For today’s horror on the lens, check out the 1963 film, Diary of a Madman!
It’s simply not October without at least one film featuring the great Vincent Price. In Diary of a Madman, Price plays Simon Cordier, a French magistrate. What is it that’s causing Simon’s personality to change? What is making him suffer from greater and greater delusions? Is he just going insane? Or is he being haunted by a malevolent spirit known as a horla!?
Any film that features Vincent Price being sinister is worth watching and Diary of a Madman actually features one of his better performances. Overall, Diary of a Madman is an enjoyable attempt at psychological horror.
Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime movie premiere, Are You My Daughter?
Why Was I Watching It?
Because it was on Lifetime, of course! Of course, I was only able to watch the 1st hour before I had to change the channel over to SyFy so I could watch They Found Hell. But, fortunately, Lifetime always shows their movies twice so, once They Found Hell was over with, I was able to turn back to Lifetime and catch the final hour of Are You My Daughter?
What Was It About?
14 years ago, Laura Paddington’s (Brooke Langton) 3 year-0ld daughter disappeared. In the years since, Laura has suffered from a lot of guilt. She’s also seen her marriage to Richard (Mike Dopud) end in divorce.
At first, when Laura meets Jacob (Peter Benson) is a support group, he seems like the perfect guy. Jacob tells Laura that she has to move on from the disappearance of her daughter and, under Jacob’s guidance, Laura finally decides to clean out her daughter’s old bedroom.
However, when Laura attempts to donate her daughter’s clothes to the local shelter, she is shocked when she meets Rebecca (Stephanie Bennett). Rebecca not only looks like a teenage version of her daughter but she also has the same birthmark on the back of her neck! After Rebecca gets a DNA test, it is confirmed that she is Laura’s daughter!
Or is she? When Richard meets her, he is immediately suspicious of both Rebecca and Jacob. Is Richard being paranoid or is Laura the victim of a very cruel con?
What Worked?
There are certain directors who I’m always happy to see listed in the opening credits of a Lifetime or a SyFy movie. Whenever I see that a film was directed by Doug Campbell, Grant Harvey, or Griff Furst, I always know that I’m going to see a movie that’s better than the average Lifetime melodrama. The director of Are You My Daughter, Jason Bourque, is another one of those directors. He’s directed and written his share of films for both Lifetime and SyFy and his films are always very entertaining and well-done. That’s definitely the case with Are You My Daughter, which is a fun and twisty little melodrama. (Bourque also directed a film called Black Fly, which I reviewed on this site a few months ago.)
As well, Stephanie Bennett did a good job as Rebecca/Zoe. She kept you guessing.
What Did Not Work?
It all worked. This was a fun and enjoyable Lifetime movie.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
I’m not a mother yet but once I am, I am going to be so overprotective. Seriously, my kids are never going to be out of my sight. It’s hard for me to think of anything more terrifying than having your child disappear.
They Found Hell, which premiered last night on the SyFy channel, deserves a lot of credit. In the tradition of the best grindhouse films (and, make no mistake, this was definitely a grindhouse film even if it was made for TV), They Found Hell delivers exactly what it promises. The title tells us that “they” will find Hell and that’s exactly what happens.
“They” refers to a group of college students who, through some questionable use of science, manage to not only open up a portal into Hell but get sucked into it as well. One student does manage to avoid getting sucked into the portal but he turns out to be pretty ineffective. When he goes to the local crazy professor (James Sobol Kelly), he tells him what has happened, and then suggests maybe calling the police. (I assume so that the police could read Hell its rights?) The professor responds by tying the student up. The professor has a plan of his own.
As for the students actually went down the portal … well, they’re in Hell. One student insists that there’s no such thing as Hell and therefore, this must all be a dream. Of course, he’s the first to die. This, of course, leads to an interesting theological question: if an atheist dies in Hell, does he just come back to life? I mean, he’s already in Hell. What else can be done to him?
Anyway, the remaining students soon find themselves split up and each exploring a different section of Hell. And this is really where the movie triumphed because this was a very convincing and very memorable Hell. One student found himself in a desolate forest and ended up getting attacked by a bunch of vines. Another found herself wandering through the hallways of what appeared to be the ruins of a Tuscan castle. Another student found himself in a burning city while two others found themselves chained to a wall while a pendulum swung back and forth. (I assume they were in the Edgar Allan Poe Wing of Hell.) It was all surprisingly well-done and quite creepy.
At first, it seemed that Hell was nearly deserted and I guess we should be happy about that. (I mean, humanity must be doing something right if there’s hardly anyone on the streets of Hell.) But, as we quickly learn, the students are not alone. There are lizard creatures that jump through windows. There are snarling dogs that eat men who have been tied to the trees in a dark forest. And, of course, there’s the succubus…
And then there’s Charon, the boatman. In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman who takes souls across the River Styx. Of course, he’ll only take you if you can pay the toll. Charon’s always been one of my favorite mythological characters so I was definitely excited when he made an appearance here, looking all spooky and ghastly.
When They Found Hell started, I noticed that a lot of Hell seemed to look like other horror movies. There were some scenes that had a Saw feel to them. And then there were others that felt like they could have been lifted from a zombie movie. At first, I assumed the film was just ripping off other horror films and I was totally okay with that. But, as we discover, there’s actually a very clever reason why the various sections of Hell resemble other horror movies. I’m not going to spoil it but it really is pretty clever.
And really, that’s a great description of They Found Hell. It’s a surprisingly clever little horror film, one that is full of spooky atmosphere and scary moments. It’s also surprisingly well-acted, with the entire cast bringing a lot of conviction to their roles. This is a fun movie, one that you should definitely watch with a group of your best, snarkiest, and smartest friends.
So, keep an eye out and, the next time that They Found Hell is on SyFy, be sure to watch!
The fact that Crimson Peak, Guillermo Del Toro’s wonderful new film, is only getting mixed or grudgingly positive reviews tells you everything that you need to know about the sorry state of modern film criticism.
Taking place at the turn of the 19th Century, Crimson Peak tells the story of Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska). The daughter of industrialist Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver), Edith is haunted by a childhood memory, in which her mother’s ghost appeared to her and told her to never go to Crimson Peak. Edith grows up to be an aspiring writer. She writes stories about ghosts, though she is always quick to point out that the ghosts are just meant to be a “metaphor for the past.” Her publishers tell her that no one wants to read a ghost story written by a woman and they recommend that she concentrate on writing a nice romance.
Following the violent death of her father, Edith marries the charming inventor Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and moves to his family home in England. Still in shock over the death of her father, Edith struggles to make things work in England. Tom is nearly penniless and seems to be more interested in his inventions than with her. (Not only did they not consummate the marriage during the honeymoon but Tom sleeps in a separate bedroom.) Meanwhile, Tom’s older sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain), does little to hide the disdain that she feels towards her new sister-in-law.
As for the house itself, it is on the verge of collapsing. At one point, Tom mentions that, because of the red clay that sits underneath the mansion, their new home is sometimes called Crimson Peak. If that wasn’t enough to panic Edith, she keeps seeing mysterious figures wandering through the halls. Edith swears that she is seeing ghosts and that they are trying to tell her something. Tom and Lucille tells her that she’s imagining things and continue to insist that she drink a special tea. Could that tea be the reason why Edith finds herself coughing up blood?
(Actually, there’s a lot of blood spilled over the course of Crimson Peak. It’s not just the clay that makes the ground red. If Edith Wharton had written a horror movie, the end result would probably be a lot like Crimson Peak.)
And let’s just get this out of the way right now — Crimson Peak is an absolutely brilliant movie. Those critics who have complained that Crimson Peak doesn’t have any of the expected “shock” scares are totally missing the point. Crimson Peak is not about cheap scares. Del Toro is not looking to make you jump by having a cat jump out of a closet. Instead, Crimson Peak is all about atmosphere. Del Toro maintains an atmosphere of consistent unease throughout the entire film. The scares come less from what is shown and more from what is implied. In that way, Crimson Peak pays homage to the great gothic horror films of the past.
And remember when I complained about how terrible Jessica Chastain was in The Martian? Well, she absolutely brilliant in Crimson Peak. The role of Lucille is not one that demands a lot of subtlety and Chastain appears to be having a great time getting to play such a menacing character. If anything, this is one of Chastain’s best performances. (One need only consider how overly mannered Meryl Streep would have been in the role to realize just how great an actress Jessica Chastain truly is.) Mia Wasikowska is the epitome of fragile loveliness as Edith and Tom Hiddleston is perfectly cast as a handsome, slightly decadent aristocrat with a secret. In fact, all three of them are perfectly cast. Taking their roles too seriously would have been a mistake but so would have not taking the movie seriously enough. The entire cast strikes a perfect balance, embracing the melodrama without going too far over the top.
So, why are so many film critics having such a hard time embracing Crimson Peak? It’s pretty much for the same reason that a lot of them had a hard time with Pacific Rim. Guillermo Del Toro’s films are masterpieces of the pulp imagination. As such, he exposes the condescending attitude that most contemporary critics take towards “genre” films. When mainstream critics dismiss Crimson Peak as just being “a horror film that isn’t scary enough,” all they’re really doing is revealing how ignorant they are of the horror genre.
So, in other words, don’t listen to those mainstream critics. They are not worth your trouble. CrimsonPeak is a wonderfully acted and visually gorgeous gothic romance and it needs to be seen on the big screen.
Reportedly, Crimson Peak struggled at the box office this weekend.
Well, you know what?
If you haven’t seen Crimson Peak, you need to go out and see it this week. It’s a great film and what good are we if we let the great ones go unseen?
Sorry if I forget some things, but last night after watching this movie I lost cellphone reception and thus went into a severe panic attack. Just kidding, I just said that to make the point that the losing cellphone reception thing to show how shallow and disconnected someone is in a movie is a cliche that is getting really really old. Also, I’ve been quite surprised. I can drive many miles out into the middle of nowhere and still get near perfect LTE where I live. In fact, I only know of two places where I lose cellphone reception. A room that is basically a bunker and one of my favorite parks that is in a canyon. At least this movie didn’t have people in wide flat open spaces losing GPS signals because the writers don’t know how that works.
With a title like Bridal Wave you might imagine that there must be some surfing going on here. That maybe someone is going to end up in a wedding dress on a surfboard. No such luck. This movie opens up at plastic surgeon’s office. We meet Dr. Phillip Hamilton (David Haydn-Jones) and his assistant Georgie Dwyer (Arielle Kebbel). Wait…that means!
Now we meet a girl who for her 21st birthday has just received a nose job. I’ll have to take this movie’s word at that because I look at this girl and think she has had some work done on her eyes instead.
As I’m sure you’ve guessed already, Georgie and Phillip are closer than just colleagues and are going to be married. Now we meet the parents. It’s not worth your time introducing them. All you need to know is that all the scenes with the parents make you think this is the first time either of them have met the other’s parents. And given a conversation at the end of this movie, I think that was done on purpose. That you are supposed to read it that way. This is a movie that has some uneven writing. This bit about the parents and two conversations at the end of the movie make perfect sense and are based in reality. However, the stuff in between falls back on stupid stereotypes yet again.
Of course that means we need to introduce the right guy. His name is Luke Griggs (Andrew W. Walker). How do we know he’s the right guy? Because we see him mention that he doesn’t own a cellphone anymore. While we are talking about cellphones. Kudos to this movie for not screwing up the fake video chat scenes the way A Ring By Spring did by accidentally leaving the the bit at the top of the screen that shows what we are seeing is a pre-recorded video.
The setup is that Phillip and Georgie have come to an island that has a hotel which is a popular place to have weddings. In other words, they see wave after wave of brides come through their place. Hence the title Bridal Wave. Griggs is an architect who lives right next door to the hotel and is a little teed off about it because of the loss of the natural beauty of the island. However, up until the end of the movie he kind of comes across like an angry old man waving his cane at the modern world. My favorite part of this is when to explain his point about how imperfections in a person are what make them perfect, he compares them to an outcropping of rocks. Yes, because human beings are exactly like inanimate objects.
This part happens during Luke and Georgie’s nature excursion. Phillip was called away to perform some surgeries because it was too hard to have both him and Luke in the movie at the same time and have Georgie still pick Luke. During this scene is when we get the ridiculous cellphone reception thing. We also get Luke being confused as to who might want to get their ears pinned back. I totally can’t think of anyone who might want that procedure done.
Everything else is standard stuff except for two conversations at the end of the movie. The first is when Georgie and Phillip finally sit down and talk about that they probably shouldn’t get married. The reasons they bring up make absolute perfect sense and don’t rely on BS. They do have feelings for each other and they work together so much and so well that marriage just seemed like the next logical thing for them. That’s why they really hadn’t met each other’s parents because they are so busy all the time that they kind of wind up in their own world. Makes sense!
The second conversation is when Luke sits down with the owner of the hotel. Luke basically says the hotel and the marriages don’t bother him, but what bothers him is that the design of the place robs people coming there of the beauty they should be getting by coming to this island. He wants to sell off his place next door, tear it down, and restore it to the way it looked before as a natural grotto to hold weddings in. Again, makes perfect sense!
Why couldn’t the whole movie be like that? Although just to pander to people who want one last laugh at Phillip because he must be superficial and shallow since he does plastic surgery.
After they cut to one year later to show Georgie and Luke getting married in the grotto, we see that Phillip is with a girl he gave a nose job.
This one is far far better than A Country Wedding, but it still uses too much stereotype BS. You can do better in general, and even from Hallmark.
I’m a few weeks late in reviewing The Martian, largely because I was on vacation when it was first released. When I finally did see The Martian, it was at the wonderful UEC theater in beautiful Russellville, Arkansas. As opposed to my experience when I saw The Green Inferno, the theater was packed and, throughout the entire movie, it was obvious that the audience absolutely loved what they were seeing on screen. They laughed, they applauded, and it was obvious they had a great time with the movie.
And why not? After the commercial failures of both The Counselor and Exodus, it’s obvious that director Ridley Scott was not going to take any chances with The Martian. There’s not a single scene that is not specifically calculated to keep the viewer as complacently satisfied as possible. Telling the story of how botanist Mark Whatney (Matt Damon) gets stranded on Mars and must figure out a way to survive until he can be rescued, The Martian is such a positive film that its total lack of cynicism almost gets overwhelming. The end result is a film that is a 100 times better than Exodus but never as interesting or challenging as The Counselor.
In fact, as I watched The Martian, I kept thinking about another film about a man stranded out in the middle of nowhere, Into The Wild. The main character in Into The Wild spent his isolation contemplating the meaning of life and finally reaching some sort of spiritual peace before starving to death. Mark Whatney, on the other hand, spends his isolation recording a snarky video diary and listening to classic disco songs.
And, before anyone gets offended or accuses me of being a film snob, allow me to say that I enjoyed The Martian. I thought it was an entertaining movie and I especially loved the soundtrack. But, at the same time, one can enjoy The Martian and still acknowledge that there’s not much going on underneath the crowd-pleasing surface.
Looking back on the film, I find it remarkable just how little we learn about Mark Whatney. We hear at one point that he has a family but we really don’t learn anything about his life on Earth. In a way, he’s a bit like Robert Redford in All Is Lost. Except, of course, Mark Whatney talks. He talks a lot. Fortunately, Mark is played by Matt Damon, who is a great talker. If I think that The Martian is entertaining but also a bit overrated (and I do), I also think that Matt Damon deserves every bit of praise that he’s received for his performance.
Interestingly enough, The Martian not only features Matt Damon’s best performance but it also features Jessica Chastain’s worst. Chastain plays Commander Lewis, who is in charge of the Mars expedition and who take it upon herself to bring Mark Whatney home. And really, this should have been a great role for Jessica Chastain but, for the first time that I can remember, she gives a performance that just isn’t that interesting.
Then again, there’s really only one interesting character in the entire film and that’s Mark Whatney (though I would have liked to learn more about the astronomer played by Donald Glover, who gives an appealingly eccentric performance). This is Matt Damon’s film and it’s best moments are the ones where Mark deals with life on Mars. In fact, there’s a part of me that almost wishes the majority of the NASA scenes had been left on the editing room floor and almost the entire movie had just been Matt Damon on Mars.
In the end, I did enjoy The Martian. It’s a good film that some people are insisting was great. (Of course, a lot of that is because it’s trendy to be into science. Fortunately, Mark Whatney isn’t as much of a pompous blowhard as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, nor is he as creepy as Bill Nye.) Some people are even suggesting that The Martian is the new Oscar front runner and maybe it is. (After all, it’s not like there was much going on below the surface of Birdman either.)
But for me, in the years to come, the main thing I’ll remember about The Martian is the totally kickass soundtrack…
Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, “I’d love to see a movie where a youngish Jack Nicholson played a French soldier who, while searching for a mysterious woman, comes across a castle that’s inhabited by both Dick Miller and Boris Karloff?”
Of course you have! Who hasn’t?
Well, fortunately, it’s YouTube to the rescue. In Roger Corman’s 1963 film The Terror, Jack Nicholson is the least believable 19th century French soldier ever. However, it’s still interesting to watch him before he became a cinematic icon. (Judging from his performance here and in Cry Baby Killer, Jack was not a natural-born actor.) Boris Karloff is, as usual, great and familiar Corman actor Dick Miller gets a much larger role than usual. Pay attention to the actress playing the mysterious woman. That’s Sandra Knight who, at the time of filming, was married to Jack Nicholson.
Reportedly, The Terror was one of those films that Corman made because he still had the sets from his much more acclaimed film version of The Raven. The script was never finished, the story was made up as filming moved alone, and no less than five directors shot different parts of this 81 minute movie. Among the directors: Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Jack Nicholson himself! Perhaps not surprisingly, the final film is a total mess but it does have some historical value.
(In typical Corman fashion, scenes from The Terror were later used in the 1968 film, Targets.)
1980’s Don’t Go In The House is one of the many “Don’t” films to come out in the 70s and 80s. These films all had titles that warned viewers not to do something. Don’t Answer The Phone! Don’t Stand Near The Window! Don’t Go To Sleep! Don’t Go Into The Woods…Alone! Don’t Go In The House!
And I have to admit that whenever I come across one of these titles, my initial response is to get a little offended because I don’t like being told what to do. A grindhouse movie about me would be called Don’t Give Lisa Orders. Seriously, you’re going to tell me not to go into the house? I’m going not only going to go into the house but I’m also going to stay for however long I feel like staying. If you don’t like it, buy a new house.
But, that being said, these Don’t titles do make it very easy for a lazy reviewer. A title like Don’t Go In The House practically invites a critic to be snarky. “Don’t go in the house? How about don’t watch the fucking movie?”
Seriously, it’s fun!
But, at the same time, that’s a bit unfair to Don’t Go In The House. As far as crazed serial killer films go, Don’t Go In The House is one of the most disturbingly effective entries in the genre. Dan Grimaldi (who later played Patsy Parisi on The Sopranos) stars as Donny Kohler. Shy and awkward, Donny lives in a dilapidated mansion with his mother. When Donny was a child, his mother’s favorite punishment was to burn him and, as a result, Donny has grown up both fearing and loving fire.
Though Donny is obviously disturbed from the first minute we see him, it’s not until his mother dies that the true extent of Donny’s madness becomes apparent. Now living alone in that huge house, Donny starts to hear whispering voices. The voices tell him to “master the flame.” Soon, Donny is luring victims into his house, where he chains them up in a specially made room and uses a flame thrower to set them on fire…
AGCK!
Seriously, this movie is soooooooo disturbing! Not only is the film full of ominous atmosphere but Dan Grimaldi gives an all-too realistic performance in the role of Donny. Much like Nicholas Worth in Don’t Answer The Phone, Grimaldi turns Donny into an all too familiar monster. The fact of the matter is that we’ve all known a potential Donny. Don’t get paranoid? Well, that’s next to impossible after you watch a movie like Don’t Go In The House.
I also have to say that I have never actually seen anyone burned alive, though, when I was nine, I did see my Dad accidentally set himself on fire. (Before anyone freaks out, he did that whole drop and roll thing or whatever it is and he was absolutely fine.) That said, the immolation scenes in Don’t Go In The House felt totally and completely authentic. They were pure nightmare fuel, truly some of the most disturbing scenes that I have ever seen.
Am I recommending Don’t Go In The House? I don’t know. It’s thoroughly unpleasant but, at the same time, it’s a very well-made film and surprisingly well-acted film. And, despite being about a serial killer and featuring very graphic violence, the film itself is always on the side of the victims. No attempt is made to make Donny into some sort of Hannibal Lecterish antihero (from the minute we first meet him until the film’s final scene, Donny is presented as being a total loser) and, as a result, Don’t Go In The House emerges as a grindhouse film that has a stronger moral center than most mainstream features.
But my God, is it ever disturbing! I saw the film once and that was more than enough for me. If you’re a fan of grindhouse and exploitation films, Don’t Go In The House is a film that you’re going to have to see eventually. If you’re like me, you’ll probably end up watching it through your fingers.
Seriously, don’t underestimate the disturbing experience of watching Don’t Go In The House.
Earlier this month Lisa posted a scene from Slaughterhouse Rock that she likes, but she said she hadn’t actually seen the movie. She might as well have slapped me across the face with a steel gauntlet. Well, I’ve seen Slaughterhouse Rock now. Twice in fact. Probably three if you count all the rewatching of segments I had to do while writing this review because I was still confused. I can assure you that scene is the most entertaining thing about this movie. Lisa is right, that scene does show parts from earlier in the film. I love that it even flashes back to pointless scenes like when one of the kids slips while climbing up onto Alcatraz Island. Or a quick shot of one of the girls talking in a restaurant. It’s like they reached that part of the film and ran out of money because they blew it on effects from earlier in the film. That, and it was probably in Toni Basil’s contract that they let her dance a little in this movie. Oh, by the way, this is one of two rock horror films that star Toni Basil. I already reviewed Rockula. Why are there two of these?
So let’s get this review over with so I can subject myself to more films of questionable quality. The film starts out with some dreamlike scary scenes that end with someone’s hand getting chopped off. Then a guy wakes up to find his hand missing. Of course he wakes up again because he was still in a dream. Cut to the opening title card. We find out that not only Toni Basil was involved in this, but Devo too. And then we find out that the cinematographer on this movie is Nicholas Von Sternberg. The son of famed director Josef Von Sternberg. I bring that up because the first film he is credited with shooting is Dolemite (1975). That film is famous for numerous reasons including the boom mic popping in from the top of the frame.
I mention it since I’m pretty sure there is a scene in this movie where the boom mic pops in on the left hand side of the shot. I wish I had watched a higher quality copy of this movie, but here’s the shot anyways.
But back to the story. That kid is Alex Gardner (Nicholas Celozzi) who has been having some weird dreams lately. Cut to the outside of a college building and we learn that Alcatraz has been closed down temporarily because of a tragic incident. A rock band called Body Bag broke off from the tour group and was later found dead. That’s Sammy Mitchell’s (Toni Basil) band. Since his dreams seem like they are taking place in a prison, his friends think there must be a connection. The next group of scenes are either stupid 1980’s teenagers in a horror movie stuff, creepy unreal stuff, or one of the very few shots in this movie that are actually of Alcatraz.
In here is one of the dumbest scenes in the movie. They obviously thought it was really cool and built atmosphere, but it’s actually just really frustrating and confusing like most of this movie. It takes place in a restaurant where the scene starts with this person picking up some food to take to a table. The camera moves in slow motion around this restaurant for what feels like an eternity. Then a voice kicks in. Who is saying it? Is it the people we are looking at? The camera is still moving so I guess it can’t be. It takes close to another 10 seconds before the camera slow motion moves some more and finally settles on a girl and Alex talking at a table. My god! Was it so hard to cut that shorter? This is especially frustrating because the rest of the scene is actually done rather well. It uses close ups of his eyes and other peoples faces combined with angles and playing with the sound to build up to a hand breaking through the wall behind him. None of which required that unnecessarily confusing roam through the restaurant. Likely, that stuff was padding. There’s a lot of stuff that feels like padding in this movie.
Now apparently these kids are taking some sort of class on the metaphysical in college because of course we can’t just have the kids go to Alcatraz of their own volition. No, Alex’s teacher finds out about his dreams after he freaks out in class. It’s her and this Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) scene that finally push them to take a small boat out to the island.
Once we arrive on the island then the film really starts to have issues. The problem is since this was obviously not shot on the island, what you are seeing are small separate sets. In a well directed movie, this wouldn’t necessarily be an issue, but here it is. You never really have a sense of space. How long is that hallway? Where is this exactly? Where is it in relation to the other sets? All of these problems are what make the film feel like a lot of just people walking and talking. To where? Who knows? And who cares.
After getting grabbed by a hand and pulled somewhere else, we meet Sammy Mitchell. She starts to tells us the story behind all of this and that she has been reaching out to him in order to bring him to the island. Expect there to be a reason she reached out to him specifically? Only in your dreams. We now learn about her fascination with the occult and that she let some demon out. Apparently, all the people who have died on the island are the source of his power and are trapped on the island by his power. She then explains how this guy allowed in something more evil than the guy could have imagined. Then it cuts away to someone else for a bit. We then come back to her, and he asks why she chose him. Her answer is that she needs a living being to open a door at the end of a tunnel in order to release all the souls trapped on the island. Now comes the stock footage dance that Lisa posted.
While all this is going on, we have the other kids wandering around the island. One of them includes Alex’s brother Richard (Tom Reilly). Richard becomes possessed by this demon. I love the scene with this one girl that he has shortly after getting taken over. It’s like that ridiculous dry hump sexual assault scene from the game Phantasmagoria. Only this scene actually makes some sense since the bad guy did have a history of that sort of thing whereas in the game it’s really random.
With Alex out of his body, the movie now has an excuse for how it can show us, and him, scenes from the past really explaining things. Okay, what’s going on is that apparently Alcatraz was a military outpost before it became a prison. And of course there was a really nasty guy who liked to hire girls, then eat them. After he couldn’t hire hookers and eat them anymore, he fed off the locals. The Native Americans finally got fed up with him and burned him. Unfortunately, he apparently had learned enough about magic that this didn’t do him in really. He had made a pact with the devil according to Sammy. I love the dialogue from the ghosts that almost sound like Sean Connery’s famous opening credits lines from Highlander (1986) that were recorded in a bathroom. Also, I love the quick anti-drug line they threw in with Basil’s exposition dump.
After Basil finally shuts up, although she keeps popping in from now on, the movie basically comes down to a D.W. Griffith cross cutting sequence. On one end you have people fighting the demon and on the other you have Alex (out of body) walking down the tunnel to open the door. Just as the camera seemed to take forever to move through the restaurant, Alex takes his sweet time walking through this tunnel. Almost like they shot all the other scenes of the kids fighting the demon, figured out how long they ran, then shot enough of Alex walking down the tunnel so they could keep cutting back to it. During this is where this lack of a sense of space really comes into play. The demon keeps pounding against a wall in some place and that somehow has an effect on Alex in the tunnel. The demon is hitting his hand against the wall, and then it cuts to Alex’s body to show his hand twist, which then seems to have an affect on his soul moving through the tunnel. It’s all very confusing, and since it’s the climax, it really damages the movie.
At the end, as far as I can tell, Basil joins souls with Alex in some fashion. There’s something there because he can suddenly play the piano at the end. I don’t care.
This film was disappointing. I wasn’t a fan of the opening stuff, but they should have stuck with it all the way through. Yes, they could have improved on the sense of space issue, but I could have forgiven that if I felt trapped and held in a suspenseful atmosphere. Instead, they had to explain things, bring in Toni Basil, the dance number, the ridiculous outfits on her, and comedy bits from other dead people.
In other words, you can skip this one. If you must have Toni Basil in a rock related horror film, then go with Rockula. It’s not great, but it’s better than this. Plus you also get Thomas Dolby and Bo Diddley in that one.
First released in 2010, The Last Exorcism is one of the best films of the past 5 years.
I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with that statement. When The Last Exorcism was released, a lot of people were so angered by the way the film ended that they dismissed the entire movie. Add to that, The Last Exorcism is yet another found footage horror film and that genre has produced a lot of truly terrible movies. Whether fairly or not, a lot of people have judged The Last Exorcism on the basis of the sins committed by films like The Devil Inside. With all that taken into consideration, it’s perhaps not surprising that The Last Exorcism only has a rating of 5.6 on the IMDb.
However, those who casually dismiss The Last Exorcism are making a mistake. The Last Exorcism is a hundred times better than it has any right to be. If nothing else, it’s probably one of the best found footage horror films ever made.
Produced by Eli Roth and directed by Daniel Stamm, the film opens with footage of the Rev. Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) leading a revival meeting. We quickly see that Marcus is a showman, a born actor who knows how to manipulate and control an audience. In interviews with a mostly unseen film crew, Rev. Marcus also explains that he’s both a highly successful exorcist and a complete fraud. As he explains it, he has lost his faith and is participating in a documentary to reveal how he and other evangelical exorcists con and exploit their followers. He’s agreed to perform one last exorcism, specifically so he can reveal just how much of a fraud that he really is.
One of the more interesting aspect of this setup is that it’s based on an actual documentary. Released in 1972, Marjoe followed a former child evangelist named Marjoe Gortner as he conducted his last revival tour. Talking directly to the camera, Marjoe would explain the tricks that he and other preachers would use to cheat the faithful out of their money. The documentary, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1973, painted an intriguing picture of a con artist and The Last Exorcism does the same thing.
Marcus and the documentary film crew go out to a small rural community where farmer Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) claims that his daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell) has been possessed by a demon. Nell’s brother, Caleb (Caleb Landry Jones) is openly hostile to both Marcus and the documentary film crew. Marcus, meanwhile, is convinced that Nell is faking.
However, as both the film and the exorcism progress, we are given reasons to suspect that Nell might actually be possessed. While a good deal of the film’s scares will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a found footage horror film (there’s the usual loud noises in isolated parts of the house and the menacing shadows glimpsed in the corners), the question of whether or not Nell is possessed is given extra importance by what the answer means to Cotton Marcus. If Nell is faking, then Marcus’s own loss of faith will be justified. However, if it turns out that Nell actually is possessed than it will mean that Marcus hasn’t merely been a con artist for his entire life. If Nell actually is possessed, it’ll prove the existence of a God that Marcus claims to no longer believe in.
Indeed, it’s the character of Cotton Marcus who elevates The Last Exorcism over other entries in the found footage horror genre. Much like Father Karras (as played by Jason Miller) in the original Exorcist, Marcus is a conflicted protagonist, a former man of faith who isn’t quite as ready to give up on his belief as he originally seems. As played by Patrick Fabian, Cotton Marcus is an intriguingly ambiguous hero. At the beginning of the film, Fabian is spell-binding and believable as a fire-and-brimstone evangelist. (In perhaps his best scene, he impishly sneaks a recipe for banana bread into his sermon.) As the film progresses, Cotton Marcus goes from being an arrogant charlatan to being a very vulnerable and scared man and Fabian is both believable and compelling throughout the entire film. Patrick Fabian elevates The Last Exorcism from being just an average (if effectively atmospheric) horror film to being a truly intriguing piece of pulp art.
As for the film’s ending, I may be in a minority but I think it works. The most common complaint about the film’s final 15 minutes is that they tend to contradict everything that came before them. I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. You have to remember that we’ve only seen the film’s events through the perspective of the documentarians and we’ve only heard Marcus’s admittedly biased interpretation of what’s going on. Perhaps the worst possible thing that you can really say about the ending is that it reveals that Marcus wasn’t as clever as we previously assumed him to be.
