For today’s song of the day comes from Ennio Morricone’s score for John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. Desolation is an aptly named composition because this song capture the feel of isolation and paranoia that has made Carpenter’s film a classic.
That’s what we ask ourselves after every school shooting, isn’t it? Because the perpetrators are usually not around to explain themselves, there’s a tendency to look to the shooter’s parents and to demand to know how they could have allowed things to get so out of control. The assumption almost always is that the parents were negligent. If only the shooter’s mother or father had done a better job, we’re led to believe, the tragedy could have been prevented. It’s human nature. When faced with an unspeakable tragedy, people need someone to blame.
Of course, an actual examination of the history of most school shooting does reveal some bad parents but it also reveals parents who did their best under difficult circumstances or who were as fooled by their children as everyone else in the world. Yes, there are the parents who gave their obviously unstable children guns. But there are other parents who tried to get their children help and who tried to be tough disciplinarians and who sincerely believed that that their children were doing better in school or life or whatever. And if a parent does suspect that their child is a sociopath, what are they to do? Are they supposed to stop loving that child and cast them away? Too often, the trauma of violence leads people to seek out easy answers but often times, those easy answers are not there. We forget that no one sets out to raise a monster.
M.O.M. Mother of Monsters is a found footage film that attempts to explore some of these issues. Abbey Bell (Melinda Page Hamilton) is a single mom who suspects that her 16 year-old son, Jacob (Bailey Edwards), might be a psychopath. So, she plants hidden cameras around her house and she obsessively films their every interaction. She says that she’s doing it so that she can prove that her son is dangerous and also so she can help all of the other mothers out there who are struggling to raise psychotic children.
And yes, Jacob is certainly obnoxious. He’s frequently angry and he makes inappropriate jokes about killing people. He spends a lot of his time locked away in his room and he throws a fit when Abbey tries to take away his Playstation. He’s casually racist and he listens to loud and angry music and he’s a habitual liar. From the time he was 6 years-old, he’s been drawing disturbing pictures. The question, though, is whether he’s the next school shooter or if he’s just a 16 year-old boy.
Not helping matter is that Abbey herself seems to be even more unstable than her son. Abbey gets as mad at her own mother as Jacob does at her and she continually talks about whether or not evil is hereditary. Throughout the film, there are dark hints about an incident that occurred before Jacob was born. When we’re told that Abbey majored in psychology, we find ourselves wondering if she’s trying to use Jacob an his bed behavior to justify her own fears and obsessions. Who is the bigger threat, Jacob or Abbey? The film keeps you guessing all the way up to its violent conclusion.
The first two thirds of M.O.M. works pretty well. Though I’m usually not a fan of the found footage genre, M.O.M. actually comes up with a believable justification for the constant filming. It also makes good use of its low budget, setting almost all of the action in one claustrophobic house. Bailey Edwards and especially Melinda Page Hamilton do a great job playing the two main characters and the film keeps you guessing as to whether Abbey is right to be concerned or if she’s projecting her own instability onto her son.
Unfortunately, the final third of the film features a plot twist that just didn’t work for me. While I imagine that it will work for some people, it was just a bit too implausible for me to accept and the twist’s clumsy execution took me out of the film’s carefully constructed reality. The film went from being an intriguing character study of two damaged people to just being another found footage thriller. As such, the film’s final disturbing image didn’t quite have the power that it perhaps would have if not for that final twist.
That said, the first part of the film was undeniably effective and that’s enough for me to recommend it. If nothing else, this film identities Tucia Lyman as a director to watch out for. According to the imdb, this was first narrative feature film and she did a good job using the familiar rules of the found footage genre to tell an intriguing story. I look forward to her second film.
Today’s song of the day comes from Ennio Morricone’s score for Exorcist II: The Heretic. This is not a film with a great reputation but I think almost everyone agrees that it has a great score.
This is Regan’s Theme. This song was also later used in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.
You knew this one was coming, right? Seriously, no tribute to Ennio Morricone is complete without the main theme from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
Morricone’s score is as much of a character in this film as the ones played by Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef. It perfectly sets the moods, telling us that we’re about to see something that is truly epic. The opening notes, which have so often been parodied but which have never lost their power, truly capture the feel of Sergio Leone’s mythical vision of the old west.
Today’s song of the day comes to us from the classic score that Ennio Morricone wrote for Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly! When we started our tribute to Morricone, there was no doubt that we would eventually include at least a few songs from this film’s soundtrack. Today, we share The Ecstasy of Gold, which plays in the background of one of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema. It’s hard to listen to this without thinking about Eli Wallach (as Tuco) joyfully running through that cemetery.
Becky is a fairly intense thriller, featuring two actors who you normally wouldn’t expect to appear in a film about a 13 year-old girl savagely attacking and killing a group of criminals in the woods.
For example, Kevin James is best-known for starring in The King of Queens and for playing Paul Blart: Mall Cop. He’s a member of the Adam Sandler stock company and almost his entire career has involved playing goofy but lovable manchildren. In Becky, he plays Dominick, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who has escaped from prison and, along with a group of other fugitives, is desperately searching for a key that will apparently unlock something that will lead to a race war. Over the course of the film, Dominick murders several people. He orders his associates to kill children. He tortures a man with a branding iron and he taunts an interracial couple. He has a big bushy beard and a swastika tattooed on the back of his saved head. In other words, this isn’t the Kevin James movie to show your grandma.
And then you have Joel McHale. Joel McHale is best-known for hosting The Soup and playing Jeff Winger on Community. In Becky, McHale plays another character named Jeff. This Jeff is the father of an angry 13 year-old girl named Becky (played by Lulu Wilson). Jeff wants to have a nice weekend up at the lake with Becky and he’s hoping that he can get Becky to accept the fact that Kayla (Amanda Brugel) is going to be her new stepmother. Needless to say the weekend does not go well. Not only does Becky resent Kayla but Dominick and his crew show up at Jeff’s cabin, searching that key.
While Dominick is holding her family hostage, Becky is hiding in the woods and picking Dominick’s men off one-by-one. As Kayla explains it, Becky is unstoppable because she’s “a vindictive 13 year-old girl.” The majority of the film is taken up with scenes of Becky coming up with creative ways to kill people who are a lot bigger than her. It turns out that everything from an art pencil to a ruler can be turned into a deadly weapon. (Of course, sometimes, a lawn mower works just as well.) Becky is the type who will scream over the corpse of someone who she has just killed. It’s not because she’s upset over what she’s done. It’s because she’s so pissed off. And believe me, I could relate. I was a pissed off 13 year-old too. Luckily, I never had to kill anyone with my art supplies so let’s all be happy about that.
Becky is a bit of throwback to the grindhouse films of the past. There’s even a scene that plays a very obvious homage to the ending of the original I Spit On Your Grave. There’s a lot of violence. There’s a huge amount of gore. If you’ve ever wanted to see what an eye looks like when it’s literally hanging out of its socket, this is the film for you. There are some moments of very dark humor as well. Lulu Wilson gives a fierce performance as Becky and, In general, the film’s well-directed. The first 20 minutes of the movie are actually rather brilliant, with scenes of Becky dealing with school bullies alternating with scenes of Dominick killing people in prison.
That said, the film itself runs out of gas long before the final scene. A huge part of the problem is that Domenick and his associates are all way too stupid to really be a legitimate threat to Becky and, as a result, there’s not much suspense as to whether or not Becky will be able to kill them. (It was hard not to unfavorably compare the buffoonish, easily outwitted Neo-Nazis in this film with the legitimately terrifying ones that appeared in Green Room.) As well, for all the film’s violence and it’s homages to the grindhouse, it oddly allows two characters to survive the film despite the fact that there was no reason for the film’s villains to keep them around. Their survival reminds you that you’re just watching a movie and it takes you out of the moment. You realize that if the movie doesn’t have the guts to kill the two of them, then it’s probably not going to have the guts to really surprise us further down the road.
I have to admit, I really wanted to like this film, if just because I was intrigued by the against-type casting of Kevin James and Joel McHale. I may not care for the majority of Kevin James’s films but I’ve always felt that he was a good actor. Joel McHale, as well, has always been a personal favorite of mine and, like James, he’s a better actor than he’s often given credit for being. I was hoping that both of them would get a chance to shock viewers by brilliantly playing against type. But McHale is stuck playing a character who is just too wimpy to be sympathetic and Kevin James, bless him, often seems to be trying too hard to project menace. True menace has to feel natural. Once it becomes obvious that you’re trying to be menacing, then you’re not. Dominick is a Sid Haig role being played by Kevin James. Despite (or perhaps because of) the goofy appeal of such an idea, it just doesn’t work.
Despite its flaws, Becky is a well-shot, quickly paced film and it has enough entertaining moments to be watchable if not entirely satisfying. If you’re looking gore, this film has what you’re looking for and, as any horror fan can tell you, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. The film doesn’t quite work but still, directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion do a good enough job that I look forward to seeing where they do next.
