.

I am most intrigued by horror films and stories that swing for unusual concepts and ideas. When the trailer for The Watchers dropped it peaked my interested but cautiously.

New Line Studios

The Watchers is the story if Mina (Dakota Fanning) an American woman living in Ireland avoiding the traumatic memories of her mother’s death. While transporting a Sun Conure to a distant zoo Mina becomes stranded in a deep and threatening forest. One that voice over prolog has already painted as not appearing on any map and that draws damaged souls. As night falls Min discovers a concrete structure and warned to flee inside before the daylight is gone or she will die.

Inside she meets the other people trapped by the forest. Ciara (Georgina Campbell) the surviving spouse of a couple that had become stranded in the forest. Daniel (Oliver Finnegan) a rebellious local and Madeline (Olwen Fouere) an older woman who holds the knowledge of the rules that keep them alive. Each evening ‘they’ strange unseen creatures come to the structure and spend the hours of darkness observing the people on display. No one has ever seen the creatures and to be caught outside after dark is to die, as what happened to Ciara’s husband.

This premise, adapted from a novel by A.M. Shine, holds tons of intriguing promise. There are mysteries to uncover. Who are the watchers? Why do they spend their hours watching the trapped humans? What is the nature of the forest and where did the shelter come from?

A premise such as this lives or dies on the answer to those questions and how those answers are discovers. The Watchers fails on both counts. The answers are inconsistent even within the story’s own logic and most are vomited at the audience by way of ‘info dumps.’ when your 3-act movie has a massive info dump in the third act you know that it has failed at the most basic level.

In addition to the supernatural elements The Watchers expects the audience to accept situations that are utterly beyond credibility. There is no way in hell a professors University office remains untouched, unused for 14 or 15 years so a character as go there and discover the story’s final twist.

The greatest failing of The Watchers is not the clumsy exposition or the bluntly illogic f it backstory and construction but rather that the characters are flat, uninteresting, and devoid of any characteristic for which someone forced to endure a screening might find some form of emotional engagement. I never once cared what happened to anyone in this movie. Throughout the screening I was more concerned about getting some sleep unreservedly uninterested in any of these people’s outcomes.

I can find no reason that anyone should endure this movie.

.

Yesterday I wrote about faith being a critical and essential component in the success of 1973’s The Exorcist. Today I am thinking about the other religiously themed horror film that also work for me and how strange it is that an atheist enjoys these Christian stories.

In addition to The Exorcist the other massively successful and franchise inspiring ‘devil movie’ of the 70’s is The Omen. This film’s theology is not as well sourced or faithful The Exorcist playing much more directly as the genre intended for it, horror. It doesn’t raise question but presents the inevitability of the ‘End Times’ and the futility of humanity’s position in the grand scheme. A perfectly positioned movie for its decade The Omen is the bleak and cynical counterpart to The Exorcist’s questions of faith and love.

Two months ago, I went out and watch the pair of religiously themed horror films release in the spring of this year, Immaculate and The First Omen, the latter being a prequel to the aforementioned 70s film.

Of the pair it has been Immaculate that persists in my thoughts. I have a review of the film here on my blog, but I am going to expand on my thoughts a bit. There are by necessity spoilers.

Seriously — spoilers for the big reveal.

Black Bear Pictures

Immaculate unlike either The Exorcist or The Omen is quite subtle in its relationship with the supernatural aspects of religion. It is an easy interpretation of the film that absolutely nothing that occurs is beyond normal accepted reality. A perfectly valid way to view the story is that the fanatical faithful of the convent are deluded. The ancient and rusted spike is not from the crucifixion and the genetic material is not that of Jesus. That their cloning attempts are of some random person and the deformed products are just tragic miscarriages.

It is also possible that the spike is exactly what they believe it to be and that the convent’s repeated attempts to clone the son of god will, if successful, produce the opposite, the ‘anti-Christ.’

A third interpretation is that the convent and its faithful are doing precisely what they believe, bringing about the second coming of the Christian savior by cloning and producing him by way of a virgin birth.

Side note, it is a common misconception that the phrase ‘immaculate conception’ refers to Jesus’ conception without sexual intercourse but theologically it is about Mary and her being born without ‘original sin’ and thus possessing the purity to bear a god.

The film gives no clues if any of the three interpretation I have presented are the ‘correct’ way to view the events of the film. From the story as presented one cannot determine is Cecila is a young woman abused by fanatics, the savior of humanity, or the vessel through which it is damned.

This week I obtained Immaculate on Blu-ray disc and I look forward to listening to the director’s commentary.

.

May 9th, at the age of 98, Roger Corman, a man who arguably had the greatest impact on cinema, passed from this bitter mortal realm.

Corman specialized in low budget features, often of a lurid and exploitive nature. His career spanned from the 1950s into the 21st century. He wrote, produced, and directed independently financed feature and along the way ignited the careers of cinema titans like James Cameron, and Jack Nicholson. Bucking the conventions of the period Corman also gave women position of creative control though he was not also above using nudity and ex to sell a picture. (The sexual assault by a giant worm in Galaxy of Terror was at his insistence, over the protests of the director and writer.) Modern cinema and in particular genre cinema simply would not exist in the state it does without Roger Corman.

Sunday evening to honor this man’s achievement I rewatched It Conquered the World.

The film has a ludicrous monster. A creature from Venus that resembles a massive fat carrot and can create organic mind control stinger. Aided by a bittered scientist (Lee Van Cliff) whom the creature has deluded into thinking that this is humanity’s salvation and not its subjugation, the monstrosity seizes control of a small town and the local army base. (Hardly the world.) Pulled back from the grips of his delusion by the death of his wife at the creature claws and the persuasion of a fellow scientist (Peter Graves) he redeems himself in destroying the threat that be led to our planet.

It Conquered the World is fairly typical of a Corman production of the mid to late 50s. There are limited locations and spare sets displaying the absolutely minimal budget but there is also something more to be said than ‘evil monster.’ The film ends with a monologue about the need for humanity to strive and find its own way to paradise and peace. A speech that could have just as easily been part of Star Trek a decade later.

Corman cared about the world. I have read that he apricated the 100 million dollars plus that James Cameron spent making Titanic but was also repulsed by such a sum being used for entertainment when so much misery remained in the world. Keeping his budgets limited certainly made it easier to make money but there was also a moral component that he never lost.

98 is a good run for any human being and we shall never see his likes again.

.

There are 3 films that are considered the ‘unholy trinity’ of folk horror movies, The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan’s Claw, & The Witchfinder General. All three come from that cynical decade the 1970s and all three are British in origin. Now, folk horror with its rural settings, ancient practices, and disquieting people can be found around the globe. Estonia’s November from 2017 remains one of my favorites, but what of American, and by that I do mean specifically United States, folk horror.

There are those who would count Eggers’ The Witch as folk horror but that feels like a misclassification to me. That movie is as writer/director Eggers described it a Puritan nightmare. Others classify the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as folk horror but while its isolated rural setting fits, one deranged family of cannibals do not a culture make and for me folk horror is always about cultures and the clash of outsider to an isolated culture.

1992’s Candyman get closer with its inner-city culture that is decidedly alien to the pretty, blonde, protagonist but it strikes me as more of a ghost story than a folk horror. Vengeful ghosts are great stories but in my eyes they are not ‘folk.’

Isolated communities living by practices forgotten by the wider world in America would seem to point to with Appalachian Mountain towns in the deep recesses of the that rugged terrain or somewhere in the vast American West where so many communities became ghost towns as their fortunes evaporated.

And yet as my mind twists and turns at the germination of an idea for a novel of American Folk horror it is neither the hillbillies nor the cowboys that is drawing my attention and inspiration but rather the hippies of the 1960s.

Counter-culture is simply another culture one that, to an extent, fetishized the idea of abandoning modernity and returning to nature. An isolated commune, 60 years separated from the rushing madness of modern American life feels like a perfect fit for folk horror. What starts are a collective rejecting modernization and mechanization can grow and transform into a unique and alien culture with its own ideas of what is proper to worship.

This is the direct I think I want to go but I need to make up my mind is the horror metaphysical or is it entirely a matter of practice and belief?

.

(Spoilers for a 57-year-old film)

Another May 1st has come and gone the fictional anniversary of the loss of Sargent Neil Howie West Highland Police to the neo-pagan cult on Summerisle.

The Wicker Man is considered one third of the ‘unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films along with Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Witchfinder General. Of the three films The Wicker Manis by far my favorite and the one that intrigues me the most.

Canal Studios

After being lured to the produced producing island of Summerisle by a bogus missing child case, Sgt Howie (Edward Woodward) is burned alive as a human sacrifice by the island’s neo-pagan population lead by the community and religious leader Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee.)

The question of villainy in this story is an interesting one. Clearly deceiving Howie, subjecting him to secrets tests to determine his suitability as a sacrifice, and then burning him alive to appease the goddess of the fields are not the actions of a good and heroic people.

Howie however while less overly threatening or dangerous displays a willingness and a conviction that the people of Summerisle must be brought to a Christian heel, to be compelled to live in a manner consistent with his interpretation of his religion. His disdain and intent to bring ‘the authorities’ to Summerisle precede any knowledge of actual wrongdoing or violence. Had there been no missing child and Howie had stumbled upon Summerisle he still would have scampered off to bring official action against the people.

It is in these two diametrically that I see the real villain of The Wicker Man; dogmatic conviction.

Blind obedience led the neo-pagans to horribly slaughter a stranger for the island’s religious practices and that very same straitjacket of belief would have led Howie to force his interpretation of morality upon the island.

The small ‘l’ libertarian in me finds all parties in the film to be utterly horrifying, with the neo-pagans only marginally more dangerous.

Universal Pictures

.

From the creatives at Radio Silence that brought to life the delightful horror/comedy Ready or Not comes their latest bit of cinematic fun Abigail.

If you have seen the trailers, then you know the core concept: a gang of professional criminals kidnap a young girl in hopes of a massive payoff but discover to their horror that she is in fact a vampire and they must now fight to survive their criminal enterprise.

The film and the trailer, with their tongue pressed firmly into their cheek, makes liberal use of music from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake a nod to Universal granddaddy of Vampire films 1931’s Dracula which used the ballet’s themes as its score.

The film is led by Melissa Barrera as ‘Joey’ the most sympathetic member of the kidnapers and who displays the most concern for Abigail before they learn of the girl’s true monstrous nature. Joey contends for leadership of the gang against ‘Frank’ (Dan Stevens) a former police officer and the most hardened of the criminals.

Abigail, like Ready or Not before leans more towards the comedic than the horrific. The writers and directors display an utter lack of concern with the quantities of cinematic blood that they explode across their frames. There are twists within the simple and contained plot of the film but none that aren’t easily deduced from clues contained with the movie’s trailers. The film can be seen as the love child of The Usual Suspects and an over-the-top Hammer movie.

The cast is uniformly good with particularly standout performances from Kevin Durand as ‘Peter’ the dimwitted muscle of the group and Alisha Weir as the title character Abigail. Weir shows remarkable range for so young a performer going to terrified child to threatening monster in the space of a breath.

Abigail is a not a deep film that comments on the ineffable nature of the human condition but rather is something fun the be experienced and enjoyed. The filmmaking is clever and competent enough that things are established but not so blatantly as to be obvious. This is a film that will be best enjoyed in a theater with a crowd of people laughing and screaming with the rapid onscreen escapades.

Abigail is currently player in theaters.