Review--Nocebo--Lorcan Finnegan (2022)

 

             Nocebo (Lorcan Finnegan, 2022) even manages to make Eva Green ugly!  Hard to do.

Many people do not take horror films seriously, and just think they are dumb fun without anything really socially relevant to say.  Further, those kinds of films rarely get Oscars, which isn't the only way to judge a film, but it is a way many people align films with their worth.  Sigh.  Sure, some films are more overt about their socially conscious message, but horror films have important things to say about our fears and anxieties, as well as how those fears shape our world.  Most horror makes us fear through the process of "othering," rendering characters who might seem different and strange as monstrous.  Nocebo, Lorcan Finnegan's newest film after Vivarium (2019) goes back to his Folk Horror focus, initially represented in his first feature Without Name (2016).  While I haven't seen either of his previous films, a film starring Eva Green will always be in my "to see" list, especially if it's a Folk Horror film.  Win!!!  Finnegan's film is an astute exploration of inequality and revenge, and once you get to film's end, the message is damn clear.  viewers should be thinking more deeply about where their clothing comes from, and who makes them...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

  Traditional medicine seems to fail Christine, for her symptoms disappear every time she sees a doctor

The film is set in both Ireland and the Philippines, making this work a solid coproduction.  Spectators are first introduced to Christine (Eva Green) while she's at work.  She's a children's fashion designer, and she's putting on a runway show for her latest designs.  Having to take a phone call, we only see her side of the conversation, but she appears deeply upset and says "pulling out bodies" at one point.  Ruh-roh.  My first thought was that either her husband, Felix (Mark Strong) or her daughter Roberta, aka Bobs (Billie Gadsdon), have been in a car accident.  This narrative move seems to be more and more common in horror films with female protagonists.  While Christine is on the phone, a mangy looking dog walks into the showroom, and slowly shakes itself all over Christine, showering her with ticks.  Yeah, it's nasty, but we never learn what the phone call is about until much, much later.  Cut to eight months later, and Christine is a shadow of her former self, with a mysterious ailment that she cannot seem to shake.  Her symptoms weirdly disappear every time she goes to the doctor, and thus Felix thinks it's all in her head--of course he does, because the unsupportive and suspicious spouse is the go-to in horror films that focus on women protagonists.  Then her savior arrives, the lovely and enigmatic Diana (Chai Fonacier).  Because of Christine's frequent memory lapses, she's not at all phased that she has forgotten she's hired Diana, a Filipino woman, to take care of the house and her daughter.

          Diana (Chai Fonacier) employs folk practices to help heal Christine's various ailments

Chai Fonacier as Diana is a force of nature in Nocebo, literally and figuratively.  She arrives, claiming to be there to help Christine, and she does so, using various folk traditions and practices to pull the sickness out of her.  She's a bit mysterious, though, with a shrine set up in her bedroom that she hides away from her employers, and a pile of ash that she leaves in front of her bedroom door--one that a child's footprints are nestled in.  Christine grows more dependent on Diana as time passes, and even Bobs becomes increasingly close to her gentle kindness.  Yet, what is she hiding?  Certainly Felix is extremely suspicious, and feels like he's in an emotional tug of war with her over Christine's well being.

               Diana, as a child, being possessed by the Ongo--one that gives her great powers

Diana eventually discloses to Christine that her healing powers come from her possession by an Ongo, whose powers were passed to her as a young girl when the Ongo originally passed in her childhood home.  Now, Diana has the ability to heal, and to also cause great harm.  Like any good Folk Horror, the cultural clash between this rich, white, privileged family and a poor woman of color struggling to make money determines much of the film's conflict.  Viewers discover later, through flashbacks to the Philippines, that Diana used to work in sweatshop eking out fast fashion in a Philippine city, and her daughter, who she was forced to bring to work with her, perished when a fire erupted in the warehouse.  Crucially, **spoilers moving forward, Diana was making clothing, children's clothing, for Christine.  Once viewers think back to the film's instigating incident, and the start of Christine's mysterious illness, the urgent phone call she takes at her fashion show is news of her workers perishing in this fire.  They were harmed because they were 1) forced to work in unsafe conditions, 2) asked to increase their quota of garments significantly, and 3) locked into the building in order to prevent them from stealing--something that Christine specifically makes a policy.  Diana's long game is revenge.

    Diana's rituals escalate as she "helps" Christine to understand her complicity in her daughter's death

Christine's husband Felix was suspicious of Diana from the start, but Diana expertly uses Bobs as a way to cast doubt on his trustworthiness, asking her to lie in order to turn Christine against him. Then a fortuitous fall over the bannister lands Felix in the hospital, and Diana conveniently steps up her treatment of Christine's illness, including having her slave over a sewing machine in intense heat and without breaks.  While I'm not going to give a way the film's ending, it's pretty damn satisfying.

                           Bobs, as the new Ongo, collects valuable herbs in the forest

Nocebo is unique for its clever mixture of occult and supernatural rituals--with a specific Philippine focus--as well as its frank and powerful indictment of white privilege, fast fashion, and sweatshop labor.  While I do love Eva Green, her character Christine is pretty hard to like by film's end, and her fate seems fair for the crimes she, however unwittingly, commits.  A comment by Diana, that she'll always be with Christine's daughter, Bobs, plays out as true and rather poignant, as viewers witness in the film's final images the young girl communing with the nature that surrounds her.  Finnegan's work here actually makes me want to give Vivarium a try!  Nocebo is currently streaming on Shudder, and highly recommended.

Review--The Twin--Taneli Mustonen (2022)

 

           One Creepy kid (Tristan Ruggeri) and Finnish folks with dorky hats are in The Twin (2022)

I was really, really digging The Twin (Taneli Mustonen, 2022) through most of its run time!  Then came the film's ending, and I was so outraged.  Outraged!  

Sometime in the 1980s, Rachel (Teresa Palmer) and Anthony (Steven Cree) are struggling with immeasurable grief, as they lost one of their twin sons, Nathan, in a car accident.  Haunted by this incident, they leave New York City with their son, Elliot, in tow, and travel to Anthony's homeland, a small village in Finland (it was actually shot in Estonia).  The majority of the film takes place here, as the couple and their son hastily move into a giant house in the Finnish countryside in order to start anew.  The house in which the film is set has multiple floors, and seems to be the setting for a former funeral home or mortuary?  It's kind of unclear.  Elliot immediately decides to live at the very top of the house, in the attic, with a super sinister round window at the top, and asks that Mom and Dad put a twin bed in for his dear, departed twin.  Rachel acquiesces to his request, while Anthony immediately pushes back, suggesting that this situation is exactly what "the doctor" warned against.  This set up easily slides into the Haunted Heroine horror film, where a female protagonist struggles with seemingly supernatural events, while everyone else--the local folk, Anthony, and even Elliot--actively question every single move that Rachel makes.  Yet, there's a ton of creepy stuff afoot.

                       Rachel and Elliot cling to each other in the menacing Finnish forest

First, the family visits a local pagan shrine, where if you press your hand against the red handprints on the rock, and make a wish, your wish very well might come true.  Elliot proceeds to "make a wish," and you just know he's wishing for his brother's return.  Then at a welcoming party that the family attends, everyone seems to ignore Rachel, except for the elderly Helen (Barbara Marten), who the villagers believe has a screw loose.  She pulls Rachel aside and tells her that she dreamed of her, and that her son has made a wish, and it was granted.  Ruh-roh.  Not only is Rachel not fitting in, but she and Anthony are compelled to climb onto some giant wooden "wedding" swing as another "pagan" tradition of the town.  As the pagan traditions start to add up, I was getting really excited about a potential Folk Horror title to add to my very long list.  Helen appears to be the only person really willing to talk to Rachel, or take her seriously, especially when Elliot disappears, and then comes back, claiming that he's Nathan.  Sure, Helen equates pagans with Satanists, which is rally sloppy for 2022, but I went with it.

               Rachel, dressed up as some May Queen, is tended to by a bunch of nuns/cultists?  

The strange folk of their new town are rendered stranger at every turn.  At first, they stand around silently, looking disapproving and whispering behind Rachel's back.  Then her visit to the doctor about Elliot's claims (that he's Nathan) just serves to piss her off.  Helen then brings up a cockamamie story about her husband being possessed by some demon, his face twisted into an obscene grimace as he dies a pretty awful death.  There's even one scene that juxtaposes Teresa's weird nightmares/visions with Helen's to suggest that these two women are struggling within a foreign environment (Helen is British) intent on destroying them.  At this point in the film, like Rachel, viewers do not trust anyone, especially Anthony, who comes from this pretty grim place.  Helen also suggests that there are some weird town-related conspiracies involving circles, and we then see numerous rituals on bleak hillsides, where the strange folk are standing in circles, doing who knows what.

                                        Rachel looks pretty awesome in mourning garb

If not for Teresa Palmer's persuasive portrayal of Rachel, this film would be dead from the start, but she's so convincing, that viewers care about the stakes here.  The husband and son are not very well-developed, but after they move to Finland, Anthony comes across as a gaslighting mastermind, who has the whole town convinced that Rachel needs medicating.  In fact, there are numerous shots of Rachel waking up in bed after being dosed with a hypodermic.  What are these people up to, you wonder, as clumps of townsfolk stare, and stare at her.  As I said, the explanation jettisons all the potential Folk Horror/possession/haunting possibilities.  **SPOILERS FOLLOW Turns out, according to that jerk, Anthony, that he and Rachel never had a twin, that Nathan died in a car crash where Rachel was driving, and that she's just crazy, hallucinating another twin when there isn't one.  Oh, and Helen's clearly crazy too, just as the rest of the town thinks she is.  Sure, the Haunted Heroine narrative always oscillates between supernatural happenings and unreliable narrator madness, but something about The Twin felt cheap and dirty in choosing to end the film this way.  Leaving the cemetery one last time, with her family's two gravestones in front of her, Rachel climbs into her car to discover that EVERYONE'S ALIVE, including the imaginary twin she created.  Basically, the ending completely negates all of the spooky stuff happening throughout the earlier portions of the film, rendering any supernatural questions pointless.  The "it was all just a dream/delusion" finale does not feel earned, and I'm still angry at the bait-and-switch.  Perhaps the "she was always just insane" approach has worn thin for me, but The Twin, now streaming on Shudder, disappoints.  NOT recommended.

Ari Aster's Exploration of Grief--Midsommar review (2019)

Dani and Christian take a solstice holiday in Ari Aster's Midsommar (2019)

I had the good fortune of seeing an Ari Aster double feature last night, with a re-screening of Hereditary (2018) accompanied by the premiere of Aster's second feature film, Midsommar (2019).  On the whole, I'm a fan of Hereditary, and watching it again, I unsurprisingly noticed more details and became more sympathetic to the grief-stricken Annie and her family than I was the first time I saw the film.  To some extent, Annie and Charlie are mere victims of a group of people "hellbent" on maintaining the patriarchy by bringing this low-level demon, Paimon, into the world.  Toni Collette is still mesmerizing in her grief, and I really started to sympathize with Alex Wolff's Peter in a much more visceral way this time around.  Wolff gives an extraordinary performance.

I also got into a bit of an argument with this guy sitting next to me, who kept insisting that Annie is entirely unreliable, and the only character worthy of our identification is Steve.  Of course, I think Steve (Gabriel Byrne) is by far the lamest character in the film, just politely downing some pills with his scotch rather than actively doing anything of import!  Yeah, I still dislike that character, but the guy next to me swore that Steve is the only one who actually knows how to grieve, and he's the biggest victim, mostly of Annie's machinations.  Please.  I didn't stick around to hear his take on Midsommar, but I bet he didn't like it that much, since spectators are yet again compelled to identify with an "unstable" female protagonist.  If he was trying to cling to some male POV, then he's pretty SOL unless he identifies with the wonderful Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) who is always, always on protagonist Dani's side.

Dani (Florence Pugh) is the heart of Midsommar and we are aligned with her POV

Ari Aster is capable of bringing out these incredible performances from his female protagonists, and Florence Pugh's Dani is a revelation.  Her journey is ours.  I happened to encounter Pugh in Carol Morley's wonderful The Falling (2014)--her breakout role--and while we do not get enough of her character in that film, one can understand why the other girls, including Maisie Williams' Lydia, are obsessed with her.  Initially, Dani is painted as insecure, tiptoeing around her boyfriend Christian's (Jack Reynor's) delicate feelings, concerned that she might scare him away.  She beautifully embodies this giving and generous woman who chooses a bro who doesn't really appreciate her.  In fact, Aster makes it a point to represent Christian and his bro friends, Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter) as dickheads, with Pelle standing out as someone who is especially sensitive and kind in comparison.  Pelle has invited the guys to his Swedish village's Midsommar festival, and after Dani suffers an incredible tragedy, Christian reluctantly invites her along.  Grumble, grumble say the bros, especially Mark, who clearly just wants to get laid by some beautiful Swedish women.

Christian, Dani, Josh, and Pelle observe the beginning of the 9 day feast and its accompanying rituals

I'm a huge fan of folk horror--HUGE!  So the elaborate occult rituals and all the details involved in this special solstice celebration--one held every 90 years according to Pelle--gave me such pleasure.  Sure, there are moments that seem pretty over the top and hearken back to Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (1973) big time, but Aster really doesn't handle any of these ritualistic scenes in quite the same exploitative fashion as the earlier film.  In fact, the pagan rites--intertwined with notions of nature and community--seem no less strange than a variety of different practices which are a part of "acceptable" religions; which, I believe, is exactly Aster's point. Christian and Josh, anthropology doctoral students, see the commune as alien, something to be studied and investigated, and do not really perceive the inhabitants as human.  Don't even get me started on Mark, who Aster unfortunately caricatures as this unenlightened neanderthal horndog. Yet, as the film really is filtered through Dani's perspective, her attitude toward the commune and her fellow American guests, gradually, but assuredly, evolves.  Our experience of the film as "horror" largely depends on if our perspective changes along with hers.

Some of the Midsommar rituals are not without a little ultraviolence

One of the reasons the film is not that horrifying is that its images are bathed in the glorious sunshine of summer, and the lush landscape rich with green grass and wildflowers fills the frame with pastoral beauty.  Even when the rituals' participants are tripping on some type of hallucinogen (and that happens a lot), the landscape softly undulates.  For anyone that's every tripped on mushrooms, LSD, or their ilk, the scenes where some of the guests freak out are hilarious.  The effects Aster use are essential to both our identification with Dani's experience, and add to the otherworldly quality of the commune.  At one point, I could not stop staring at this flower on Dani's headdress, that just kept opening and closing, opening and closing.  Mesmerizing.

The film has some graphic moments of violence, especially near the beginning as Dani acclimates to the community and its rituals.  Pelle and his family are distinctly "othered" as they dance and gesture in their all white clothing, wreaths of flowers in their hair.  Once Dani dons their clothing and ornaments, she meshes with the other inhabitants of the commune, baking pies for the feast, and participating in the dance to designate who will be crowned the May Queen.

Pelle speaks of his own losses and encourages Dani to stay

The real turning point of the film is the heart-to-heart talk Dani has with Pelle, where he explains that after he was orphaned, the commune became his family, and he always feels like he is cared for and loved, that he "felt held."  He says he wants that for Dani, and really, the audience wants that for her as well.  His words continue to echo as we watch Christian flirt with Maya, some local girl who sets her eyes on him "to mate."  As Dani absorbs the warmth and intimacy of these Swedish people, wrestling with her grief throughout the film, she finds a place of comfort and support where she would least expect it.

The Hagar women feel Dani's pain

Sure, some of the film's outcomes seem inevitable, and I wasn't surprised by the film's conclusion as much as satisfied with the fates of all those involved.  Reviewers have been touting the film as a sick "breakup movie" and "relationship revenge," but I see it rather as a journey where Dani finally finds herself.  Once lost and clinging to her boyfriend as a life line, she grows and evolves, working through her stages of grief until she comes out on the other side of all that pain, surrounded by a loving and supportive "family"--finding a new "home" far, far away.  I think Aster's film is quite beautiful, but I can imagine that my take isn't the most popular.  In comparison to Hereditary, Aster equips Dani with emotional depth without demonizing her or the cult that embraces her.  In the end, Dani's smile mirrored my own.  Highly Recommended!

2019 Fantasia Film Festival--The Schedule is Up!!!

2019 Looks to be a Fantastic Festival!!

Summer is here, and that means the Fantasia Film Festival is just around the corner (8 days from now, and a couple metro rides away, but whatever).  As usual, the festival is headlining way too many films that I desperately want to see, so I'll give you my must sees for this year.  The festival is always full of discoveries, and my abbreviated stay last year meant I missed out on some great films--I caught them later (and I'll be posting on some of my favorites), but nothing beats hearing the crowd go nuts in one of the two main screening venues.  Here we go!

Riley Keough is trapped in Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's The Lodge (2019)

In 2015, only my second year of attending the Fantasia Film Festival, I went to a film that was generating a lot of buzz on the festival circuit--Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's Goodnight Mommy (2014).  This stunning and deeply unsettling film blew my mind, and I not only reviewed the film then, but presented on it at a conference and exposed my students to its wonders.  So at the top of my list for films to see this year is their follow up film--The Lodge (2019).  Again, the film follows a stepmom dealing with a couple of kids who aren't thrilled with her, but this time they are snowed in some remote lodge while Dad is away, leaving all kinds of supernatural things to creep around.  Synopses and the trailer suggest that Grace (Keough) is the sole survivor of some suicide cult, so that info puts a spin on things.  I can almost guarantee that this heroine is haunted by some trauma from her past.

The Duchess (Milla Jovovich) keeps her wayward schoolgirls in line in Alice Waddington's Paradise Hills (2019)

I recently read a discussion of Ari Lester's Midsommar (2019) by Charles Bramesco in The Guardian regarding some critical drubbing of the film as "overlong" (at 140 minutes).  Bramesco claims that "Personally, when a horror film gets dinged on the grounds of being “overlong” or “full of bizarre tangents that go nowhere," I take notice and pay attention. The unwieldy, the inexplicable, the ambitious-to-a-fault – this is my cinematic happy place."  For me, a film that draws complaints regarding its gorgeous cinematography and production design "at the expense of narrative" sounds exactly like something I'm going to like.  So Alice Waddington's Paradise Hills (2019) seems ideal.  This dystopian film about a reform school for girls, on a mysterious island, run by The Duchess (Mila Jovovich) has been called "beautiful," "gorgeous," "stunning." As Adi Robertson explains in reviewing the film's Sundance screening, "The film both critiques and revels in an aggressively feminine high-tech aesthetic that’s tinged with eerie surrealism."  Sign me up.

Teens react to the disappearance of Carolyn Harper in Jennifer Reeder's Knives and Skin (2019)

You may be noticing a pattern here, and my frequent readers have already sussed out that the films about which I'm most excited are directed by women.  This predilection is not always wide-ranging, as I tend to avoid horror comedies even if they are women-directed, but award-winning short filmmaker Jennifer Reeder's feature Knives and Skin, touted as a "feminist teen noir," has me quite enthusiastic!  This brief clip not only showcases the stylish imagery, but gives us some Cyndi Lauper love as well.  Reeder will be in attendance as well, so YAY!  I also had to chuckle because one review (written by a man) claims that the film emphasizes "style over narrative."  Yep, I'm in.

Arielle Dombasle is the writer/director and star of the wondrous Alien Crystal Palace (2019)

Speaking of women-directed wonders, I'd see Arielle Dombasle's Alien Crystal Palace (2019) no matter who directed it.  One look at this gorgeous trailer, and I was overwhelmed by vibes from The Hunger, Wim Wenders, with a dash of Liquid Sky.  The film's screening is at midnight at Fantasia.  Honestly, I don't care what time it's showing, I have to see it! Oh, and it's a musical, which would usually send me scurrying away, but if the trailer is any indication of the kind of music on display, I think I'll be fine.

A Mother shoe masquerades as a man in order to raise her daughter in SHe,

One of the more outstanding facets of the Fantasia Film Festival is their animation offerings, and they program innovative animators from around the globe that often use very unique and painstaking techniques to tell their stories.  This year I have my eye on two films that look incredible.  The first, SHe by 28 year old Chinese animator Shengwei Zhou, masterfully employs stop-motion to create a sumptuous tale of a mother (embodied in a red high heel pump) passing as a man (in a leather boot) raising her daughter in a repressive patriarchal culture.  The director illustrates these social concerns with shoes!  Amazing.  The trailer is really opulent.

The Psychedelic Visuals stand out in Son of the White Mare (Marcell Jankovics, 1981)

I know as much about Hungarian animation as I do about Chinese animation (umm, nothing), but after watching a trailer for Marcell Jankovic's Son of the White Mare (1981), I am excited to watch this psychedelic trip.  Seems like the perfect film in which to indulge in Canada's legal psychedelics.

Mia Wasikowska plays Judy, an abused puppeteer, in Mirrah Foulkes Judy and Punch (2019)

Another women-directed project, Mirrah Foulkes' Judy and Punch (2019), has been described as a whimsical and skewed revenge-driven fairy tale; and honestly, Wasikowska's take on characters gives them an extra-special something.  Her role as Jackie in Nicolas Pesce's Piercing (2018) really stole the film from Christopher Abbott's bland murderer wannabee, and I haven't seen Damsel yet, but I've heard that she is magnificent in that as well.  The first time she caught my attention was back in 2008, when she had a major role in In Treatment.  Although I think Burton's Alice films (in which she stars) are just Burton sending his kids to private school (cashing in), she's always riveting, even in dreck.

One wonders what this creepy kid has been munching on in Abdelhamid Bouchnak's Dachra (2018)

This Tunisian horror film, Dachra, has been receiving waves of buzz since its debut in Venice, and the trailer's pacing made me very, very tense (a feeling I quite like).  This film is Bouchnak's first, and I'm excited to fall under its spell, especially so I can figure out what on earth I'm looking at in terms of Dachra's poster.

WTF??

Alba finds herself repeating the same day, less an hour, in Jon Mikel Caballero's The Incredible Shrinking Wknd (2019)

From my very first attendance of Fantasia in 2014, I've noticed that they have a wonderful habit of programming original and innovative "time travel" films.  From The House at the End of Time (2013) to Predestination (2014), Animals (2017), and A Day (2017), I simply love them!  I also teach a Confusion Cinema/Puzzle Films class, and I'm always adding films screened at Fantasia to my list--every single year. This Spanish thriller by Jon Mikel Cabballero, The Incredible Shrinking Wknd, comes across, from the clip, as more of a thriller than a comedy.  Will Ada be able to close the time loop before she runs out of hours in the day?  I must find out.

Is Jade as "crazy" as her boyfriend makes her out to be in Jade's Asylum (2019)

In May of 2018 I flew to Scotland to present at, and attend, a conference on representations of mental illness in cinema--unsurprisingly, there were very few, if any "positive" or thoughtful representations of madness, especially in horror cinema.  I am fascinated by these representations, especially if they are embodied in female protagonists deemed to be crazy--whether "crazy violent" or "crazy and seeing things, aka ghosts."  Alexandre Carrière's Jade's Asylum (2019) is exactly in my wheelhouse--Is Jade having a psychotic episode and delusional, or is the supernatural present?  The film's trailer does not provide any easy answers.  I just hope it doesn't end up demonizing Jade too much.

Super Cool Poster!

After trauma, Luke resurrects his imaginary friend, Daniel, in Daniel Isn't Real (Adam Egypt Mortimer, 2019)

A film that's also getting a tremendous amount of buzz since it's debut at SXSW is Adam Egypt Mortimer's Daniel Isn't Real, which from its title and synopsis, suggests that maybe, just maybe, he is (real.)  Comes as no surprise, dear readers, that a film about a guy is going to attract so much more attention since the link between women and madness is seen by society as normal.  Especially if we get uppity, have opinions, and claim power for ourselves.  Heavy sigh.

I've just touched upon what the 2019 Fantasia Film Festival has in store for us this year.  More to come!!

The Perfume of the Lady in Black--Francesco Barilli (1974)

A haunted Sylvia (Mimsy Farber) graces the elegant and very weird The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

Italian giallos are some of my favorite types of horror films, especially if they are centered on a female protagonist lurking around an incredibly stylish set.  They've often been accused of being more style than substance, and frequently seen as an incoherent mess of red herrings, but there's something so intangibly cool about these (mostly) 1970's thrillers, that none of those complaints make any difference to me--especially in regards to the gorgeous, and undeniably wacky, The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974).  Even though director Francesco Barilli wrote Who Saw Her Die (1972) and later directed Hotel Fear (1977), he's not really that known for his giallo offerings.  I wish he would have had a chance to dabble in the subgenre some more, because this 1974 film is completely, and utterly, unique.

Perfume introduces us to Sylvia Hacherman (Mimsy Farber), a career woman working at a perfume factory, with a smooth boyfriend, Roberto (Maurizio Bonuglia), and an elegant neighbor, Francesca (Donna Jordan).  She lives in an apartment complex with some very nosy neighbors, such as hippo-obsessed Signor Rosetti (Mario Scaccia), and a mysterious black cat named Chopin.  Sylvia seems successful and assured, albeit a little quiet, but this facade hides a roiling mind, troubled by her absent father and a trauma connected to her dead mother.  In typical giallo style, the film provides clues to Sylvia's puzzling past, but also throws in enough ominous little moments to make viewers suspicious of everyone--especially Andy (Jho Jenkins), a black man who talks about occult practices and ritual sacrifice at dinner parties.  While playing tennis with Andy, she cuts her hand on a nail that happens to be jutting out of her racket, and Andy seductively sucks on the wound in a truly unsettling manner.  He and Roberto are pals, but they seem to exchange frequent odd gazes when Sylvia's back is turned.  I give some credit to Roberto in a love scene which is exclusively about her pleasure--nice.  Yet, for the most part, you can't trust this guy.  He's shifty and far too smooth.  Unsurprisingly, the narrative hinges on whether Sylvia is mentally disturbed, or whether her friends and neighbors are deliberately trying to drive her there.

Sylvia is haunted by visions of her mother, handling perfume while wearing black

In many ways, Sylvia is a classic haunted heroine, jumping at shadows and seeing people only she can see.  As the film unfolds, she becomes increasingly unstable: she flashes back to her mother having sex with someone other than her father, and sees Mom in all sorts of places.  In one version of events, Sylvia stabs her mother's lover, indicating an early penchant for violence.  She repeatedly visits her mother's grave, until she violently smashes her mother's image on her gravestone with a hammer.  In another scene, she's using scissors to cut all the men out of her mother's photographs.  She becomes enamored with a vase she sees in a store, but when she goes to purchase it, it's no longer there.  Shortly thereafter, it shows up as a gift at her door, as if someone is watching her, or can see inside her mind.  She starts to see a younger, child version of herself hanging around her apartment, until the girl declares "I've come to live with you."  Little Sylvia gives "the bad seed" a run for her money.  Things escalate, and soon Sylvia's getting really handsy with a cleaver, and setting up her own macabre tea party after obviously reading Alice in Wonderland.

Grown Sylvia and Little Sylvia bound together over a mysterious shared trauma

Still, there's more going on in this film than Sylvia merely losing her mind because she's haunted by a trauma from her past, and viewers are given glimpses in order to suggest some gaslighting is underway.  Sylvia is blown off by Roberto for one evening, but as she hangs up, the camera cuts to Roberto climbing into his car with both Andy and Francesca by his side (Andy's supposed to be on a date with Francesca that evening too).  Soon, the gang are joining a whole bunch of other people, dressed in black trenchcoats, and hanging around an ominous warehouse space.  The next day, the neighbors are whispering over the tragic death of Francesca, who somehow fell to her death the previous night.  How???  After the memorial service/cremation, the camera cuts to Signor Rosetti, painting some hippos (yes, I'm not kidding) and feeding his cats some bloody looking meat.  A close-up reveals there's a finger in that mess!  What???  They even have a seance with a blind psychic, because...creepy.  The film isn't remotely as entertaining if you insist on these random things making any sense.

A blind psychic creeps out Sylvia in a random seance they happen to have

Often a film's ending is what really solidifies the narrative's drive, or may give the audience a false impression, only to perform a killer twist in the end.  For instance, in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), we ostensibly believe that Nancy has successfully banished Freddy just by virtue of turning her back on him, even after a rather violent climactic battle.  Yet, that film's actual ending turns everything upside down in a "what just happened??" way.  The Perfume of the Lady in Black performs a similar feint.  By film's end, we're pretty convinced that Sylvia has lost her mind, and turned to violence once again.  But then...the gory ending makes you feel like you're watching some other film, even though most of the cast of characters left standing are from earlier moments--at her apartment building, at the perfume plant, and even from the local antique store. 

Francesca's pad just gives you a sense of the outre style and visual flair of the film

I'm very deliberately NOT giving away the ending of the film, so I recommend checking the film out--it's available on Amazon Prime for as little as a couple of bucks, and well worth your time.  The film is bold, visually rich, and gloriously demented.

Winchester--Michael and Peter Spierig (2018)

To be perfectly clear, Winchester (2018) is not really about Sara Winchester, but actually about this guy (Jason Clarke)

I'm big fans of the Spierig brothers, Michael and Peter.  On a lark, I saw Undead (2003) in theaters, and I utterly adored it (even though Owen Gleiberman savaged it in EW--he didn't "get it").  I liked Daybreakers (2009) and I think Predestination (2014) is a work of genius--seriously, it's brain melting brilliant.  So, I was not prepared at all for the absolute s***show that is their latest film, Winchester (2018), although if I had known that they'd joined the Blumhouse family already with Jigsaw (2017), I would have hesitated.  The film has been getting press mostly regarding its "based on a true story" moniker, since supposedly Sarah Winchester, the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune,  built the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose in order to appease the ghosts that had died from her family's rifles--something she could never quite do, so she kept building, and building, and building that damn house.  Some parts of that story are true--she was an heiress to the rifle fortune, she built a house in San Jose--but a lot of it is apocryphal, and the Spierigs take the bones of the story, and turn the silliness dial up to twelve, because eleven just isn't far enough.  The trailer makes the film seem like a great haunted house yarn centering on Sarah Winchester, played by the weirdly ageless Helen Mirren like a goth Miss Havisham, traipsing around in full grief regalia the whole damn time.

The awesome Helen Mirren as a goth Miss Havisham, er...I mean Sarah Winchester

This woman frequently comes across as intelligent and regal, no matter what kind of crappy role she's given, and trust me, this one is truly crappy.  She's no Jane Tennyson.  While you would think the film is about her, it's actually about Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) a washed-up laudanum junkie doctor who had a brush with death that made him lose his "once in a lifetime love" from which he's never quite recovered (ergo laudanum).  He's hired by the minority shareholders of the Winchester Rifle Co. to declare Sarah Winchester nuts so they can take over her controlling share of the company, and she will subsequently stop building her damn house.  He shows up at the construction site in San Jose, to find everyone expecting him and not excited about it. Not only is Sarah wise to his laudanum habit, but her niece (Sarah Snook) and her painfully annoying son, Henry, are not fans of his either.  Also, Henry has this habit of sleepwalking with a bag over his head in the oddest places, and talking in weird voices with glazed over white eyes.  See, still not really about Sarah here.  Ugh, I'm still mad that I paid for this film.

The Winchester House looks like a fake stage set, which is what the Spierigs shot on, in Australia

Dr. Price has a special connection to the Winchester House, since he was shot with a Winchester rifle, and died for 3 minutes, then came back to life--which makes him the only one who can stop an especially malevolent ghost played by Richard Horne from Twin Peaks: The Return (Eamon Farren), who absolutely defines the term "ugly pretty."  Turns out that only Sarah and Eric can see this ghost, although he possesses annoying nephew Henry any chance he gets.  The film goes on, and on, and on, with Eric thinking that Sarah's crazy, and then realizing that she's not and that everything she says is totally true, even when delivered in an over-the-top scenery chewing fashion by Mirren.  In fact, I almost nodded off at one point--in a movie theater, with some guy opening and crumpling every plastic covered snack food imaginable behind my head.  One would think that nodding off would be physically impossible since this film is almost entirely made of jump scares--really dumb, overly telegraphed jump scares.  I guess the insipid, stilted dialogue induced narcolepsy.

False advertising--this film is not about what's going on inside Sarah Winchester's head

Finally, Jason Clarke, Eric, whatever, figures his s*** out, gives Sarah a clean bill of health, and but for a few ornery nails (far more entertaining in a Quay Brothers film), all is well.  Except for the fact that the Spierig Brothers have squandered all my good will toward them. Now I think I understand why, before the film, the Brothers headline a very brief making-of doc and "thank us all" for going to see their film.  Yeah, you're not welcome guys.  Not welcome at all.  Let me put it this way:  both Havenhurst and The Abandoned were better films.  Not Visions, though.  That film was on par with this one.  Ugh, Winchester.

The Abandoned--Eytan Rockaway (2015)

Julia/Streak's journey is rather harrowing in The Abandoned (Eytan Rockaway, 2015)

Why is it that so many creepy haunted spaces were formerly the home/burial ground for an insane asylum?  Julia (Louisa Krause) stumbles upon one in the majestically set "haunted heroine" film The Abandoned (Eytan Rockaway, 2015), encountering the gamut of well-preserved children's drawings, rickety beds covered in mysterious stains, and voices calling to her from every corridor and dank, dark hallway--all the ingredients for some derivative, but unsettling scares.  The film opens with Julia taking a cab to her new job as a night security guard at some gigantic, ornate, and sinister abandoned apartment building.  Spectators learn that she's a "haunted heroine" almost immediately, as she chats with her Mom on her phone; we find out that 1) she has a kid, and 2) she's gotten into some trouble, and this job is her "last chance," and 3) that she has to take her "medication."  Of course.  So, from the film's first moments we should not trust Julia's potentially crazy POV, as we go on this subjective journey with her.

Jason Patric is her curmudgeonly paraplegic co-worker Cooper

The first horror that Julia encounters is the grumpy as f*** Cooper (Jason Patric), who has been working as a security guard for quite some time, ruling over a set of surveillance cameras and chasing his coworkers away with rampant hostility.  Yes, he cannot use his legs, which makes him a curious candidate for guard duty, but hey, the film has to make him unhelpful in order to put Julia in serious peril.  The use of a head-cam as Julia walks around gives the film some really unnecessary surveillance footage--making the film even more derivative than it needs to be.  At least Julia isn't a secret ghost hunter, although that fact doesn't make the narrative any less ridiculous.

This mysterious abandoned apartment building looks suspiciously similar to Grand Central Station

The opulent setting of the film's abandoned apartment complex is what makes The Abandoned worth the watch--supposedly it was shot at the Prince George Ballroom in NYC, and some of the sets are pretty breathtaking.  Still, most of the film is shot in dank hallways and boiler rooms barely lit by a flashlight.  Now I love a good, scary hallway, but one really wonders why Julia, on her first night on the job, would decide to break the lock in a forbidden area of the building and go exploring.  Ah, to forward the plot, obviously.

A Heroine isn't truly "Haunted" without malevolent kid ghosts in the mix

As I mentioned earlier, seems that the apartment complex was actually an asylum housing the strangest menagerie of kids with issues, and they really don't like adults.  Mix in some weird poisoned water, neglectful caretakers, and angry ghosts abound.  One silly, but kind of fun scene has Cooper losing control of his wheelchair, as it speeds down the hallway by some kind of "force."  Just when you are truly wondering how Julia and Cooper will get out of this mess, the film switches gears and the ending MAKES NO SENSE.  It garnered a "wait...what?"  As per many desperate horror films, the twist makes you question everything that came before, and then the film SWITCHES BACK, making viewers question the previous ending.  While I can usually posit some type of interpretation (as an expert, natch), this film left me utterly puzzled--as if the filmmakers couldn't decide on an ending either, so let's have two contradictory ones!  The Abandoned is currently streaming on Netflix, and I'm on the fence whether to recommend it or not.  Like The Forest, I would say that there are some really great moments, but they don't make up for a film that really takes a header rather than nailing the landing.  Ooof.

The Sound--Jenna Mattison (2017)

Rose McGowan must fight not to be infected by The Sound (Jenna Mattison, 2017)

Trawling through Amazon looking for "haunted heroines," I came across the quite compelling, women-directed The Sound (Jenna Mattison, 2017), starring the sadly underutilized Rose McGowan.  Rose has recently drawn quite a bit of attention for being a vocal activist against sexual harassment and assault, accusing Harvey "the disgusting pig" Weinstein of rape way before it became a deluge of accounts and spurring a "white, sexual harassment" version of the #MeToo movement.  Admittedly, McGowan's current role in this movement garnered much of my initial interest in the film (that, and that she looks remarkably like Angelina Jolie).  Yet her performance as ghost debunker Kelly Johanson really won me over, and while there are some loopy plot holes here and there, The Sound is a chilling ghost story that rather astutely brings another "haunted heroine" into our midst.  Damn, there certainly is no shortage of these women in horror.  Could there be some link with horror's penchant for unreliable female narrators within cultures where women are rarely trusted or believed?  Coincidence?

To remind readers, the figure I term "the haunted heroine" is a frequent female character in the horror film genre.  She is a vulnerable, often fragile character suffering from a previous trauma, and the film traces her journey as she interacts with a space that morphs and transforms around her.  This interaction with cinematic space is linked explicitly to the character's subjectivity, as her confusion and disorientation mirrors the space she occupies.  The line between reality and fantasy is hopelessly blurred in these horror films, and the chief concern here is whether the heroine is actually experiencing supernatural occurrences, or if she's just losing her mind.  Often, "science" is used to disprove the existence of ghosts, but the technology used to disprove such things rarely works, and consistently breaks down.  In The Sound, Kelly is a renowned debunker, who analyzes sound waves in order to prove that spirits are just low frequency sound waves affecting the brain, and producing hallucinations, along with headaches, nosebleeds, etc.  Her blog is beloved by denizens of the interweb (rather unrealistic, because as a woman, people/guys would troll the crap out of her).  She actually makes a decent living, as she's invited to cure various people of "ghosts," and she can just hop on a plane to "ghostbust," whether at some distant farmhouse, or in an abandoned Toronto subway station.

Kelly makes a living traveling around convincing people that ghosts do not exist

After a brief scene with genre stalwart Stephen McHattie, in which Kelly points out that his grandson isn't seeing ghosts, but affected by nighttime crop dusting, she then is summoned to Toronto to check out a ghost that seemingly haunts an abandoned subway station.  She expects to be back in Detroit to attend some party with her attentive beau, but things never go according to plan in these films, and she ends up spending the night, riddled with hallucinations as the sound waves take hold.  Her most frequent line: "It's not real, it's not real."

Christopher Lloyd shows up to offer some wisdom and change some lightbulbs

The film is full of some great genre actors who do manage to steal Kelly's thunder.  International treasure Christopher Lloyd adds another horror film to his roster after his incredible performance in I Am Not A Serial Killer (Billy O'Brien, 2016), playing a friendly old coot who mysteriously works for the Toronto Dept. of Transportation in some rather dubious capacity changing lightbulbs in abandoned stations.  Suspicious??  Then there is the absolutely terrific and menacing Michael Eklund as a Detective with really shady motives.  Let's just say that his character reveals the truly tremendous power of low frequency sound waves on the human body!  Finally, Richard Gunn plays Ethan, Kelly's beleaguered husband, who gets way too much screen time chasing after her and ultimately saving her ass (I think).  Oh, also, there are hordes of moths, and perhaps ghosts.

Scary kid ghosts always seem to carry around creepy dolls

As Kelly undergoes an underground "ordeal," the film's narrative reveals in bits and pieces that there's a past traumatic event that motivates Kelly's zeal for ghost debunking.  In black and white flashbacks, we see a young girl's stumbling walk into a forest, clutching a doll very similar to the one above.  Kelly seems to be obsessed with some girl named "Emily," but we only find out who this girl is in the last 10 minutes of the film.  Indeed, the film keeps you guessing, and the incipient disorientation and "lostness" common to these types of films is present in every single frame as we are almost entirely focused through Kelly's skewed perspective.  Sure, there is some crazy, nonsensical stuff here, especially surrounding Eklund's creepy detective, and the omnipresent moths, but on the whole, spectators are rooting for the intrepid Kelly to make it out alive and sane.  Funny, like Nick Murphy's The Awakening (2011) which follows Rebecca Hall's ghost debunker, all The Sound's momentum seems to move toward Kelly's inevitable transformation from a doubter to a believer.  Like Murphy's film, Kelly experiences her own "awakening," as she tries to come to terms with her past; and the film offers one of the few (relatively) happy endings of the genre.  I was pleasantly surprised by The Sound, and since it's directed by a woman as well, I highly recommend you check it out while it's still available for less than a buck on Amazon.

Visions--Kevin Greutert (2015)

Isla Fisher plays the pregnant, and in peril, Evie in Kevin Greutert's Visions (2015)

Ah, pregnancy horror.  After a film like Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's Inside (2007), any film involving a pregnant woman in peril is going to come off as derivative.  Insert Kevin Greutert's Visions (2015), currently streaming on Netflix, a film indebted to that earlier film with some Lifetime channel haunted house stuff thrown in for good measure.  The film opens with a car accident, and Evie (Isla Fisher) coming to in the hospital with the realization that she killed a baby (she has flashes of a kiddie seat, empty and askew in the road near her wreck).  Cue a title card proclaiming "one year later," and Evie and her husband, David (Anson Mount), have just bought a vineyard in Paso Robles, CA as a way to start over after the earlier accident.  AND Evie is newly pregnant and having a baby of her own!  She's leery of medicating, even though she was on major anti-depressants after "killing a baby," as one probably would be; yet, she starts seeing weird things that suggest that she might be "losing her mind" again, and David, in his typical way, thinks she's losing it too.

Evie's creepy mannequin would freak anyone out

Hallucinations start in earnest.  Nickels balance en masse on their edge, hooded figures bang on her front door, wine bottles explode, guns suddenly appear, and even mannequins attack, forcing Evie to tumble through a glass door.  As her husband doesn't believe anything she says, or sees, shattering glass seems like the last straw for him, and he and Evie's smarmy doctor, played by Jim Parsons, insist that she goes back on the meds "for her own good."  Meanwhile, fellow expecting mom Sadie (Gillian Jacobs) is Evie's drug free enabler, insisting that Evie knows what is best for her own body, and that she shouldn't let these men tell her what to do!  Of course, with David possibly gaslighting Evie, we side with the pregnant women, and support Evie refusing to take her meds.  Yet some crazy stuff is happening in her house, and Evie's the only one who seems to see it.  Coincidence??

Evie is a quintessential haunted heroine, broken by trauma and haunted by ghosts (maybe)

In previous posts, I've tried to outline some of the chief characteristics of what I term "the Haunted Heroine," a repeated female figure in horror just as ubiquitous as the more well known "Final Girl."  The Haunted Heroine is a fragile and sensitive soul, broken by some traumatic event, and frequently looking to start over in a new house, but seemingly haunted by spirits there.  Yet are there ghosts, or is she just crazy?  On this question the entire narrative hinges, and much of the film has spectators questioning everything our female protagonist sees, says, and believes.  Much of the film is spent rendering her unreliable as hell--all the other characters seem to think she's nuts, so why not spectators too.  Things get so bad for Evie in Visions, that her husband and friends perform an intervention!!  They suck...but not for long, because at that very moment in the narrative, the film's super-predictable climax unfolds, and exactly what you thought would happen, does.  Sigh.

***Spoilers!  Turns out that Evie was partially right.  She is seeing things, but rather than ghosts or spirits, Evie is experiencing premonitions of the future.  Somehow her anti-depressants tamper with her clairvoyance, so it's a good thing she quit them.  The film firmly comes down on the side of "not really crazy" (like Sadie).  Even more strange, every single woman who's lived in this house or on the property has succumbed to visions of the exact same night, when Evie et al. are attacked by the murderously psycho Sadie and her lame boyfriend, what's-his-name.  He's only there to shoot some people on Sadie's orders--and obviously because its fun for him.  I felt really, really badly for Gillian Jacobs when watching this film.  She deserves so much better.  I'm not going to give away the ending, or what happens to Evie, but I will describe the film's last sequence.  A couple are being shown the house by a realtor; "the wife/girlfriend" looks possibly pregnant, and as they pass one of the tables, the nickels (from earlier) seem to magically materialize, all balanced on their edge.  This final sequence makes absolutely no sense, and throws the previous events into question AGAIN, although who knows why???  This film will never have a sequel (I hope).  I appreciate the film for its haunted heroine and her traumatic travails, but I am not recommending this film unless you are looking for totally predictable genre fare with a female lead.  Then, yawn-n-n-n, go for it.