Old Horror

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One of the early horror movies not in the Universal lineup was Doctor X.  It deals with themes that are perhaps surprising to modern viewers of old movies since the Motion Picture Production Code had not yet taken effect.  The story itself is slow paced, as is typical for the time, and not very scary according to modern standards.  Police are investigating a series of full moon killings and have traced them near to Dr. Xavier’s institution, the Academy of Surgical Research.  There he, along with four other scientists, are conducting advanced, but unorthodox medicine.  Dr. X convinces the police that he will investigate thoroughly and if the killer is among his colleagues, which he does not believe he is, he’ll learn which one.  There’s quite a bit of screwball humor introduced by the investigative reporter and even the butler and maid.  Hooking everyone up to a machine that indicates excitement, Dr. X has the murder reenacted to determine guilt among the watching scientists.  This is an early form of polygraph, apparently.

One of the colleagues, Dr. Wells, is excused because he is missing a hand and the murderer clearly used two.  The lights go out during the experiment and the “guilty” doctor is found murdered.  The solution Dr. X proposes is to do the experiment again, using his daughter (with whom the reporter has fallen in love) as the “victim.”  In order to prevent anyone from moving around, all but Wells are handcuffed to their chairs that are bolted to the floor.  Wells is then shown transforming himself into a monster by using “synthetic flesh” that he’s developed, allowing himself to animate a second hand and also, to disguise his face, freeing him from being identified.  He attacks Dr. X’s daughter, but the scientists are all handcuffed to their chairs.  The comic reporter saves the day by destroying the monster.

These early horror films blazed trails for later monster movies.  The science is a mix of plausible sounding theory and mumbo-jumbo.  I wasn’t sure what to expect since I knew the movie by name only.  Dr. X is a kind of mad scientist, but he’s not evil.  There’s a theme of cannibalism that runs through the story as well, since this is where Wells gets the material for his synthetic flesh.  The themes are scarier than what’s shown on the screen, of course.  These were the days when Boris Karloff in Frankenstein monster makeup could cause viewers to faint.  Doctor X was never as popular as the Universal lineup and although Wells is grotesque enough, he’s no Frankenstein creature.  He is, however, part of cinematic monster history.

Little Girl

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It might be inferred from the fact that I’ve mentioned it once or twice that I’ve seen The Little Girl Who Lives down the Lane before.  On a rainy autumnal afternoon it’s the horror movie that most often comes to mind.  While some find the “horror” designation overkill, it is the genre under which I bought the DVD many years ago.   Besides, it won a Saturn Award for best horror film.  I picked it up at a two-for-one sale not knowing what it was about but I was immediately taken by the atmospheric setting and weather.  A proper New England fall, after the leaves have come down.  It opens on Halloween with one of the most cringy openings ever.  Charlie Sheen plays a pedophile asking 13-year old Jodie Foster (Rynn) probing questions of where her father is when he finds her alone at home.

There will be a spoiler later in this paragraph.  Rynn lives on her own after her father dies by suicide and she murdered her mother and put her body in the basement.  Frank Hallet (Sheen), and his insufferable mother, own the Maine town where Rynn lives.  Befriended by Mario, a high school student who discovers her trying to drive, she eventually confides that Hallet’s mother was killed going down to the basement.  Meanwhile her son Frank keeps trying to insinuate himself into Rynn’s life, and, strongly implied, bed.  The story has some improbable plot elements and a few surprising moments, but not any jump startles.  It’s a slow burn, building to where Rynn attempts to poison herself, but Frank, not trusting her, drinks her tea instead.  Moody, rainy, and played out on a carpet of dead leaves, this is one of those horror movies that gets the season right.

Ironically for October nights, there aren’t a ton of horror films I know of that manage to capture this feeling.  I suppose that’s why I’ve seen this one a few times before.  I’ve gone through many lists of “October movies” and come out thinking that few people must think about this season the way that I do.  Or at least I haven’t found many horror movies that allow the season to pull its own weight.  Little Girl wasn’t welcomed with open arms when first released, but it has become a kind of cult classic.  Foster’s acting is pretty amazing considering her age at the time the film was shot.  But the autumnal weather does it for me, every time, even as we slip into November.

Halloween, Disney Style

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I really don’t spend much time on social media.  It’s literally just a few minutes a day, half an hour at most.  I’m too busy to spend more.  I tend not to join groups because, well, I don’t spend time there.  One group I did join on Facebook is for Halloween fans.  I believe that’s where I heard about the movie Halloweentown.  I was surprised that, as a fan of Halloween for pretty much all of my life, I’d not known about this 1998 movie.  Watching it, it became clear why not.  It is a Disney television movie.  In the nineties we didn’t have television (a few channels from a snowy aerial at Nashotah House) and certainly didn’t subscribe to the Disney channel.  While the movie failed to penetrate my consciousness, it went on to start a franchise.  Once I heard of it, I decided I should see it because I’m interested in the darker side of Disney.

Television movies, with their comparatively small budgets and limited viewerships, don’t have the finished feel that theatrical films possess.  This is the story of a family of witches, three kids and a mother, living in the human world.  The children don’t know they’re witches.  Then when their grandmother visits on Halloween, they sneak into the eponymous Halloweentown with her.  This is where witches and other monsters live because humans fear them.  The “monsters” mostly consist of obvious humans wearing masks and makeup.  There are a few mildly frightening moments as the evil Kalabar tries to take over the human world by persuading his fellow monsters to join him.  But this is Disney where threats are gentle and good fairly easily defeats evil.  While the movie isn’t even as scary as Hocus Pocus, some people watch it to get in the Halloween mood.

One thing that I’ve noticed about many movies that try to capture the autumnal feeling while being shot in California, is that they miss the more dramatic temperate shift in seasons.  This annual outdoors Götterdämmerung resulting in the colorful dying of leaves and the surrender of summer to the inevitable chill to follow is integral to my experience of Halloween.  In fact, one of the few criticisms I’d make to John Carpenter’s Halloween is that Haddonfield, Illinois was shot in Southern California.  Other movies make a similar gaff.  I’m always on the lookout for movies that manage to emulate that Halloween feel.  The film that perhaps does this best, in my experience, is The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, shot in Canada and Maine.  I’m still searching, however, for my own Halloweentown.

Don’t Stop Moving

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Stopmotion is a strangely affecting horror movie.  Body horror as well as Euro-horror, it follows the dream-like world of Ella, a stop motion animator.  She learned the trade from her mother who, suffering from arthritis, has Ella do the work for her.  After her mother has a stroke, Ella continues working on her final film but in a new location.  Tom, her boyfriend, gets her an apartment in a run-down building where Ella meets a precocious and odd little girl who tells her she should film a different movie and proceeds to tell Ella how it should go.  To her chagrin, Ella has to admit that the little girl’s story is better than her mother’s.  With the girl’s help, Ella animates a monster, the Ash Man, who is pursuing a girl lost in the woods.  Then Ella starts receiving visits from the Ash Man, or at least she believes so.  She ends up in the hospital. Spoilers follow.

Tom, who visits her there, is worried that Ella has let this go too far.  He threatens to delete the film while she’s immobile in the hospital.  Ella’s mother dies and with the little girl’s help, Ella gets back to her apartment to finish the film.  When Tom, and his plagiarizing sister, come to return Ella to the hospital, she kills them both.  She then, with the girl’s help, finishes the film.  The film results in her own death, or at least that’s the way she sees it.  The film features quite a lot of stop motion animation although the movie itself is live action.  It’s a very artful, if gross, film.  The little girl is never seen by anyone else, nor explained, suggesting that she’s a younger Ella following her own creativity.  And paying the price for it.

I can’t claim to understand everything that happens in this movie.  That doesn’t make it bad, but worth pondering.  Those of us who live creative lives experience dry patches, and often, self-doubt.  I know that when I compare my writing to that of others, I suffer in the very comparison.  When Stopmotion first ended, I felt both confused and intrigued.  Euro-horror of recent years, to generalize, emphasizes the art of the craft.  There was a lot of symbolism in this movie, some of which I couldn’t connect to the action.  I suspect repeated viewing might bring some of this to light.  My family has often told me that with my focus and interests, I would’ve been a good stop motion animator.  I certainly have the creating monsters part down pat.  It’s just a matter of deciding which narrative to follow.

Not Frightening

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Years ago a friend, which I define as someone who wishes me no specific bodily harm, suggested I watch The Frighteners.  It finally came to a free streaming service (with commercials), so I gave it a go.  I really enjoyed parts of it, but on the whole, there was too much going on to make it an effective film.  It’s a horror comedy, and once films like that stretch beyond 90 minutes they tend to need a lot of magic juice to keep the engine running.  So, here’s the basic idea: Frank can see ghosts.  With the help of a couple of ghosts he makes a living driving spirits from peoples homes, after setting them up.  Unfortunately there’s a serial killer ghost actually killing people.  Since Frank tends to be the last one the victims see, there is some suspicion that he’s involved in their deaths.  

A young widow, Lucy, is a doctor and is trying to help a woman (Patricia) who seems to be abused by her mother.  It turns out that Patricia is associated with a serial killer from many years ago, and it’s unclear whether or not she’s innocent.  Meanwhile, a neurotic FBI agent comes to town and decides Frank is guilty and tries to kill him without due process.  Meanwhile, more and more people are dying.  It’s probably a spoiler to say that the serial killing ghost is the same as the serial killer that Patricia was in love with and she’s still helping him to get to a record number of deaths.  Frank ends up dying twice but is brought back to life at the end, after Patricia and the serial killer are taken to Hell.

The movie is stylish and a bit of fun, but if you’re watching it on a streaming service with commercials it ends up being over two hours long.  Some parts are funny, but not hilarious.  Some parts are spooky, but not really scary.  The plot is complex and takes its time unfolding.  The serial killers attempting to break a record is disturbing and not exactly in good taste.  The acting is good but the viewer’s left feeling a bit confused as to what the message is and how they ought to feel.  It’s the kind of movie that I might find myself in the mood to watch again, someways down the road, but in the short term, I’m glad to have seen it once.  I’m not sure my friend and I share taste when it comes to movies, but at least he’s not wishing me any harm.

Mirroring Reality

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I watched Oculus for two reasons: it kept coming up as a “freebie” on a service I use, and I’d been thinking about haunted mirrors.  Well, three reasons—I also liked the sound of the title.  (Not all decisions are a matter of science.). I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be pretty good.  I’ll probably throw in a spoiler or two, so if it’s on your list, you’ve been warned.  Kaylie and her brother Tim were attacked by their parents, but Tim was being framed by the mirror.  Both parents attempt to kill the children, but end up dead instead.  Tim is sent to an institution since he pulled the trigger, and Kaylie has spent eleven years researching the mirror.  When her brother is released she convinces him that they have to keep their promise to destroy the mirror.

The problem is, the mirror messes with perceptions of reality.  The two go back to their childhood home where Kaylie has set up a device to drop an anchor onto mirror.  This is set to happen with a wind-up timer since the mirror can control electronics.  She’s also set up the room so that everything is being recorded.  If she can prove the mirror is what she believes it to be, her father will be exonerated and her brother proven innocent.  The movie gets a little tricky to follow since their current story is intercut with flashbacks as to what happened when they were children.  Also, the mirror records events on the cameras that didn’t really happen.  Add to this the fact that Tim has undergone therapy for eleven years and he’s convinced that his sister is delusional.  It’s one of those movies that messes with your perception of reality.

When Tim doesn’t see his sister in front of the device meant to destroy the mirror, he accidentally kills her.  The police arrive, believing he has repeated his murderous attack from eleven years before.  The ending is rather nihilistic, but the scares are effective.  There are a few gross-out scenes and some jump startles, but overall it is the story that conveys the fear.  For me, the mental issues were almost triggers.  But then again, I watched it on a day when I was a bit fuzzy-headed because of waking up too soon.  I really didn’t know what to expect when I hit “play.”  I’ve done that enough times and ended up with films that were wastes of time, so I was glad to have found a competent one this time.  These are my reflections, in any case.

Hungry Madness

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It’s been on my wishlist of movies to watch for a few years, In the Mouth of Madness.  A tribute to Lovecraftian horror, as well as a probing of insanity, it is a heady mix.  In keeping with my usual rules for movie watching, I hadn’t pre-read anything about it that would give away the plot.  Coming to it fresh, a number of things stood out.  There were some very good scenes and parts of the movie made me want to like it a lot.  It is a great movie for religion and horror analysis, and in that regard it’s much better than Prince of Darkness (despite Alice Cooper).  In fact, had I been able to see it years ago, it would’ve been included in Holy Horror.  That itself is noteworthy since two of John Carpenter’s other movies were in it: The Fog and the aforementioned Prince.  I suppose I should provide a little summary (if possible) in case you haven’t seen.

Trent is an insurance investigator, and a hardened skeptic.  A horror writer who outsells Stephen King, Sutter Cane, has gone missing and Trent’s sent to investigate.  He discovers that Cane is in a town that doesn’t exist (Hobb’s End) and that his books are not fiction.  In fact, Trent is a character in one of his novels.  When people read his latest book, In the Mouth of Madness (a title adapted from Lovecraft), they go insane and begin killing others.  The plot gets a bit busy because people are starting to transform into slimy, Lovecraftian monsters and this reality, if the book is read, or movie watched, will spread to all of humanity, leading to our extinction.  A bit too ambitious, the plot can’t hold all this weight, but it really isn’t bad.  There’s just too much going on.

The religion elements come in because Cane has holed himself up in an unholy church.  He refers to his latest novel as the “new Bible.”  “More people,” he says, “believe in my work than believe in the Bible.”  He later refers to himself as God.  I haven’t seen all of Carpenter’s films, but there seems to be a trajectory of his earliest major films being his best.  Halloween and The Thing are classics.  The Fog isn’t bad.  When he brings religion into his stories, as in The Fog, things begin to cloud over a bit.  Prince of Darkness doesn’t deliver a believable Devil.  In the Mouth of Madness doesn’t quite hang together well enough.  It’s not a bad movie, though.  It has given me some ideas for another book, if I can stay sane long enough to write it.

Colorful Space

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Lovecraftian horror translates to film unevenly.  Even when it’s successful, as in Color Out of Space, it really isn’t that close to reading Lovecraft.  “The Colour Out of Space” is among my favorite Lovecraft stories.  To me, it feels perhaps his closest to Poe, and Poe is my personal muse.  I knew that it couldn’t be made cinematic without changing things a bit, and that it would be pretty gnarly.  I was correct on both counts.  In very broad brush strokes, the movie follows the story: a colorful meteorite on an isolated farm begins changing the crops and the people who live there.  Instead of crumbling, however, they are struck by the color and become other.  The mother and her youngest son, for example, are fused together creating one of the most cringe-worthy scenes I’ve watched in a long while.  The movie emphasizes family, even when things go horribly awry.

Defying Lovecraft’s well-known avoidance of focus on female characters, the movie’s focal point in Lavinia accords with Poe’s concern for threats against beautiful women.  She’s the teenage daughter of the family and the film opens with a scene where she uses Wicca to try to heal her mother of cancer.  The love between Nathan (Nicolas Cage) and his wife is movingly shown.  The movie was recommended to me during a conversation about Nicolas Cage in horror.  Maybe it’s because he’s in so many movies in total, I’d never really considered him a scream king, but he’s nailed the role quite capably, with the notable exception of The Wicker Man.  Color Out of Space is pretty extreme body horror but the movie is artistically done.  You almost don’t mind feeling violated in that way because of the visual appeal of the non-horror focused parts.

The acting is uniformly strong.  In a nod to Lovecraftian fans, Lavinia uses the Necronomicon as the basis for her Wiccan rites.  Some of the scenes seem to reference Evolution and others eXistenZ.  Transforming the action from Lovecraft’s setting in the early twentieth century to the early twenty-first is done pretty well.  The family is isolated when the meteorite prevents electronics, including cars, from working.  The movie does offer some alien creatures, unlike Lovecraft’s basic story.  And these creatures point to a planet with tentacly beings that naturally tie this story into the Cthulhu mythos.  Lovecraft’s own story doesn’t make this move, but of course, the Cthulhu mythos only really developed among his fans.  In all, Color Out of Space exceeded my expectations, even though it was a box office flop. 

Aging

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M. Night Shyamalan’s horror is thoughtful.  Old is a little difficult to accept because it’s very difficult to keep artificially aging actors at a steady rate, either by make-up or substitution.  And it seems that the mysterious beach that ages people but also heals them should, in some way, make exploring its medical possibilities somewhat difficult.  Still, it is a noteworthy day-light horror offering that has an underlying ethical question.  I will need to include a spoiler to discuss that ethical issue, but before I get there, a vacation brochure.  Individuals, and families, are brought to a resort where everything’s perfect.  Then they are driven to a remote beach and discover that they really can’t leave.  And they age at a rapid rate.  (This may make you think of a Gilligan’s Island episode, but this one has no laughs.)  The aging is first noticed with the children and by the time the adults realize what is happening, it’s too late.

Here comes a spoiler.  Old was released during the pandemic’s second year, so I suspect it wasn’t widely seen.  If you’re still waiting, here’s your chance.  Ready?  Okay.  So, this island’s aging properties have been tapped by a pharmaceutical company to test new drugs on patients with various diseases.  Instead of waiting years for results, they can know in a day whether a treatment, unwittingly taken by the clients when they first arrived, worked.  If a “client” has no symptoms for a day, it is the equivalent of years.  The company, although it is responsible for the deaths of the people in the trial, give the results away, saving many lives for free.  Here is the ethical dilemma—do you save thousands, or millions, by having one person die to test the drug?  The real issue is that it’s done without consent.  Those aging have no idea they’re test subjects. 

Consent is an ideal, but in fact life happens to us and we seldom have the right of refusal.  Perhaps that’s the more insidious message here—giving consent furthers the illusion that we’re in charge of our lives.  I’m sure all of us can think of things that happened to us not because we chose them, but because we were at the right or wrong place at the wrong or right time.  When some such thing transpires, it often takes us considerable time to regain our balance, to feel like we’re “in control” again.  I chose to watch Old, perhaps when it wasn’t a good time to do so.  Or did I choose it?  And whose morals are these?

Fly by Night

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Nightwing is a movie I learned about by reading Stephen King’s Danse Macabre.  The idea has merit but falls below the expected level of any horror film of the era—and I’m a fan of seventies horror.  Those in the know suggest that this was supposed to be Jaws with vampire bats in the era when horror movies started to re-realize the dangerous potential of nature itself.  A basic problem underlies the dull pacing, non-indigenous actors playing Indians, and fatally overstuffed plot: vampire bats aren’t dangerous.  Bats are highly advantageous to the ecosystems in which they thrive and the idea that six or seven bites could drain a person of blood is ridiculous on the surface and looks rather silly in execution.  At least the later movie Bats (also bad) had genetically mutated mammals.  Eco-horror can be effective.  Natural bats are difficult villains, though.  

So, on Hopi lands an elderly priest summons the end of the world.  Releasing a god, the bats form the precursor to a native apocalypse.  Two tribes with differing views of white drilling rights on their lands argue over this while killer vampire bats attack.  They kill a group of Quaker missionaries.  Luckily, a British vampire bat killer is after the swarm.  He travels around killing bats, which, he says, are pure evil.  The deputy of the “good” tribe, which resists white incursion, eventually teams up with the bat killer because he saved his girlfriend who was going to leave him for medical school.  For some reason, two kinds of plague (including bubonic) are released but when the tribal priests all die during a rain dance it’s because of natural causes.  The leaders of the two tribes keep trying to catch each other out.

As the movie plods along, making the viewer root for the bats, the several dropped plot lines are left dangling like so many participles at the end.  The plagues?  Red herrings.  The tribal conflict?  Unresolved.  The special poison brought in to kill the bats?  Unused.  Total number of people killed to justify a wholesale bat massacre?  Nine.  Anytime I’m viewing a horror movie and I find myself repeatedly glancing at my watch, I know that something’s off.  It’s October and bats are a typical aspect of Halloween decor.  Nightwing, however, just doesn’t make them scary.  The movie was based on a novel which I’m now strangely tempted to read.  By all accounts, even though the author was partially credited with the screenplay, the book, as usual, is better.

Reptile Puppet

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I read about Reptilicus, but I can’t remember where.  A monster movie shot simultaneously in English and Danish in 1960, with two different directors, it was universally panned.  Some times you just have to see a bad movie.  This one qualifies.  I actually laughed out loud a time or two.  The idea behind the story holds promise: some animals can regenerate lost limbs, or even entire bodies from a severed piece.  What if a giant reptile could do the same?  The film’s problem is in the execution.  So, a team drilling for copper above the arctic circle—they’re sweating and working with their sleeves rolled up in a temperate forest—hits a frozen animal in the permafrost under the tundra.  Taken to an aquarium in Copenhagen, the animal’s tail is kept frozen until someone leaves the door open overnight.  When it thaws it begins to regenerate.

Once fully formed—and nobody could see this coming—it breaks out and terrorizes Denmark.  There are some scenes thrown in to show off Copenhagen, and the film makes liberal use of stock footage from military exercises.  The dialogue, poorly written, is delivered with wooden earnestness by actors who struggle to be convincing in their roles.  The monster, Reptilicus, is so obviously a puppet that it could scare no-one.  But it’s a monster movie!  Those of us who grew up on such fare sometimes feel a need to go back to the well.  To appreciate a bad movie, I always approach it with a certain hopefulness.  Here I am, over six decades later, watching the film.  If that can happen, perhaps someone will see that publishing my novels isn’t the worst you could do?  It makes for a crooked kind of logic.  

The main thing Reptilicus has going for it is its near indestructibility and its ability to regenerate.  How is it finally destroyed?  We’re not shown.  In one scene the general asks the head scientist, something like, “If we can knock it out, you can kill it?”  Receiving an affirmative answer, they drug the monster and send the scientist off to do his work (after he’s suffered a heart attack).  I’ve read novels where it seems pretty clear that the author was unsure how the resolution actually goes—I’ve painted myself into that corner a time or two, so I know how it feels.  If you’ve got a budget and backers, however, you have to deliver something.  The movie performed reasonably well at the box office, which shows just how indestructible some monsters can be.

In the Water

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On a list of hard-to-watch horror, I found the South Korean offering The Isle.  I was feeling particularly brave that day, I guess.  I was unfamiliar with Kim Ki-duk’s work, and looking for something that wouldn’t cost me any money to watch.  I found out this was one of those vomit or faint body horrors, but it is otherwise filmed so beautifully and gently that the contrast is downright shocking.  It all takes place at a low budget fishing platform rental business where the proprietor is a mute woman.  She ferries customers to their platforms, delivers food, and female companions, and occasionally takes revenge when customers treat her badly.  One day a fugitive arrives.  She doesn’t immediately know that he’s on the run, but she’s intrigued by him.  She prevents a suicide attempt and the two begin to bond.

Wanting to make sure her customer is satisfied, she starts bringing him a prostitute, but she gets jealous when they start to bond.  When the police come to find potential fugitives, he again tries to kill himself in a particularly gruesome way.  (Probably one on the vomit scenes.)  The proprietor again saves him and hides him from the police.  Apparently drawn to that type, she gets close to him and sees the prostitute as a threat.  She kidnaps the woman and when the prostitute falls in the water, hands and feet tied, she drowns.  The proprietor sinks her body and when the pimp comes looking for her, she drowns him.  The fugitive now realizes that they both have murder in common, but he feels trapped and escapes with her boat until she uses a reverse method of his suicide (another vomit scene) and he rescues her.  The police discover the bodies of their victims and the two take the platform house to a hidden location.  Apparently Kim Ki-duk likes enigmatic endings because the final scene is the proprietor drowned in a partially sunken boat.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one.  I would agree with the hard-to-watch assessment.  Not only are there gruesome, self-destructive acts, I’m pretty sure that some animals were harmed in the making of the film—particularly fish.  I’m not often in the mood for body horror, but sometimes when I’m trying to save money, I’ll settle.  I very much doubt I’ll ever watch The Isle again.  K-horror is sometimes compelling, though.  This one manages to be emotional, and of art-house quality, but the only monsters are humans and they seem more to be misunderstood than anything else.  And I didn’t vomit or faint.

Keeping House

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I really wanted to like The Innkeepers.  I’ve appreciated the Ti West horror that I’ve watched and Sara Paxton has a compelling screen presence.  The setting of a hotel that’s about to be shut down is a good set-up, and although the ghost story is somewhat conventional, it’s workable.  Part of the problem was clearly lighting.  Maybe I’m just too old, but when something important takes place in a scene that’s just too dark, well, it loses something.  So here’s how it goes: Claire and Luke are at the front desk for the final weekend of The Yankee Pedlar.  The guests are a woman and her young son, a psychic who used to be a television star, and an old man who wants to stay in the room where he had his honeymoon.  Claire and Luke are also ghost hunting at the hotel and a suicide-bride ghost is said to haunt the property.  When Claire finally does see the ghost, after the old man dies by suicide in the same room as the bride, Claire ends up in the basement where they get her.

The chase through the basement is dark.  I didn’t realize, until reading a summary later, that Claire, who uses an inhaler throughout the movie, died of an asthma attack.  That gives the story a nice ambiguity.  I, for one, couldn’t see that because things just weren’t lit well enough.  The final sequence, before the credits, shows the room in which the psychic was staying (she had a tendency to gaze out the window) and then the door slams on the camera.  The summary said a very light image of Claire is visible, and that she turns toward the camera before the door slams.  I watched the ending twice and couldn’t see her anywhere.  That scene was too brightly lit.  Without those two bits, the ending really doesn’t make much sense.

Movies generally involve many, many people (thus the very long credits).  Although the director is the “conductor” of the piece, sometimes I wonder about the lighting decisions, and whether this was a lighting department decision or West’s.  Whoever it was, I’m sorry to say that it made my experience of seeing the movie a confusing one.  The movie did reasonably well against budget so I suspect plenty of people saw what I could not.  I would be willing to try it again, maybe in a darker room or on a bigger screen.  A ghost story where you can actually see the ghost seems like a winning combination for an October weekend.

Preying

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Several aspects of Let Us Prey don’t make a whole lot of sense.  The police in this small Scottish town are all corrupt, at best.  And when push comes to shove, they choose to murder one another.  For some reason the sergeant wraps himself in barbed wire as he tries to bring the wrath of God onto his subordinate officers.  The night starts out with four prisoners being locked up and only one survives.  He’s shown emerging from the sea, with ravens, at the start of the movie and he’s never really explained.  He’s there to collect the souls of sinners and he seems to be able to control other people.  The whole thing turns into a bloodbath before it’s over.  In other words, it lacks the subtlety of much Euro-horror that I’ve watched.  One thing it does have, though, is plenty of use of the Bible.

I suppose with a title like Let Us Prey such a development shouldn’t be unexpected.  Rachel is a new constable in the police station.  The story begins with the stranger, Six—the number of his jail cell—nearly being hit by a car.  Or having been hit.  The teenage driver is arrested and finds a pedophile teacher already in the lock-up.  Two other police officers, after having sex in their patrol car, find the stranger and bring him in.  The local doctor examines him but when the doctor attacks him, he’s arrested as well.  Finally, Six is locked in.  It’s discovered that the doctor had murdered his family earlier in the evening, and the reckless driver had earlier hit and killed a classmate while out driving.  The pedophile kills himself and the two other police officers murder the doctor.  Then the sergeant, who’s a serial killer, comes back to kill everyone left alive.  Six and Rachel survive and Six reveals that he’s collecting wicked souls and invites Rachel to join him.

The Bible quotations (some not accurate) all come in the context of retribution.  The sinners are to be punished.  Rachel, however, escaped a childhood abduction and seems to bear no burden of sin.  The other police—who had all decided Rachel should die—end up dead themselves.  A gritty, supernatural police story, this film suggests a larger backstory without providing a lot for viewers to go on.  The openly Christian sergeant wears a cross, drinks when he drives, and kills his homosexual lovers.  Is there perhaps a message that the movie’s trying to convey?

A Presence

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Presence is a fairly new movie, for me anyway.  I was able to stream it at the price of commercials, so I gave it a chance.  It was provocative and to discuss it I’ll probably need to reveal the ending.  For now, however, I’ll just say it’s a ghost story from the point of view of the ghost.  It reminded me of A Ghost Story, which I also saw shortly after it was released.  Both are melancholy and explore the dilemma of a ghost having to watch as time passes.  In the case of Presence, however, it is a future ghost.  As I say, more will be given away, so be advised.  The movie is about a family of four buying a very nice house in Cranford, New Jersey.  Well, it doesn’t say Cranford, but that’s where it was filmed.  The parents, who have a bit of a troubled relationship, have a teenage son and daughter.  The daughter’s close friend has recently died and they’ve moved, in part, to try to shake her out of it.

We watch from the ghost’s point of view as the realtor shows them the house, the painters get it ready, and they move in.  The daughter, Chloe, is having trouble adjusting and the presence lingers about her room.  It’s obviously concerned about her.  Chloe sometimes senses it.  When Tyler, her brother, brings a friend over the friend starts to show an interest in Chloe.  The presence tries to intervene to prevent him from taking advantage of her.  When the friend drugs her, intending to kill her (as he did her friend earlier, which, of course, she doesn’t know), the ghost rouses her brother who saves her by tackling his friend out the window, killing them both.  As the family is about to move again, the mother sees in a mirror that the presence is Tyler, their son.  He was protecting Chloe, as a future ghost.

I found it an engaging film.  Sibling rivalry—the parents play favorites with the opposite gender children—and Tyler’s often harsh dismissal of his sister’s grief, dominates their family life.  The fact that Tyler is the presence protecting his sister even when, in real time, they don’t get along, is a form of redemption.  That brief reveal at the end is what makes the movie.  Is it horror?  It has a ghost and there are moments of considerable tension.  As I’ve argued from time to time, horror isn’t a precise genre at all.  I found this listed as horror in a streaming service and although jump startles and visible monsters aren’t evident, the affective aspect is clearly there.  Yes, in my opinion, it’s horror. And it’s well done.