot more charming. The cross country road picture allows Carpenter and Company to make some observations about the nature of human beings, and about the U.S. paranoia around aliens or any threat to National Security. The pig-headed leader of the security team played by veteran actor Richard Jaeckel , could easily have gone in a different direction. That would certainly make it a different film, but it might not be one that John Carpenter would have been willing to make. Instead we get an action film with a science fiction character, and a lot of humor. The road trip romance provides a lot more heartwarming moments than you will find in any other John Carpenter film.
I found this movie endearing back in 1984, and again when I rewatched it for my project about that year in movies that I did a decade ago, and I once again find it to be exactly that on this latest viewing. I’m not sure the film is substantial but it certainly is audience-pleasing and entertaining. Karen Allen by the way was just as good as Bridges was, but she didn’t get the accolades because her part was a lot more standard. It’s too bad that the science fiction world, doesn’t have more movies like this, and by the way, it’s also too bad that it doesn’t have more John Carpenter films as well.
I saw this film with high hopes, fueled by good word of mouth from several members of my blogging community, and it’s surprising performance at the box office. I love Nicolas Cage, and I am always willing to give him wide latitude on his acting choices because they are so out there. I had not seen a trailer for the film before I went, so the only thing I was aware of were the comparisons some had made to “Silence of the Lambs” and “Seven”. Brother, are these people overselling this pile of excrement. I started having doubts a few minutes in, and by the time the film was done, I loathed it. Sorting your sock drawer is a more productive use of two hours.
The film starts out as a procedural, but quickly turns into a supernatural thriller when our hero turns out to be psychic. No wait, she is only half psychic because she only scored 50% on a test that the FBI has for supposed psychics. So we are plunged into a world with no worldbuilding, almost immediately. Agent Lee Harker fingers a house where the bad guy is, by just looking around. We don’t actually know why they are in this neighborhood in the first place, but whatever. A tragedy occurs when the partner she has been assigned to, ignores her warning and request for back up. The two of them feel like the most inept FBI agents ever, they will fit right in with the Secret Service team that was supposed to be protecting Trump. They are not sympathetic, they are pitiable.
Just to add to the stupidity, her supervising agent, is an alcoholic who has been working the serial killer case they are on, for a dozen years without any progress. Whether he is incapable of reading her social reticence or is simply pushing her to grow, he comes across as completely thoughtless. When he forces her to meet his family, the director might just has well hung a sign over the front door which reads” Here lives the family That will be targeted at the end of the film”. It was such a ham fisted moment it probably tainted everything for me for the rest of the film. In truth though, nothing happens in the first part of the movie that gives this any verisimilitude. Harker comes across as a naif, rather than a steely mind in the FBI. The production design also undermines the film. The time period is set in the 1990s for no particular reason. The location is supposed to be the Seattle area, but making the FBI offices look like log cabins or paneled walls from the 70s seem amateurish.
The three performances that matter the most are inconsistent. Maike Monroe who plays Harker, is doe eyed and a waif. Even though Jodie Foster’s character in “Silence of the Lambs” is being diminished by the men around her, she still felt like a woman, not a shrinking violet. She can hardly make her voice heard, she moves suspiciously slow in every scene and she just never seems to be up to the job. The only thing she might have going for her is that “psychic” vibe, but there is no backstory on how it might have helped her get into the FBI. Her mother is played by Alicia Witt. This character starts setting off warning signals when we just hear her voice over the telephone line. When we encounter her, the phrase “hoarder” comes immediately to mind. This film was produced by the company “NEON”, they might just as well put neon signs around every foreshadowing twist.
Finally, let’s get to Nic Cage. The part of Longlegs is a serial killer with satanic influences. We don’t get any clues to that except the cryptic messages he leaves in code, so the idea that this is a procedural investigation film goes out the window. This is an X-Files episode that was not strong enough to make it to the screen, unless you have a strong visual hook. Enter Nicholas Cage, in make-up that renders him unrecognizable, and with mannerisms that would set off an air raid siren for every police official within a hundred miles of him. Cage screeches through some dialogue, pops his eyes out, and contorts his body enough to be creepy to look at. Who in their right mind would let a character like this any where near their family? When we get an exposition dump at the start of the third act, we are asked to accept some incredulous ideas and just go along with them because we now get to see some flashbacks. This film tries to make a mystery of the means of killing, rather than exploiting the supernatural and satanic story that is really there.
I have been an outlier before on some horror based films. I disliked “The VVitch”, hated “The Lighthouse”, laughed at “US” and now I am dismissing “Longlegs”. I don’t have to have something conventional, but I do need something that is coherent and does not insult my intelligence, a standard that this film cannot meet.
Kirkham A Movie A Day 