Fantasia 2018--Aragne: Sign of Vermillion--Saku Sakamoto (2018)

Rin's apartment building is a pretty grim place in Saku Sakamoto's Aragne: Sign of Vermillion (2018)

Full disclosure: I know very little about Japanese anime beyond Hideo Nakata, Osamu Tezuka, and The Ghost in the Shell films.  So to my delight, I discovered that Saku Sakamoto did the digital effects for Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) and he was presenting the world premiere of his debut feature Aragne: Sign of Vermillion at Fantasia 2018.  The director and producer of the film were there for a Q &A and there even was a translator--who translated Japanese into French.  Heh.  My French is mal, tres mauvais, so I pretty much gleaned little from the film's introduction, other than how happy Sakamoto was to be there.  I was enthusiastic and swayed by the cool trailer.  Giant bugs crawling all over a city!

Rin runs away from a lot of creepy crawly scary s***

My grasp of the narrative is...limited, but I don't think that really matters all that much.  The film is a dread-filled atmospheric fever dream, and its ambiguities are part of its appeal.  Rin, a University student, has moved into a new apartment that is not at all like its been advertised.  Instead of a sunny, well-lit space, the rooms are more like bunker dorms, lined up on dank hallways, the building decrepit and looming.  It's basically a dump, and little wonder it's haunted.  Or is it?  Rin is not sleeping well in her new digs, passing out exhausted in her college classroom, and riddled with very disturbing dreams.  The imagery of the film is infused with a blood red ambiance, and one can never tell whether Rin is actually seeing things, or just hallucinating.  Important, but confusing backstory: medical experimentation was performed on people some 40-odd years ago, where they became delusional, hallucinating wrecks, victims of some weird plague, and this widespread disease, spread by spirit bugs, is consuming the city in present day.  Yeah, I know.  I told you I didn't have a great grasp of the narrative.  Meanwhile, Rin seems to be enamored of this brunette who's always dancing, and she's being chased by some masked serial killer with a portable circular hand saw or some such weapon.  Also, there are "dead soul soldiers" possessed by "spirit bugs" that she must run from over and over again.  Still following?

Scary people/creatures are constantly after Rin

The film deliberately blurs the lines between Rin's dreams and waking life, and the hi-jinks in her building indicate that Rin is what I like to call a "haunted heroine."  Something from her past is causing all these horrific manifestations, and every time she seems to grasp what that might be, it slips away from her (and the audience).  She encounters plenty of people who appear to verify that all this stuff is happening IRL, but is it??  This context is really confusing/fun, and adds something special to the truly marvelous and weird imagery.  Brains with insect legs crawling on top of Rin.  EWWW!  Because she seems to be hallucinating constantly, one wonders if she's contracted this disease people seem to have.  At other moments, nonsensical things happen, and I don't know why.  At one point, I wrote in my notes, "Why is she dragging a dead body?  To prove it's real?"  Yeah, this film isn't about easy, clear answers.  Also, the dancing brunette pops up on occasion to opine, "I wish you'd just die" to poor Rin.  At one point, she's strapped to a giant machine while bugs chew on her.  It's nuts!!

Spirits from Rin's past haunt her in the present

Despite my somewhat incoherent recitation of an incoherent plot, things actually make a lot of sense at the end; indeed, the ending tempts viewers to rewatch the film to see what subtle indicators might have been supplied along the way.  The film actually reminded me a great deal of Eyetan Rockaway's The Abandoned (2015), but I'm not going to say how exactly, so you can experience this twisted little gem all on your own.  The film clocks in at just over an hour, so it never drags, even in its most confusing moments.  Give it a shot!

Zombies as livestock, factory farmed for food, turn on their corporate "farmers" in Shinya Sugai's Walking Meat (2018)

The great thing about Fantasia, is viewers often get to see really fun and innovative short films that are cool, and hard to screen elsewhere.  That's why I highly recommend Shinya Sugai's debut Walking Meat (2018).  The short starts with a commercial for zombie food--that's zombies that humans eat as food, not food for zombies.  It seems that zombies are now considered livestock, kind of like cows, but angrier and far more deadly.  Also, these zombies are not zombie cows, but zombie people.  I'm surprised that someone hasn't thought about this idea already (have they??)  Why waste a good zombie, right?

The studious girl, the social media maven, and the incompetent geek boy all show up for their first day at work

The set-up is three obvious millennials show up for a corporate training session their first day on the job.  Of course, things get pretty hairy when the system malfunctions, and the zombies get loose.  Mayhem ensues!  Plenty of jokes litter what feels like a web series, with little pauses inserted and held occasionally, before the film moves on to the next zombie set piece.  The pace is frenetic and fun, and the film is really quite accomplished, with a great deal of tension, and a lot of slash 'em action too.  Really terrific and worth looking for once it emerges online.

Fantasia 2016--Rupture--Steven Shainberg (2016)

Renee (Noomi Rapace) is an object of study in Rupture--Steven Shainberg (2016)

What is the deal with Noomi Rapace and alien babies? Really? Oops, sorry, this post is full of spiders.  I mean, spoilers.  Well, I'll try not to give too much away at the beginning, and leave the major spoilers toward the end.  For my first screening at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival, the crowd was raucous and excited.  It took a little while to get into the hall because Fantasia was busy giving Guillermo Del Toro a lifetime achievement award, so the wait was for a worthwhile cause.  Mitch Davis, without whom this festival could not exist, gave Steven Shainberg a rousing introduction--and Shainberg promptly fell in love with Mitch...as one is wont to do.  Each and every time Mitch introduces a film, you can just feel the cinephilia vibrating off of him.  He is a man who LOVES films.

So the film's opening is borderline boring as we are introduced to our main players.  Single mom Renee Marie Morgan (Noomi Rapace) is doing her morning routine when she encounters a spider on her bathroom sink and promptly freaks out.  Hyperventilating, hysteria, the works.  Her teenage son, Evan (Percy Hynes White) quickly takes care of the little critter, and all returns to normal in their banal suburban lives in Kansas City, MO.  Some exposition that will come in handy later: Evan has a hard time with homework, especially Math; Renee's ex-husband is kind of a dick, and Evan's spending the weekend with him; Renee is both fond of and handy with an exacto blade; Renee is going to go skydiving that day, and Evan hopes she doesn't die.  Things start to get weird when Michael Chiklis puts some kind of device on Renee's tire, and starts following her around.  When Renee's tire (not accidentally) blows, Chiklis and some other really bland thugs wrap her head in duct tape, taser her, and abduct her right off the road, wisely taking her car with them.  No fu**ing trace.

Intrepid Renee is a bad-ass action hero

The majority of the film follows Renee as she attempts to discover who these people are and why they've brought her to this strangely low-tech medical facility.  She has smuggled her handy exacto blade into her boot, and thankfully they let her keep them on so that she can execute her escape.  She crawls through the tunnels like a voyeur's Disneyland, peeking into the rooms housing other subjects.  She eavesdrops on quite a few conversations and torture demonstrations as the film unfolds, so while the pacing of the film is a little slow to start, things pick up quickly.  Renee, as played by Rapace, is a fierce mama bear who will do anything to survive, if only to return to her beloved teenage son--and that's my problem (surprise, surprise).  Why can't she be strong, industrious, and resourceful in her own right rather than her abilities having to be channeled through her maternal drive.  Jennifer Aniston just wrote an op-ed in the Huffington Post about how she's NOT pregnant, and she doesn't need to be a mother (or married) to be complete.  Well, that's not the way cinema sees femininity, and this film unfortunately buys into many of those tired tropes.  At least there's no sex in it (no Yummy Mummy) if you don't count all the face rubbing going on.

Renee sits with Blake (Jonathan Potts) as he undergoes his final test

Back to the positives. Rupture is both gorgeous and quite unsettling--both of those qualities are actually intrinsic to the way that the narrative plays out.  Karim Hussain's marvelous cinematography bathes the film in a sea of red, yellow, pink, and orange, and these colors add a level of surreal intensity to an otherwise rather grimy facility.  The denizens of this facility also have enhanced sensory perception;  sight, smell, and touch are hyperbolized within this film's dynamic mise-en-scene.  And speaking of significant props, Rupture is at its best when it plays upon some of the most common moviegoer fears--especially of spiders and snakes.  If you are at all afraid of these creepy crawlies, then this film may be very hard to take.  Granted, both creatures are manipulated with CGI to full effect, but the way that these fears are presented onscreen is truly masterful.  The cringe factor for this film is cranked to eleven.  Likewise, if you do not like visiting practitioners of various pointy medical instruments, there's quite a bit of jabbing, probing, and injecting too.

The poster makes Rupture look misleadingly like a sex movie

While Rupture nods to several well known sci-fi/dystopia films (1984, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, even a dash of The Shining), it has enough originality to keep you guessing--even though at times it comes across as a lost episode of the TV show Fringe with a little Orphan Black thrown in there.  When the big reveal finally occurs, the film actually encourages a rewatch, as earlier plot points and cryptic lines of dialogue become much more fraught with meaning.  Noomi Rapace plays more or less how you would expect her to--strong, capable, curious and perceptive--yet at the same time, a little hollow.  This level of emotional vacancy actually works within the confines of the film's narrative, and her supporting actors (played by some well-knowns such as Michael Chiklis, Peter Stormare, and Ari Millen) also carry their deliberate blankness well.  Kerry Bishee totally steals the film, though, as Dianne.  Her cool, alien demeanor occasionally allows for little bursts of empathy, yet she, like the others, is duly dedicated to their noble cause.

What might their noble cause be? ***Here I'm spoiling just a little.  These noble scientists are interested in the next step in human evolution, it has something to do with "rupturing" human DNA, and...alien babies.  Or maybe genetically mutated babies might be more accurate, and Renee is going to be Mommy!  Sheesh, she just escaped Ridley Scott's Prometheus, and here's another band of outsiders eager for her to breed a new race.  While I'm not going to spoil the ending, suffice to say that the choices that Shainberg makes will probably not surprise you and maintain the feminine status quo.  Rupture is definitely worth a look, especially for its sumptuous visuals and unsettling narrative.  I just wish it was more ideologically subversive.

31 Days of Horror--Day 5 COMA (1978) and its Remake (2012)

Looking at this image, one might think that this woman is experiencing a truly relaxing new-fangled spa treatment!  Her spangly skinsuit is pretty and shiny, albeit a little snug.  Alas, she is someone's "Girlfriend in a Coma," hanging in a storage facility/organ factory where she's experimented on by a gaggle of mad scientists.  This image is from A & E's totally unnecessary, far too long, but still moderately entertaining remake of Michael Crichton's 1978 film Coma, based on Robin Cook's medical thriller (a book I read when I was ten years old).  The book, and the original film, are rife with extraordinary images of the Jefferson Institute--the place where they store the bodies after the nefarious healthcare professionals put perfectly healthy people into comas.

Formerly owned by Xerox, the building is now Stride Rite's HQ in Lexington Mass.

Michael Crichton's film stars Genevieve Bujold as the inquisitive medical resident Susan Wheeler, a talented surgeon surreptitiously dating the cocky know-it-all Mark Bellows, played by Michael Douglas w/ the peacock strutting he would go on to perfect in Romancing the Stone and Fatal Attraction.  Susan is more interested in her career than a commitment, which causes Mark to whine a lot, and tell her she needs a "wife" more than a "lover."  He's upset because she tells him to "get your own beer" rather than running to serve him.  Project much??

Susan's friend Nancy is her closest confidante, as they both really get into their Jazzercise class.  After class, Nancy tells Susan that yes, she is pregnant, and she's going in for a top secret D & C (Abortion) at Susan's hospital, Boston Memorial.  Sounds like it may not be her husband's or she just might not want another child.  These modern women!  Either way, even though Susan reassures her that everything will be fine, Nancy ends up in an irreversible coma.  (See, she was the perfect coma candidate because of her loose morals).

Susan, confused as to how such a routine procedure could end in disaster, starts to investigate.  The men that surround her, including Mark, worry that she's isn't crying enough, but their sexist "concern" only propels her into further detective work.

Of course, no one believes her, especially Mark, who is asked by the head of the hospital, Dr. Harris (Richard Widmark) to distract her by taking her away for the weekend for some sexy time.  Then we're treated to scenes like these:

Douglas does the shifty-eyed ambiguously motivated boyfriend role proud, and one never knows whether he's in cahoots with the likes of Dr. Harris, who intermittently responds "Women! Christ!" just to remind us that all men are total dicks.  Mark has some cryptic conversations w/some of his co-workers that imply he's not to be trusted, especially when he points out over and over that Susan is merely being paranoid.

This film mirrors some similar women's film dystopias on hand in the 70s that feature intrepid female heroines who are talented and career-minded and struggling to succeed within a smothering sea of chauvinists.  Everyone tells them that they are paranoid, and yet, scene by scene, these women (along with viewers) uncover horrifying plots.  In The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes 1975), poor Katharine Ross is forced to move to the Connecticut suburbs where the area is overrun with creepy housewife robots intent on cooking, cleaning, and "servicing" their men; the Men's Association kill her and replace her with a robot in the end.  Brook Adams, as a talented scientist, also investigates the weirdness in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman 1978), but because Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum actually believe her, she seems a little less isolated (and crazy); she becomes a pod person too.  Since all of these films were directed by men, one might ask whether the anxieties these directors carried in relation to the 70's Women's Movement might have gotten displaced onto these frightening dehumanizing narratives.  Yet the women in these films are the active investigators with an inquisitive gaze (but they are all severely punished for possessing that look).  Both of the remakes of these films (Stepford Wives 2004 and The Invasion 2007) are beyond abysmal.

Coma places the spectator firmly with Susan, who never really seems crazy or unbelievable as she uncovers evidence that doctors at Boston Memorial are putting patients into comas if they are a match for their black market organ trafficking ring.  The film implies that the conspiracy goes all the way up through the hospital hierarchy to sympathetic parties in Washington D.C.  Susan is a kick-ass action heroine who can really investigate and fight back when threatened.  In one scene she even clings to the roof of an ambulance.  Take that James Bond!

I think that Ashley Judd was trying to channel her inner Bujold in Missing, but we know how that turned out.

The true Stepford creature in Coma is Elizabeth Ashley, who plays an amazing evil automaton/corporate tool with grace and elegance.  She runs the coma farm/Jefferson Institute, and I love how cutthroat she gets when the bidding on organs is underway.  Of course, she does it over archaic phones with big hold buttons, so her cold, steeliness comes off as extra absurd circa 2012.  Love her in this film!

Oh, Tom Selleck has an awesome cameo in this film, giant furry mustache and all!  I guess Tom wasn't famous yet, even though he starred in Daughters of Satan from 1971.  He plays a relatively healthy patient who also gets put into a coma by the evildoers.  One minute he's joshing with the doctors at the hospital; the next, Tom is lying on a slab at the Jefferson, flesh cut open as his organs are greedily harvested.

Susan's investigation gets too close to uncovering the truth, so she has to be punished.  She subsequently is poisoned in a way that mimics appendicitis, and the evil Dr. Harris rushes her into OR 8 in order to put her nosy ass in a damn coma where she belongs!  Mark/Michael Douglas ends up finally believing her, saving the day, and the cops are waiting outside the operating room door to nab the evil doctor.  Done and done.  Good thing her boyfriend saved her!

Thirty-four years later, the mini-series loving A & E network (who brought us the terrible Bag of Bones) decides to remake Coma with an all star cast including Ellen Burstyn, Geena Davis, Richard Dreyfus, James Woods, and Lauren Ambrose as the super-curious Susan Wheeler.  Steven Pasquale plays Mark Bellows, and after perusing IMDB I know that I've never seen him in anything he's been in, ever; after this show, I'm still not a fan.

I believe without the slightest doubt that this mini-series did not need to be made, and that some of the remake's "improvements" now make the original film look like a serious FEMINIST CLASSIC.  Burstyn and Davis's N.O.W. memberships need to be rescinded because their roles take one giant leap back for womankind.  What did they put in their kool-aid?

The Good

Lauren Ambrose makes a pretty good female action investigator, and you are rooting for her throughout.  In this incarnation, she's only a lowly medical student rather than a surgeon, and the only reason she's perceived as competent at all is through nepotism.  Turns out grandpa was a world famous doctor/surgeon type who became super-rich and put his name on an entire hospital wing.  Susan is curious about all the comas because it's in her blood.  Old farts like Dreyfus and Woods knew her grandpappy and are eager to remind her.

Also, the series sports great images of the Jefferson Institute, which has only become more scarily high-tech and sinister.

The Bad

The romance between Susan and Mark is so-o-o boring.

The chemistry between these two actors is non-existent, and I found myself more interested in the crazy psycho that stalks Susan in a near identical scene to one in the original film.  The back story for the stalker with some weird tree fetish introduces some truly stunning visuals, but the guy's a serial killer who tortures and kills women, so he's not good boyfriend material.  Mark appears to be not only interested in Susan but genuinely concerned for her welfare, which makes the stupid twist at the end even more stupid.  **Spoiler, he tells Susan "it was all just a bad dream" and then gets a text from the Dragon Lady, which proves he was working for the bad guys all along.  Sigh.

and The Ugly

Exhibit A: The Dragon Lady, aka Dr. Agnetta Lindquist, aka Geena Davis

Dr. Lindquist is an evil cougar who sets her sights on cute younger male doctors or residents and helps them climb up the Hospital ladder if they will sleep with her.  She not only is fiercely jealous of Susan, but sics the evil psycho on her in order to get her competition (for Mark's bed) out of the way.  She gives the evil psycho guy bad therapy and bad drugs so that he'll become completely unhinged and go after Susan.  She also seems to orchestrate (behind the scenes) Dr. Howard Stark's near fatal car accident so that she can use his body as a test subject for her nefarious Alzheimer's experiments.  And no, she's not in any way nuanced or even morally concerned about the consequences of her actions.

Exhibit B: The Psycho Baby Lover, aka Mrs. Emerson, aka Ellen Burstyn

Burstyn takes the crazy psycho portrayal way past eleven as she cackles non-stop during her interactions with other actors, and utters some amazing lines when she's not chomping on the scenery.  Turns out that she couldn't have babies, and it has something to do with God's will, and now she has plenty of babies because the Jefferson is not only a human experiment facility and an illegal organ warehouse, but they now also hatch babies from pregnant women in comas!  Yes indeed.  Well, if you liberals keep insisting on stem cell research then this is what you get!!  Ugh, the horror.

Still, my all time favorite moment in the whole mini-series is when Mrs. Emerson pulls some frozen rods out of storage--the better to skewer Susan with--and quibbles about the size saying, "I'll have to use number eights.  These tens might shatter her pelvis.  She's quite petite."  Nice.  All the other people working at the Jefferson Institute are nowhere near as scary as this lady.  Or Davis's Dr. Lindquist.  Even after Richard Dreyfus turns out to be the King of all the Villains, in cahoots with Susan's saintly granddad, and shouting about "culling the herd," he still comes off as not so bad.  I'm shaking my head at the folly of it all.

Scary Hallways!

So I highly recommend a double or triple feature of the original Coma with maybe the original The Stepford Wives and the original Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (John Newland 1973) as a potent cocktail of women-in-peril thrillers where the evil firmly lies in the hands of Men.  Stay away from the remakes, for these days, if women are victimized, they only have themselves to blame.