Review--Consecration--Christopher Smith (2023)

 

As a someone who was raised Catholic, I think almost all religious films, and religions, are scary.  My take is that Catholicism is a cult just like any other, and the Pope and his cadre of guys are the cult's leadership.  I'm also a pretty big fan of Jenna Malone, the star of Christopher Smith's latest horror thriller, Consecration (2023), so ignoring the disappointed and disappointing reviews of the film, I jumped right in.

         Grace (Jenna Malone) is a hardworking ophthalmologist trying to help her patients 

In the first few minutes of Consecration, Grace is walking down a London street when suddenly a nun in a pristine white habit points a gun at her...fade to black.  I like this beginning.  Call me intrigued and ready for more!  Switching to the present day, Grace is meeting with a blind woman and her husband, and suggests that there is a way to bring her sight back.  She then receives a phone call that her brother, a priest named Michael, was involved in what the police believe is a murder/suicide at a Scottish convent.  Grace doesn't believe that Michael could kill someone, let alone himself, and goes to the Mount Savior Convent on the Isle of Skye to investigate.  Cue sweeping vistas and sky-high seaside cliffs, as well as some really lovely drone shots of driving through the scenery.  Stunning.  The film actually reminds me of Mariano Baino's 1993 Nunsploitation shocker Dark Waters, with equally weird and malevolent nuns and just a touch of Folk Horror.  

              Grace sees the body of her brother Michael's body (Steffan Cennydd)

Grace is not buying the story the nuns are giving to the cops, particular DCI Harris (Thoren Ferguson), who is in charge of the investigation.  Why isn't there sand all over him if he died on the beach, she asks.  Well, Mother Superior and her mysterious fellow nuns are definitely hiding something.  Also on the case is Danny Huston's Father Romero, sent by the Vatican to consecrate the church and deal with a missing relic situation.  He appears to be helping Grace, but one scene gives away the game when Grace is not present.  Of course, as a Vatican "enforcer," he's not to be trusted.  He provides Grace with a book in secret code written by her brother--one that only she can read.  Kind of cool.  Lots of religious talk about there being "one true God," etc.  Again, like Dark Waters, viewers are not quite sure what God that might be, since the practices by the nuns are rather strange.  

Upon reading her brother's coded journal, Grace starts to experience a stream of confusing visions and hallucinations.  She has a very strong connection to Michael, in life and death, and not only does his spirit warn her, but she "sees" his torture by a priest and nuns when she touches an area where he has been.  What gradually unfolds is a traumatic past full of religious zealotry, child abuse, and children kept in cages.  Further, when the two children are on the way to being adopted after their mother's death by their father, a priest boots little Michael out of the vehicle and tries to chloroform Grace.  Things do not go well.  She also has strange flashbacks to experiences a century ago, where she's a little girl wearing a weird mask, and worshipping some deity above.  Definitely some folk horror practices going on.  Time bounces back and forth without clear boundaries, as Grace seems to see things from the past and the future.  No wonder in adulthood, Grace turned to science, while Michael fell deeper into religion.  Now, it seems there's a reckoning, as Grace investigates the secrets the convent is hiding, and how they connect to a traumatic past she is eager to forget.

                  Mother Superior (Janet Suzman) believes that the "relic" is Grace herself

Throughout the film, Grace is progressively stripped of her independence, as the convent places more and more restrictions upon her.  Also, nuns seem to end up dying right and left, by their own hand.  One minute they are brandishing a scary knife.  The next, they are dead.  Grace becomes more and more frightened as she watches these "murders" unfold, and the cops are highly interested in her.  Strangely, DCI Harris, when faced with these strange occurrences, steadfastly thinks it's all hooey.  Despite the occasional moment with another character, for expositional purposes, viewers are never far from Grace's side, and we are consistently meant to identify with her as she investigates these mysteries.

                         Grace begs Father Romero for help, surrounded by nuns

One of the penultimate showdowns between Grace and this cult is quite a spectacle, and the choreography of their religious rituals is definitely one of the visual highlights of the film.  Father Romero keeps saying "my child" to Grace in the most disingenuous way, but based laid cult plans!  I have to say, when viewers start to get answers to what's going on, I thought, "Oh. That's really dumb." Yet, you cannot just accept the film's "conclusion" at face value, because there are two, count them, two explanatory codas, that make spectators question everything that came before.  Like his previous film, Triangle, Consecration is certainly twisty, with some last minute reveals that sometimes hit and miss. Still, the nun with a gun comes back, and the very last death in the film is kind of great.  Sure, the death is a little cliché, but for me, that particular jump scare never gets old.  Consecration is not a great film, but it's pleasantly watchable, with a good performance by Jenna Malone, and a bunch of creepy nuns.  If you find religion terrifying, this film will hit some of your sweet spots.  It's streaming now on AMC+.

Review: My Best Friend's Exorcism (Damon Thomas, 2022)

                               My Best Friend's Exorcism's Girl Squad  (Damon Thomas, 2022)
 

I'm not immune to the plethora of horror film texts these days that look to the decade where I came of age--the 80s--with cultural nostalgia.  For me, it's largely the needle drops, for my tastes were formed by postpunk and new wave music from that period.  Likewise, I'm drawn to horror centering on women protagonists, so Damon Thomas's recent adaptation of Grady Hendrix's novel, My Best Friend's Exorcism, hits many of the marks.  The film zeroes in on Abby (Elsie Fisher) and Gretchen (Amiah Miller), best friends in the emotional hellscape of high school, who along with their two buds, Margaret (Rachel Ogechi Kanu) and Glee (Cathy Ang), head to a girl's night of fun at Margaret's parents' summer cabin-in-the-woods.  Of course, the girls decide to pull out the Ouija board and see if any spirits are around, but initially their only surprise visitor is Margaret's crass and excessively horny boyfriend, Wallace (Clayton Johnson).  Oh, and the 5 of them decide to take LSD--although it never actually appears to work.  Abby and Gretchen decide to check out an abandoned and supposedly haunted house in the woods, because 80s horror film vibes, but are soon separated by a presence mimicking their voices and leading them astray.  I'm not giving too much away to say that something strange happens to Gretchen.

                                  Abby and Gretchen's charming (and queer leaning) friendship

While I'm sure viewers will read My Best Friend's Exorcism anyway they want, I could not help but be charmed by how adorably queer Abby and Gretchen are--even while trying to fit in to the requirements of girlhood circa 1988.  I mean, they both want to "marry" Boy George, for goodness sake, but Abby kindly is willing to relinquish The Culture Club lead singer to Gretchen, as long as she can just live with them both.  Their friendship has a heartbreaking time limit though, for Gretchen is moving two states away with her snobby Christian parents.  This note of melancholy hovers over the entire film as Abby tries desperately to help Gretchen at every turn.  Meanwhile, Gretchen's transformation through possession hits very few original notes.  She basically becomes a mean girl to all of her friends, and hurts them in a variety of personal and creative ways.  What happens to Margaret is the most disturbing, and gets some good gross-out moments into the film.

                                      The Lemon Brothers perform for their High School

I keep telling other people that have lived through the 80s, that culturally, in many ways, we're right back to where we started.  Fear of nuclear annihilation because of Russian aggression?  Check.  Prejudice and hatred toward gender fluidity and non-normative gender performance?  Check.  The rise of the religious right and their endless culture war?  Check.  Fierce fighting over women's bodies and reproductive health?  Check, Check, Check!!!  Yet, My Best Friend's Exorcism's approach to Evangelical Christianity is relatively gentle and amused in its critique, especially when it comes to The Lemon Brothers and their zeal for Jesus.  Unsurprisingly, they are hired to "perform" their literal song and dance at the private religious school to which Gretchen, Abby, Margaret, and Glee attend, espousing the pleasures of "faith" and "fitness." The Brothers are a trio of Himbos that run around, lift weights, and shout about religion with delight.  Yet, when Christian spots the sulking Gretchen in the crowd, his face turns from pleasure to horror, as he seemingly witnesses something lurking in her depths.  Since he possesses "the sight," when Abby searches him out after employing every other avenue to help her best friend, he tells her of the demon within.  The pair decide to go back to Margaret's parents' cabin and perform an exorcism.

            It's not an exorcism film without some gratuitous backbends and body mortification

Once the exorcism is underway, the focus on Abby and Gretchen's friendship veers a bit, as Christian's humorous approach to exorcising demons takes center stage.  Of course, when things get messy, he freaks out and runs away, leaving Abby to her inevitable standoff with the demon.  Then....things just kind of end.  Full disclosure, the last half hour of the film gets tedious, and you'll want to stick around to find out what happens, but there are no shocks or twists involved. While the film is a fun riff on Heathers with exorcisms, unless you're plugged into the 80s nostalgia train, and willing to take that ride, the film is not very groundbreaking.  Still, it's fun, and streaming on Amazon Prime.

Fantasia 2019--THE DEEPER YOU DIG (John and Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, 2019)

Kurt (John Adams) appears to be seeing ghosts in The Deeper You Dig (2019)

Films are notoriously hard to make, even if some filmmakers make it look easy.  As I teach in a film department, and have even endeavored to make films of my own (all pretty terrible), as well as acted in some productions, I know of which I speak.  Not only must one have dedicated actors and crew who are willing to work for no money, but a story capable of being told on the cheap.  Then you have to figure out how to get people--with power, money, and connections--to see the damn thing.  For every film screened at Fantasia, there are a dozen more that didn't make the cut.  One way to resolve some of these issues is to exploit your family members and friends--so many great horror films hinge on getting just the right location, and frequently that location is your Uncle's house (with Mom and Dad providing "craft services" and a bunch of crew camping out on the floor of the set).  Still, getting all these factors in place is pretty rare, and that's why Toby Poser, and John and Zelda Adams' The Deeper You Dig (2019) is such a delightful accomplishment.

You'll float too!--Toby Poser as Ivy and Zelda Adams as Echo in The Deeper You Dig

Deeper begins with two narratives that will soon interconnect.  It follows mother and daughter Ivy and Echo as they experience an average winter day in Upstate New York (the Catskills, to be precise).  Echo wants to go sledding, and Ivy reminds her that she cannot be with her because she has a client meeting--Ivy's a "psychic" who does tarot readings and bilks customers for a chance to talk to their loved ones from beyond the veil.  Meanwhile, Kurt, their new neighbor, is tearing the house apart next door in order to flip it.  His clients are also likely wealthy New Yorkers who want a country getaway not too far from the city.  As is wont to happen, a snowstorm blankets the area, and during Kurt's drunken drive back from the local dive bar, he hears a "thump, thump" and stumbles out of his car to discover what he has accidentally hit.  As you can guess, it's not a deer.

Echo awakens in confusion

Here's where the film takes its fateful turn, and speaks to the carefully crafted nature of its story.  Most people (one hopes) would call 911 and get some emergency personnel out there to handle the situation.  Not Kurt...and what he decides to do shortly thereafter further seals his doom.  Ivy is not just sitting around either, and contacts the local authorities, files a missing persons report, and puts up "missing" posters all over town, even paying Kurt a visit to ask for his help in finding her.  What happens to Kurt is more than just a guilty conscience; as he slips deeper and deeper into the darkness, Ivy and Echo's real connection to the supernatural becomes impossible for him, and the audience, to ignore.  The film combines ghostly hauntings, paranormal phenomena, and possession in a wicked brew that is quite persuasive for a film budgeted at $11,000--as the filmmakers divulged in the film's Q  & A.

How did they pull it off?  Well, Toby and John are a couple, and Toby wrote the script and co-directed with John, and his daughter Zelda operated the camera, and all three of them star, using their home in Upstate as well as a house John was "flipping" as their primary locations.  While the film does have a DIY vibe, the soundtrack is quite evocative and sinister (crafted by John) and the beats of the story, as well as its practical effects, are superb.  The Deeper You Dig (2019) is a family affair, and the 5th feature film on their roster (the other films made by "The Adams Family" are available to screen on Amazon Prime).  John explained that he first got the idea for the family to make films when they were living out of an RV (with eldest daughter, Lulu, now off at college) driving around the country.  Only recently have they decided to try their hand at the horror genre--and the Fantasia audience was certainly glad that they did!

One cannot have enough creepy clowns!

Still, The Deeper You Dig is not just coasting on its "origin story," but is a deeply unsettling, well-acted, and beautifully composed dark fairy tale in its own right.  Toby, John, and Zelda are immensely talented and easygoing artists, and I really hope that more people get a chance to see this low budget, indie horror gem than the fans who cheered and embraced "The Adams Family" at Fantasia.  I'm hoping to bring them in as guests to my college, because I think our students will find them really and truly inspiring. 

Fantasia 2018--Luz--Tilman Singer (2018)

Dr. Rossini (Jan Bluthardt) gets a kiss to die for in Tilman Singer's super-cool Luz (2018)

As I waited patiently to file into the screening room to see Tilman Singer's Luz at the 2018 Fantasia Film Festival, a lovely gentlemen said to me, "It's like early Cronenberg, with some David Lynch, and also Zulawski."  I replied, "That's awesome, I like all those things!" now exceedingly pumped for a film about which I was already excited.  Well, he was right, but Luz is even cooler than all those touchstones, and one of the most lingeringly compelling and aesthetically beautiful films I've seen at Fantasia, this year and all the years.  Yes, it's that great.

A colleague of mine, whom I deeply respect, asked me, when I was waxing rhapsodically about Luz, "what exactly is the point?"  Hmmm.  I don't think that Luz can be explained in a pithy synopsis, because the film is not a straight-forward, linear narrative.  In fact, there is a thread of a narrative, regarding the female cabbie, Luz, and what appears to be a demon for whom she opened a door during her early boarding school days.  Intermittent flashbacks show a young, nude woman lying in a pentagram surrounded by candles--cue demon ritual.  Said demon really took a liking to Luz back in the day, and now she/he/it is on a "romantic" mission to reconnect with its lost love.  Like Justin McConnell's Lifechanger, the film's supernatural entity is also more or less a body thief, so gender does not really stick.  Yet, unlike McConnell's beast, Luz's entity is distinctly odd and inhuman, rendering the body it possesses strange and uncanny.  In the scene where the possessed Nora (Julia Riedler) seduces Dr. Rossini (Jan Bluthardt), she moves her body in a jerky, yet seductive, manner, slithering on her bar stool.  She fills the small space with her unnatural presence.

Dr. Rossini/the demon controls Detective Bertillion during Luz's hypnosis

The term "fever dream" is pretty over-used when it comes to hallucinatory horror films, but here it seems well placed, as the film shifts from different character subjectivities, and between past and present, without any discernible boundaries. Sometimes the camera gets up close to a character, such as its intimacy with Luz, but most of the time, the camera stays at a significant distance, like a wary observer.  This type of cinematography lends an eerie quality to the set pieces of the film, whether at the police station, where much of the film takes place, or at a bar, where Dr. Rossini has a very strange encounter with the intense Nora.  The scene at a local bar conveys genius on a limited budget, with oddly colored cocktails and shots served up, thrown back by Nora in a primal and predatory manner.  The scenes that take place at the entry to the police station, shot both in a long shot and in a long take, almost convey a mad "Jacques Tati" humor straight out of Playtime--although the film is far too creepy to elicit anything other than uncomfortable laughter.  A hypnosis scene in the police station's conference room becomes a melding, transformative encounter, as Dr. Rossini asks Luz to describe what happened to her the night she leapt from her moving cab.  Gunshots, body swapping, and demonic flashbacks galore explode into a gauzy mist, where characters become indistinguishable in the murky haze.

Luz's (Luana Velis) punk attitude and tough exterior hide her occult leanings

Accompanied by both a seductive and slightly discordant soundtrack, the encompassing mood of the film is deeply unsettling, and its 16mm grain gives the film a certain timelessness--even though the decor nods to 70s and 80s art horror.  Thankfully, no one's whipping out a cell phone here to ruin the mood.  Subtitles for this German film are sensitive to the multiple languages used, and Luz's blasphemous Spanish cursing is accompanied by both German and English subtitles.

Luz's deadly encounter with Dr. Rossini transforms the police station into a liminal space

All my delicate dancing around the film's subject matter cannot really express how gorgeous, imaginative, unsettling, and utterly unique the film is.  So many images leave an indelible impression that continue to haunt long after the film's screening.  Luz is Tilman Singer's student thesis film.  Yes!  I think if one of my students turned in a film with this much confidence, style, and power, my head would probably explode like a moment straight out of Scanners.  Fantasia is a place that can make a filmmaker's career, and I can only hope that a platform like Shudder or Amazon Prime will get a hold of Tilman's film and share it with everyone.  A standout of Fantasia 2018, it's too soon to tell, but Luz is a contender for my favorite film of the festival!  Wow.  Find it and see it.

Yet another review of Hereditary--Ari Aster (2018)

This moment precipitates the slide toward non-stop visual and narrative "insanity" in Ari Aster's Hereditary (2018)

Since everyone out there in "horror film" land has eagerly been anticipating this film, has seen it, or has seen a bazillion reviews about Ari Aster's Hereditary (2018), I figure it's time for me to weigh in.  Not only should you see this film if you are into horror, but you should probably screen it more than once, since a great deal happens in little corners of the frame, and certain moments take on much greater significance (and perhaps a shift in meaning) upon film's end.

The film follows one particular family, The Grahams, as they process the death of their mother/grandmother, a difficult woman that her artist daughter, Annie (Toni Collette) tends to immortalize in these miniature dioramas of her house, and the experiences she has there.  Rounding out the rest of the Grahams are psychiatrist/father, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), with eldest son, Peter (Alex Wolff), and younger, ambiguously disabled daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro).  Unsurprisingly, this family is really pretty bad at expressing their emotions and supporting each other in times of crisis, so the death of Annie's Mom sends them on a slippery slope, and then over a precipice into a nightmare abyss from which there is no return.  The film is a pretty slow burn, punctuated by the death of a main character a la Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.  Once that death occurs, things start to escalate, but the film really gets into gear in the last 15 minutes of the film, and then things just get nuts.  While one has to be careful how one uses words like "insanity," "crazy," or "nuts," the ending of Hereditary is so intense, over the top, and out there, that these terms seem quite appropriate--especially for a film that in some ways at least calls out, if still not really exploring, the pain of mental illness.  I haven't seen an ending in a contemporary horror film that left my mouth hanging open quite so much as Hereditary's, not since Liam Gavin's  A Dark Song (2016)--a film I really need to rewatch and review.

Annie (Toni Collette) channels her turbulent inner life by creating bespoke interiors

One of my favorite things about Hereditary is its portrait of its protagonist/artist, Annie.  She makes these finely detailed dioramas of her personal space, and many clues to the film's world are lurking in these miniature realms.  Indeed, the film begins through a clever device thrusting us into its world, as one of Annie's miniature rooms is suddenly charged into animation by Steve walking into his Peter's room in order to wake him for Grandma's funeral.

Making living in "little boxes" all too real

This liminal, psychological space, formed and perfected through Annie's artistry, constantly shifts as Annie's perspective changes.  No one really talks about their feelings in the Graham household, compelling Annie to visit grief counseling groups, rather than turning to her psychiatrist/husband, Steve.  On the whole, Steve is one of the most useless characters ever committed to celluloid, and sure, Gabriel Byrne is underplaying his role, but Hereditary really does some harm to representations of the psychiatric and therapeutic communities.  In fact, it's in grief counseling where Annie meets Joan (the always marvelous Ann Dowd), who sends her on a journey that "ignites" a spark that rapidly explodes the family's already tenuous connections to each other.  What I'm suggesting, in perhaps a roundabout way, is that the film does a wonderful job of allowing Annie an outlet for some of her pain at the same time implying that her safe, miniaturized universe will not save her from the sh**storm to come.  One particularly powerful moment has Annie regaling her grief group with an anecdote regarding her mother's overbearing presence in raising her daughter, Charlie, which the film chooses to illustrate by returning spectators to the world of her dioramas.  These chilling illustrations punctuate the film's past and present with reminders about the unsettling contents of Annie's psyche.

Annie illustrates a not-very-touching scene where her mother's domineering presence hinders her connection to Charlie

Also, Toni Collette has given one of the best performances of her acting career.  During the film, you cannot take your eyes off her.  She combines sympathy with charisma and the kind of blithe cluelessness that seems essential in order for horror film protagonists to fall into the hot messes required.  She performs grief, rage, stoicism, confusion, and mania with equal expertise, and like Amelia in The Babadook, spectators are both identifying with and afraid of Annie--quite a trick that only the most talented actors can pull off. While horror films rarely get enough accolades, one hopes that someone in these various awarding institutions realizes the tremendous performance Collette gives in Hereditary.

Of course, I wouldn't be a horror film critic if I didn't s**t a little bit on the effusive love of Hereditary by calling out some of its most egregious problems.  Be warned, from here onward there are lots of ***spoilers.

Herditary's representations of disability, and their alignment with evil, really suck

The film's pat representations of both mental illness and disability, and their ultimate link to demonic evil are a really BIG problem, and I have seen some, but not a ton, of discussion about these issues in reviews.  First, audiences learn from a monologue Annie gives to the camera/her grief support group, that she comes from a long line of mentally ill family members, including her mother and brother.  This revelation, combined with the tragic ways in which the Grahams communicate/do not communicate with each other, points a finger throughout the rest of the film right at "bad MOM" Annie, who perhaps has inherited these unfortunate traits, and has indeed passed them onto her disabled daughter, Charlie. 

Then there's Charlie's unnamed, undiagnosed, and unclear disability.  Ominously pegged as Grandma's favorite, she barely speaks, and needs to be monitored at all times since she cannot seem to control her own vicious nut allergy.  Is she on the autism spectrum, developmentally disabled?  Hereditary is happy to use her disability to make Charlie creepy and unlikable, but cannot spare the time to either explain what's wrong, nor flesh out her interior world.  Like Annie, Charlie also appears to be an artist, constructing her own little effigies out of various parts, but she happens to cut the heads off of dead birds to use in her contraptions.  Such details become important when spectators find out at film's end that Charlie houses a demon who's trapped inside her inferior female body until "he" can find a preferable male vessel in Peter.  Here is the film's great conceit: Charlie isn't actually disabled, but rather possessed by a demon, seemingly compelling her to decapitate herself in order for the demon, Paimon, to sneak into her now devastated brother, Peter.  This great demon uprising has been in play since before Charlie's birth, as Annie's mom had pressured her to have children in order to create this vessel.  Which brings me to the most tired and cliched part of Hereditary:

Moms are evil and will destroy everything and everyone--including themselves--for the greater demon good

Women, especially mothers, are evil, self-absorbed, and not protective, and will do anything to reestablish patriarchal dominance through the worshiping of male demons, and once that's handled, they might as well off themselves in one of the most incredible, indelible images ever to be committed to horror film.  Seriously, the image of Toni Collette's Annie, levitating up into the upper corner of the house, manically sawing her own head off in front of Peter's horrified gaze is going to stay with me for a really long time.  That image, followed by a perverse tableau of demon worship (visited by a trio of headless female corpses) enacted in the family tree house, leaves Peter the last guy/demon standing, compelled into place by the machinations of some demon-worshiping cult (led by Anne Dowd, of course). 

So Hereditary isn't a film about mental illness, or a family's inability to cope with grief.  Nope.  The long con is a plan to resurrect a demon, and it works.  Women are only pawns or tools in achieving this dream, and their bodies are easily violated as they are mere supplicants to this patriarchal fantasy run amok.  Now you might think, "Hereditary is obviously a critique of these ideas because it's representing them in such a blatant manner."  I would then sigh, heavily, and once again remind readers that "representing" racism, sexism, and homophobia doesn't necessarily mean that those problems are critiqued, and very well might be reinforced by said representations.

Come for the occult rituals and weirdness, but don't be fooled by talk of "cultural critique"

Should you see Hereditary?  Definitely.  The film is visually provocative, marked by a riveting performance by Toni Collette, revels in various uncanny settings, and is laden with enough creepy occult stuff to pretty much demand repeat viewing.  What are those words written sporadically on the walls of the house?  What are some clues that Joan's really evil, and how does Charlie manifest this evil while she still has her "girl" body?  How many shallow shout-outs to mental illness are there?  Why is Steve clearly the worst mental illness professional ever?  These questions are sure to haunt viewers after their first screening, but nothing, NOTHING haunts as much as that image of Annie frantically sawing off her own head.  Still haunted.

Fantasia 2016--The Wailing--Hong-jin Na (2016)

A bravura gore scene from Hong-Jin Na's The Wailing (2016)

Horror films are notoriously populated by not-so-bright characters who make bad decisions.  Characters constantly go where they should not, trust people that are suspicious, and react in panic rather than rationally--and honestly, with all the blood, violence and mayhem suddenly surging into their lives, one can forgive horror protagonists for going a little nuts.  That's why Hong-Jin Na's protagonist, Sgt. Jeon Jong-gu (Do Won Kwak), rather surprisingly takes "the protagonist who makes poor decisions" to a whole new level.

Family members are brutally slaughtering each other in the formerly boring rural town of Goksung

For the most part, nothing seems to happen in rural Goksung, so when the Sgt. is called to investigate a brutal double homicide, his whole family excitedly chirrups that "someone has died."  This violence is only the beginning as a series of horrible murders, burnings, and mutilated bodies are found in rapid order.  To say Jeon Jong-gu is bumbling is a kindness.  He and his partner stumble from crime scene to crime scene, shocked and inept, as rumors of red-eyed cannibalistic demons, and the influence of a Japanese stranger, start to circulate.  The film does impress upon the spectator that these events are pretty dramatic, since not a lot happens in Goksung.

In the film's first 45 minutes, The Wailing's tone is a little wonky, as we are introduced to the main players, and basically witness Jeon's cowardly performance in a comedic fashion--making me wonder if the "comedy" is supposed to counteract the horror that really starts to sweep through the film at an unrelenting pace.  At one point, Jeon is called "A girly wimp with balls the size of peas," and this description is not unwarranted.  He's the guy who hides under the bed when attacked.

These cops kind of deserve the rocks thrown at them by The Woman with No Name (Woo-hee Chun)

For instance, a rather hilarious set-piece has Sgt. Jong-gu and his partner patiently guarding one crime scene while a woman (with no name) throws rocks at them.  While Jeon eventually speaks to her and discovers some important information about the case, it takes him a really long time to put the puzzle together--although he's at least suspicious of the "poison mushroom" theory proffered by the local medical community.

Is this Japanese stranger (Jun Kunimura) responsible for the violence that befalls Goksung?

This woman sets him on the path of a Japanese stranger who may be a catalyst for Goksung's current horrific decline, and when Jeon pays him a rather violent visit, the brutal violence that has spread like a curse through his town takes an extremely personal turn, as his daughter begins to exhibit symptoms of possession.

Jeon's poor daughter (Hwan-hee Kim) is possessed by vicious evil

Once Jeon's daughter is taken over, the film becomes a little more genre familiar as Jeon does everything he can to save her, including hiring a pretty expensive shaman to perform some extremely loud rituals.

The Shaman (Jeong-min Hwang) goes full throttle in an attempt to exorcise the girl

At this point in the film, I felt the most out of my depth, wondering if this kind of "shaman-for-hire" is actually still a part of contemporary Korean culture, or if it's limited to more rural pockets.  As I live in a country that still has its share of snake charmers and Scientologists, I figure anything is possible, but this type of ritualized religious performance seemed very over the top--which might be quite deliberate.  My cultural ignorance felt acute.

Hwan-hee Kim gives a harrowing performance as Jeon's possessed daughter

As I mentioned before, the film's horrific grip is motivated by Jeon's dumb decisions, but things ratchet up when his family's life is at stake.  The film's well-performed and orchestrated possession narrative takes center stage in the second half of the film, and propels the narrative into a series of bursting climaxes, as one rising tension is followed by another in rapid succession.  At 2 hours and 36 minutes, this film is rather long, but really never feels that way once things get rolling.  The film's downbeat ending is pretty much telegraphed from the start, but Hwan-hee Kim's tense performance feels like a fist closing around your heart.  This ending has divided some viewers, but I thought it hit just the right note.  See The Wailing on a big screen and with an audience if you can, but be sure to see it!

In homophobic, present day Russia, Pyotr (Alex Ozerov) hides a powerful secret

Special props to Blake Mawson for the simultaneously unsettling and timely PYOTR495 (2016), which screened at Fantasia prior to The Wailing.  Beautifully shot and wickedly paced, this short feels especially poignant in the wake of the Orlando massacre at Pulse nightclub and Russia's LGBT propaganda law.  Queer teen Pyotr meets up with a Grinder date for a hookup, but soon realizes that he's stepped into a horrific trap by homophobic Russian nationalists up for a little gay bashing "ultra violence."

This psycho Barbie is a super stylish Russian nightmare

The styling of this short is sleek and masterful, with the lighting, costumes, sets, and makeup creating a visual feast that at the same time is damn hard to watch--at first.  Not to give anything away, but Pyotr might not be so young, naive, and defenseless after all.  As Mawson was kind enough to point out, the film's awesome soundtrack by the inimitable Konrad Black is available for a listen here.  I'm looking forward to seeing more from this talented young filmmaker.

Fantasia 2016--Demon--Marcin Wrona (2015)

Zeneta (Agnieszka Zulewska) comforts her ailing newlywed husband Piotr/Pyton (Itay Tiran) in Marcin Wrona's Demon

Weddings are overwrought family reunions steeped in archaic traditions, where everyone wears a mask of faux frivolity and cheer.  Weddings are also a place where much alcohol flows, and family secrets and tensions tend to come to light when inhibitions start to erode.  If one had to imagine a worst-case-scenario for weddings, I think that Demon would fulfill that particular nightmare.  Londoner Piotr travels to Poland to wed his best friend's sister, Zeneta, someone he has clearly not known for long since his wedding is his first time meeting the rest of the family.  Zeneta's parents have gifted them the country house at which the wedding takes place, and it's definitely a fixer upper.

Hana watches as Piotr stands over where her bones lie

The night before his wedding, Piotr uncovers some bones dug up by a backhoe.  Suddenly he gets sucked into a black, bubbling mud puddle, and things take a turn....

A Priest marries Piotr and Zeneta in a very traditional ceremony

The bride and groom try to fulfill various wedding traditions

Piotr is really not feeling very well

Piotr's thrashing and shrieking cannot be misinterpreted as "dancing"

The next morning, family and friends gather to celebrate the couple's nuptials, but as the celebration unfolds, Piotr starts behaving ever more oddly, and feels...rather strange.  He starts to see things, and when forced to give a groom's speech, he stutters and gags, eventually spitting out the name "Hana"--much to Zeneta's dismay.  He's raising the ghosts of ex-girlfriends??  Well, not quite, but Piotr is at first haunted and then possessed by the poor dead Hana, and the mystery to her disappearance, and what she symbolizes adds a great deal of richness and nuance to the way Poland grapples with its violent past.

Piotr's groom's speech is both confusing and awkward

Itay Tiran's performance as Piotr is truly remarkable.  He balances sinister and vulnerable beautifully as he gradually gives himself over to Hana's possession.  The various attendees try to medically or rationally explain Piotr's transformation--he's really drunk, he has epilepsy, he's a lunatic--not willing to own up to their possible involvement in the Dybbuk's possession of Piotr's innocent outsider.  While a priest, doctor, and the family patriarch all weigh in, its a bumbling old Jewish professor who translates Piotr's Yiddish and realizes who is actually present.  Another standout performance is Tomasz Zietek as Ronaldo, a jealous young friend of the family who harbors a not so secret crush on Zeneta, and eagerly participates in keeping the family's secrets--in the process, creating one of his own in a fit of rage.

Zeneta's dreams of wedding bliss are demolished

Finally, there's Agnieszka Zulewska's devastating performance as Zeneta, a woman who on her wedding day sees her dreams of love and family destroyed.  She must bear the burden of coming to terms with, and recognizing, her own complicity in her family's, and Poland's, sordid past, and the ending to her story is fitting and irrevocably sad.

While it's early days at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival, and I have a great deal more to see, Demon was the first film that powerfully rendered me speechless and overwhelmed.  This film is a powerful testament to the secrets and histories that we try to bury in order to "put on a happy" facade and avoid our horrifying past.  A must see.

Anguish--Sonny Mallhi (2015)

Tess (Ryan Simpkins) isn't sure it's safe to go home in Anguish--Sonny Mallhi (2015)

Mental Illness and Demon Possession have always been strange bedfellows--in horror films and throughout history.  Mentally ill people are often wrongly persecuted under the assumption that they are possessed by evil.  Unnecessary exorcisms ensue.  Throw in rampant sexism, and then women who do not behave appropriately (too sexy) are also deemed possessed.  Burn them at the stake--problem solved.  Rarely does a film that dabbles in spiritual possession do so with any sense of nuance or moral ambiguity.  Rather, the world is strongly rendered in moral contrast, and films that focus on spiritual possession obsess over the struggle between GOOD and EVIL at play in the film.  These films are often about punishing mothers for not being good enough (The Exorcist, The Conjuring), reiterating the scariness of female sexuality (The Exorcist, The Haunting of Hell House, The Last Exorcism), or focusing on a male character struggling with his faith in the face of EVIL (The Exorcist, Deliver Us From Evil).  Sonny Mallhi's Anguish (2015) is that rare film that gets the balance just right, exploring people struggling with mental illness while also suggesting that those "illnesses" may be a way of explaining what happens to people "gifted" with spiritual possession.  Anguish also explores these ideas through the sensitive representation of women characters--two pairs of mothers and daughters.  What this film accomplishes is really rather astounding, and frankly, pretty damn scary too!

The film opens on one mother/daughter pairing, Sarah (Karina Logue) and her daughter Lucy (Amberley Grimley).  The two are having a fairly typical conversation, with Lucy asking sullenly if she can go on a camping trip, and her mother saying "nope."  In a huff, Lucy decides to walk home rather than sharing space with her Mom, and as one sees in the trailer, things turn deadly.

Jumping forward to what seems like a mere few months later, another mother and daughter move to town, Jessica (Annika Marks) and her daughter Tess (Ryan Simpkins).  Tess's quiet withdrawal and darkness mirrors Lucy's brooding from before.  These teenage girls seem sad and mysterious, trapped in discomfort, misunderstood, and wrestling with their inner demons.  What becomes clear quickly is that Tess is "troubled," on medication, and struggling to get through each day.  Her new home does not help matters, as she seems to be especially sensitive to the bad vibes (or spirits) lingering around town.  She and her Mom both wear crosses, and visit the local Priest, Father Meyers.  Still, when sh** gets real, the church and religion do not seem to provide any clear or easy answers.  In fact, as my friend Andrew Mack, an Associate Editor at Twitch points out, men do not save the day in this film.  How refreshing.  The only way Jessica and Tess can find there way out is through the help of another mother and daughter--Sarah and Lucy.

Sarah (Karina Logue) and Jessica (Annika Marks) do their best to save Tess (Ryan Simpkins) from her Anguish

Mallhi is probably best known for producing films like The Strangers (2008) the Oldboy remake (2013), and last year's At the Devil's Door (2014).  Here he crafts some remarkable set-pieces and characters, creating a heady atmosphere of dread.  What Mallhi does beautifully is capture the misery of what it feels like to be a teenager while showing that parents, especially mothers, are not always the enemy. Not once are Jessica or Sarah shown in a negative light, even when they are acting like parents and telling their daughters what to do, or expressing their concern.  The daughters, like many teenagers, are pretty damn inscrutable at times.  Ryan Simpkins' Tess is a fascinating presence in the film, and Simpkins effectively conveys to the audience what it feels like to live in Tess's skin.  And wearing that skin is like wearing an itchy sweater.  Not comfortable. 

Another striking thing about this film is how ambiguously it frames the "afterlife"--or at least what happens after a particularly violent death.  To me, that part of the film was truly terrifying, and suggests that there is all this messed up stuff happening behind the veil between worlds.  Hints of this world could be parlayed into a sequel (I know, bite my tongue) in order to explore this realm further.  Yes, you know it's a good film when I'm actually requesting a sequel!  Likewise, the film ends on a slightly ambiguous note, leaving the film open to interpretation with some questions left unanswered.  This film's openness respects the audience's intelligence, and encourages repeat viewings.

Sonny Mallhi's Anguish (2015) was one of my most hotly anticipated films screening at the 2015 Fantasia Film Festival, and I was not disappointed.  Here's hoping that Mallhi makes another soon. I highly recommend this scary, thoughtful, and unsettling film.

At the Devil's Door--Nicholas McCarthy (2014)

Ashley Rickards as the babysitter from hell in At the Devil's Door

Nicholas McCarthy really knows how to make a house vibrate with terror and dread.  I deeply and sincerely love his film The Pact (2012), which is one of those films that I happened to find on Netflix (watch the trailer).  His first feature was about a seriously scary closet.  Okay, the film explored more than just "scary closets," but this calling card gave a strong sense of how McCarthy negotiated fear, women, madness, and cinematic space.  Even Casper Von Diem was good in it, and that's saying something.  So I highly anticipated his latest film.  I have some positive things to say about At the Devil's Door, but as a whole, it was a disappointing follow-up to his first film.  This second effort indicates how a bigger budget might actually hamper a filmmaker's creative integrity.  It feels like McCarthy is trying to please someone else or pander to a wider audience.  While I understand that motivation, I'm unhappy about the outcome.

The film opens with a young female narrator reading from some tome that warns the world about the devil, his mark, and the number 666--just in case we weren't clear that some devil/demon is involved based on the film's title.  Then the film follows a teenager (Ashley Rickards) fooling around with her new boyfriend.  He tells her about a quick way to make $500 by playing some game dictated by a creepy occult guy with mysterious motives.  He tells her to go to the crossroads and say her name, and he will know her, and that she's the perfect vessel, blah, blah blah.  She proceeds to blow her new windfall on some cool red kicks and some goth make-up and nail polish, but then she hears some weird noises coming from the armoire (which is basically a free-standing closet).  Before we know it, she's up in the air, being thrown around and invaded by some mysterious malevolent force...and then she no longer feels like herself.  We get to witness her being the WORST BABYSITTER ever, a truly great antidote to the over-earnest parents who think that their baby is the greatest kid on earth.  McCarthy also dresses the girl in a shiny, red hooded rain slicker, which really ups the fairy-tale, Red Riding Hood gone bad quotient.

What's hiding in the armoire?

Fast forward to Leigh (Catalina Sandino Moreno from Maria Full of Grace) as the sweet real estate agent who is eager to sell the girl's former home, fully unaware of the events that previously occurred there.  She finds a whole host of weird stuff, including a big burn mark in the girl's bedroom, a noisy armoire with a $500 roll of bills in its bottom drawer, and a mirror draped in black--which doesn't make her hesitate about selling the house AT ALL!  Luckily red-riding slicker shows up and lurks around the house quite a bit, distracting the good-hearted Leigh from selling the place quickly.  As you might imagine, things continue to go downhill from there.

The film becomes derivative in how it shapes its "possession narrative" and how it nestles horror within the fertile female body.  McCarthy does the "sinister home" beautifully, but he's less assured when it comes to the devil.  As the film progresses, he loses sight of his unique female characters, and quite literally treats them like "vessels" for something evil, moving from our red-riding slicker girl, to Leigh, to her artist-sister Vera (played by Naya Rivera).  The last twenty minutes of the film drag as the plot tries to tie up its loose ends; the biggest problem is that by the time we are left with Vera, the least compelling of the female characters, it's hard to really care what happens.

Sometimes Vera should look behind her

Still, At the Devil's Door has a few moments that, once witnessed, are literally burned into the spectator's brain.  McCarthy is more interested in leveraging atmosphere by stretching what occurs on the edges of the frame rather than adding a lot of telegraphed jump scares.  One particular image in front of a mirror is one of the greatest images from any of the films at Fantasia.  Also there's some awesome evil kid action.  Yet like Honeymoon, the film left me wanting more information in some places, and wishing the film "didn't go there" at other times.  What was missing most from McCarthy's second feature was the building of suspense.  At times, the film has an original vision, but in the end, it falls into too many well-worn tropes.  Too damn predictable.  While I'll still call myself a fan of his work, I'm hoping that his next film will be a bit more imaginative and unique.