the belated, truncated halloweenfest: the devil's pass

(2013. dir: Renny Harlin) Sucker that I am for horror films inspired by True Fortean Incidents, the most interesting aspect of a Fortean Incident is its inexplicable nature, and movies, perhaps necessarily, strip away that layer, rarely providing anything more interesting in its place.

This one rises from the mass death in the Dyatlov Pass in 1959. It starts out as the Blair Witch Project, almost weirdly so, becomes a video game later on when the characters are exploring the underground bunker, and ends with a cheap trick. Along the way, it references the Philadelphia Experiment and the Mothman Prophecies, but doesn't shed any particular new light on the mysterious story of the dead hikers (except for one moment when they realize the "strange orange lights" that were reported in the sky the night of the calamity may have been flares sent up in desperation).

This is a "found footage" movie which cheats, just a little, just at the end. A group of American hipsters are retracing the dead Soviets' steps (although when the main girl claims to be a student at U of O but says it's in YOO-jeen AW-rygun, you know for a fact she's never been anywhere near the place), and the acting is, at any rate, better than the script. I tend to enjoy some things about Harlin's work. The best thing about this one is the easy rapport amongst the hipsters before the hellishness breaks loose, but that's a mighty weak peg to hang a thumbs-up on.

the belated, truncated halloweenfest: i, madman

(1989. dir: Tibor Takacs): And, for a change of pace, toss on I, Madman, a good-hearted, unpretentious slasher film built around beloved 80's-diva Jenny Wright as a girl who works in a used bookstore and finds herself menaced by characters in the dark fictions she reads. None of it makes much sense, but it doesn't matter, because the details are so engaging: an avalanche of misplaced books acting as a dream-quicksand obstacle, seamless travels from life into fiction and back again, twisting staircases and flashing neon. It's also bookended by the Art and Dotty Todd rendition of "Chanson d'Amour", a truly great song which evokes in detail an entire, lost era in one bouncy, repeating chorus: absolutely brilliant.

the belated, truncated halloweenfest: deliver us from evil

(2014. dir: Scott Derrickson) A return to form for the Catholic Horror genre. As has become de rigeur in the past twenty years, the Catholic priest is allowed to wear a white hat only if he is a) sexy and fit, b) fully indulgent in harmless sins, such as smoking and drinking too much, c) obviously lustful after beautiful women, and, most importantly, if he d) fell into his calling only after "real life" so devastatingly disillusioned him as to drive him into it. This priest, played sexily by Edgar Ramirez, doesn't even wear the collar, working, as he puts it, "under cover", allowing hot chicks to hit on him in bars.

It's an exorcism film, and a good one, delivering some genuine frights and three-dimensional characters (including one obvious red-shirt who I really, really didn't want to die). Eric Bana gives his usual greatness as a tough New York cop with a talent for sensing the supernatural. Among other dark delights, the movie offers a sly joke about the instinctive association we make between cats and devils.

the belated, truncated halloweenfest: alone in the dark

(1982. dir: Jack Sholder) An overlooked classic from the eighties, it's a slasher movie, a home invasion film, a lunatics-escaped-from-the-asylum story. It's got a satirical message to deliver about the violence of society, and, although it's a little heavy-handed, its wry sensibility and near-flawless cast sees it through.

A blackout frees the most dangerous lunatics (termed "voyagers" by sensimilla-smoking head-shrink Donald Pleasence, uncomfortable with the connotations of "psychopath", a man whose laissez-faire approach leads him to allow matches on request to a pyromaniac) from an asylum and they target the family of a new doctor, convinced that he has murdered his predecessor, whom they respected. Imagine the joy of an underplayed (!) menace by looney-in-chief Jack Palance, truly glorious, or the infectious glee of Martin Landau's butcher-knife-brandishing preacher roaring, "Vengeance is mine, saieth the Lord!" It's got all the tropes, the punished-by-death teenaged-babysitter sex, gruesome murders by crossbow, cleaver, and baseball bat, and a creepy, neon-lit dream sequence to open the festivities.

It doesn't shirk the blood, guts, rising tension, or jump-scares, enjoying itself thoroughly the entire way.

horror triple feature: devil, plus one, enter nowhere

Devil: (2010, dir: John Erick Dowdle) This is an M. Night Shyamalan story from beginning to twist-end, just directed by someone else, and it fucks up and loses me in the exact same way that Signs did: with the cut-and-dried theophany, the indisputably straightforward workings of God in the lives of men.

Divine Grace is never cut-and-dried, never indisputable, not to the eyes of humans. It may be that His works make all kinds of perfect, symmetrical sense from the god's eye-view, but we can only see the limited pieces set in front of us, and from the vantage-point of the groundlings, Divine Grace always looks partial, or sloppy, or half-baked, or maybe like an accident. One human might have an epiphany, might, for one short moment, be able to encompass the fullness of a Divine Act, but it will rub so contrary to the grain of everyday human existence that even keeping hold of the memory of it will require a stubborn contrivance of faith and courage.

And that's why M. Night bugs me. Theodicy is not simple, and this guy tries to tell us it is, and that the evil which God "allows" is all for our own good.

Plus One: (2013. dir: Dennis Iliades) A meteorite strike causes a wrinkle effect in time and a Harmony Korine party of hedonist kids find themselves partying with their doppelgangers from moments prior. What might have been an interesting idea turns out to be a post-adolescent masturbatory power-fantasy when the main guy uses the anomaly to win back the girl who dumped him and then murder her other self. The girls shed their clothes at the drop of a hat and the smartest of them spends the evening making out with herself. Too bad.

Enter Nowhere: (2011. dir: Jack Heller) It begins as "No Exit" for three lost souls trapped in a cabin in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, then turns into something more interesting before the end. When it all comes out in the wash, it’s a moral fable about how the secret to living a good and healthy life is to be raised by the woman who gave birth to you: accept no substitutes! The acting is solid enough, including Scott Eastwood (yes, he looks just like his dad only handsome) as the audience surrogate. No gore, no chills, just a strange, twisty storyline that, although ultimately unsatisfying, is enough to keep you watching.

the female gaze: the invitation and strangerland

the Invitation: (2015. dir: Karyn Kusama) An extraordinary film which, if you look at the plot, might be classed as a psychological thriller, but it dredges up the kind of heavy loathing and dread that the best horror does. The acting is first-class (including excellent use of my two favorite actors from Carnivale, Toby Huss and John Carroll Lynch). A group of old friends gathers for a dinner party after a few years apart instigated by a tragedy, and these actors really do feel like old friends. It's set in a mansion in the Hollywood hills, and although the house itself doesn't feel like a character as in your haunted house films, the view from the terrace and the winding road up and away from the hoi-polloi makes L.A. feel like an integral, living part of the story. Kusama knows just when to take us up close into our main character's haunted head (Logan Marshall-Green, revealing a star talent) and when to come back into the world of tense laughter and conversation. This is a director who knows exactly what she's doing.

The ending gave me shivers, down my spine and along my arms.

Seriously, it's such a good movie it works on your mind for days after.

Strangerland (2015. dir: Kim Farrant) Bleak, fascinating movie about a disconsolate emotional winter fallen across a family (husband and wife sleep in separate rooms, the son walks all night and never sleeps) as the teenaged daughter's powerful onslaught of sexuality wreaks havoc. When both kids go missing during a dust-storm, Catherine (Nicole Kidman) begins to feel the weight of her own long-lost sexual power during the frantic search. Hugo Weaving is lovely as a small-town cop, and there's something about the Australian outback, something more than bleak or wild, something that feels mythical. Characters refer to the Rainbow Serpent, the water-bringer associated with menstruation and so with the protection of women. When Catherine asks an aboriginal elder-woman about it, the woman says, "Children go lost here. It's something in the land."

Since Farrant's interest lies with the sexuality of the girl and the woman, the shape of the story goes awry of our usual expectations. It looks like it's set to be a mystery, then a thriller, and a strong sense of dread builds, but all the mysteries (as in life!) are not solved, and it's Catherine's internal journey that is followed to a point of catharsis. It's a movie more akin to Picnic at Hanging Rock in that sense, a movie unconcerned with cut-and-dried answers.

Joseph Fiennes is probably miscast as the strong but befuddled father. His hugely expressive eyes, a boon in many roles, play against him here, and someone more quintessentially Australian might have been a better fit. Think of a young Bryan Brown, that jagged chunk of Aussie masculinity, and how devastating it would have been at the end to see him break down in cathartic tears with his wife. Whereas Fiennes always kind of looks like he's about to cry, doesn't he?

the female gaze: by the sea and the private lives of pippa lee

By the Sea: (2015. dir: Angelina Jolie Pitt) In what appears vaguely to be the 1970s, two beautiful people, married 14 years, languish at a secluded Maltese resort by the sea. She (Jolie) wilts gracefully across divans and sloths around on deck chairs; he goes down to the local, chats up the folks, tries to write, drinks himself into sloppy rudeness only to be forgiven by the generous old man who runs the joint. We can see their marriage is dissolving in icy distance, and there is some allusion to a past crisis which cannot be discussed. One of the great strengths of the piece, in fact, is that we don't know the nature of the crisis until late in the day. The film would have been all the better had it been left a mystery indefinitely, since the instigating event is not, ultimately, important, just the emotional and psychological fall-out from it, and naming it makes commonplace and simple what might have remained a tentacled monster of vast and Lovecraftian proportion.

Jolie captures well the strangeness of marriage, and how cataclysmic abysses can open between two people who know one another too well, an estrangement seemingly against both partner's wills, seeming to have an avalanche life of its own, gaining weight and matter as it gains speed. Mostly, though, the pace here is so unfailingly languid, and the clinching moment, the fulcrum upon which the climax turns, depends on so second-perfect an accidental encounter, that it feels forced and writerly.

*SPOILER ALERT*: In the end, we are told that her "tragedy" is that she is barren, but it is simple for us to see, although the characters never do, that her true tragedy is a lack of vocation. She thinks herself into dire maelstroms because she has no purposive action, no direction for her energies. We are told she was once a dancer. When asked why she stopped, she acidly says, "I got old." When he (Pitt) holds forth about the good old times to the tavern-keeper, he recalls himself having been once a great writer, and she a dancer with a great body; whether she had talent is not of value enough to mention. Like Scott with Zelda, he will own all the genius in the family, and she, like Zelda, finds herself a dancer whose access to the stage has been stripped away by the prejudice of the world against a woman aging.

Mostly, though, it's beautiful to look at, with great cars and perfect, groovy songs, reminiscent of a certain mid-20th-c. European ouevre.

the Private Lives of Pippa Lee: (2009. dir: Rebecca Miller) Miller directs her own script, and communicates truths about womanhood and the subtleties of the roles we play: how much of it is chosen, how much decreed for us? Maria Bello is startlingly good as the speed-freak mom, Robin Wright shines in the lead, a tougher, subtler role, as a woman whose tamped-down energies are pushing volcanically to the surface without her permission. Alan Arkin does that wonderful Alan Arkin thing, bringing his ever-spry intelligence to every line. Winona Ryder takes some furious glee in milking her own crazy-girl image, and Keanu Reeves shows up as the magical animus figure who cannot lie, and will save the day in the end.

It's a good movie, don't get me wrong. The characters are shifting and complex, Miller's interest in the main character, a rich, New York housewife, is true and unflagging and keeps our own interest piqued. Here's an idea, though: how about a movie in which a woman busts out of her old life, and DOESN'T have Keanu Reeves waiting to drive her away into the Mojave? Where's the movie about the woman who loses or gives up everything, then faces a life of solitude and the challenge of living it creatively? Where's the updated version of the Ellen Burstyn character in Grand Isle? And remember My Brilliant Career? Female audiences were unsettled by the Judy Davis character's decision to choose creative solitude over domestic servitude in marriage to the man she loved -- this was set at the turn of the twentieth century, mind, so there was no birth control. Had she married her man, she'd have given up her writing to launder nappies and, yes, have some glorious sex, but she would be giving over the tiller, surrendering her autonomy, and STILL the women of 1979 were threatened by her decision. Here it is, thirty years later, and Pippa Lee still can't just drive off into the desert by herself; even today, it's considered too hard and selfish a choice for a woman to make.

But, really, how difficult would it be to drive off into the desert with Keanu freaking Reeves? Does she really need a stockpile of courage to make that choice? In a sense, unless he is just symbolic of her own internal masculine side, how is it not its own cop-out, switching dependence on one man for another?