Bloody Horror: September

With a home theater, projector, and a 120-inch screen, I was inclined to start hosting movie-themed nights on a regular basis. We began hosting Cinema Saturday every other Saturday of each month, showcasing a diverse range of classic and 1950s-1960s horror and film noir movies.

But what about the current stuff?

Sometimes, the unconventional mix of evil possession, exorcism, visceral horror, Lovecraftian nightmares, monsters from space, creepy crawlies, cults, serial killers, demons, witches, zombies, and the unexplained deserves a screening as well. This is especially true with the influx of today’s foreign horror films. My friend Ralph Kirchoff and I decided to address this gap. We started Bloody Horror Fridays, which now happens every other Friday. The Cinema Saturday group dislikes the mutilation, oozing gore, and sudden intensity that modern horror movies often bring. One friend even said he’s a cardiac patient and can't handle the extreme violence. But Ralph and I, now joined by mutual friend Leo Dymowski, wanted to explore what’s happening in horror cinema today. Ralph takes it further by reviewing films he has seen on his own and those shown at the Friday screenings, giving each a 5-star rating. We will showcase three of Ralph’s reviews every month to better understand why Bloody Horror Fridays are truly bloody, featuring modern films of interest.

THE WRETCHED

Grim tree witch yarn, well-paced, effective mood setting, trad horror effects, 3.5 stars. 1HR 35 MIN Cailleach Productions, 2019

Forget Glinda and Wicked. Witches are evil; they just are. They eat children. It’s folklore, so it’s fact ... at least in movies. The Pierce brothers present The Wretched, a grim tree that inflicts horror in a modern setting.

Directors/writers Drew and Brett Pierce grew up in a movie-making household; their father had worked on the effects for Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead. And in interviews, they claim inspiration from John Carpenter’s Halloween and The Thing. One might think that making visceral horror films would be their calling. But while their first film, Deadheads, is a zombie flick, it’s just as much a comedy. So, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that The Wretched balances horror with another genre, teenage drama. And sometimes it feels like the movie can't decide what it wants to be.

As credits begin to appear, we see an assortment of children’s toys in the rain: toy cars, a unicorn, dolls, an Etch-A-Sketch … while an ’80s style pop song plays in a muted low register. We’re going to see a backstory episode unwind, and viewers are already thinking: Where are the children?

It’s been 35 years. A babysitter knocks and enters a house. On a landline, she calls and chats with her mother while thunder rumbles in the distance. Where are the parents, the children? More pounding and knocking leads her down the basement stairs, never a good idea in a horror film. And just like that, four minutes into the movie, we see what appears to be the mother gobbling her bloody child. The startled babysitter tries to run back upstairs, but suddenly, the father appears. He locks the basement door; there’s no escape. Are the parents possessed, or could it be even more sinister? Later events show that, but I’ve already said too much. You’ll have to see for yourself.

The camera pans backward, and we see a demonic symbol drawn on the basement door as a more modern pop song plays, with lyrics about evil and wickedness. More production credits appear, and the yarn spools are reset to a five-day cycle.

Now the teenage portion of the tale begins. We meet our protagonist, Ben (John-Paul Howard), a teenage boy dozing on a bus traveling to, you guessed it, the town where the past episode happened. Struggling to deal with his parents’ separation, he’s coming to spend the summer with his father (Jamison Jones), working at his father’s marina.

He’s vulnerable and likable in interactions with a dog at a convenience store. He has a loving rapport with his father. He has conflicts with other teens at the marina. Then boy meets girl: Mallory (Piper Curda); that subplot develops. And while talking with his mother on his cell phone, he notices that his father has a new girlfriend. What kind of movie is this? Is this a teen drama?

Misty woods transition to a scene where a mother and young son frolic. The boy hears his mother at the base of a tree, encouraging him to come closer. Of course, it’s the mimicking witch; from offscreen, his actual mother beckons him to “come on, let’s go.” The camera pans back, and carved in the tree is the demonic symbol we saw on the 35-year-old door. How will the witch escape? Does it need a sacrificial kill? A bit later, the witch does emerge from death, the carcass of a dead deer. I’m going to stop the narrative there.

Much of the film features scenes with teenagers that are brightly lit, often set near a marina or at a teen party or gathering. While the witch-related scenes are darker and more earth-toned, they often take place in wooden houses, basements, and the woods. It can feel like two different movies combined.

Photography isn’t slow and atmospheric, but instead is sharply directed, with camera movement that points to and from the woods and houses, to convey the sense that you don’t know where the horror is going to come from. Likewise, the script evokes the sense that you don’t know who the witch might’ve taken, so you don’t know who can be trusted.

The witch and creature’s physical effects, done with props and makeup, look slick and clean. Good dread (what a term) is created. Pop songs accompany teen scenes, while moodier strings play against the clues of witch presence.

Ultimately, the two plots do integrate successfully enough to warrant a recommendation for this movie. We gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars at our biweekly Bloody Horror Friday screenings.

THE VOID

Solid Lovecraft-inspired cosmic horror, throwback setting, dread-drenched mood, good effects and monster, 4 stars. 1HR 24 MIN Screen Media Ventures, 2016

It can be said that moviedom’s cosmic horror began with Howard Hawks' 1951 film The Thing from Another World, an adaptation of John W. Campbell’s Lovecraft-inspired short story, “Who Goes There.” From there, 1950s science fiction films were loaded with grotesque space beings. Hammer’s productions of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass works were particularly moody, hinting at a world at risk, and by the 4th issue, The Quatermass Conclusion (not Hammer), young people succumb to alien influence, and the world must be saved by detonation.

Homicidally possessed people factor in John Carpenter’s 1987 Prince of Darkness, in which Carpenter, as a tribute to Kneale, credits the screenplay to the pseudonymous Martin Quatermass. But Carpenter’s horrors in Prince of Darkness were more earthbound.

Guillermo del Toro, working on his unfinished adaptation of Lovecraft’s "At the Mountains of Madness," discussed the project with Jeremy Gillespie, and the idea for "The Void" was born.

Scripted by directors Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie, lensed in 2015/2016 and including crowdfunded creature effects, The Void is a commendable addition to the subgenre of cosmic horror.

In a 1980s setting reminiscent of the past, we see a man running from a neglected house; within the house, a black triangle is painted on a door. A rifle-bearing killer shoots a young woman who is running away, screaming. The killer engulfs the immobile girl in flame. A hooded figure standing in nearby woods witnesses the carnage; the hooded figure prominently displays the black triangle symbol. Is the figure being controlled? … possessed? The directors use terror and symbology to immediately evoke dread and mystery as pensive music rises and the opening credits illuminate and flicker by.

Aaron Poole plays Daniel Carter, a “just doing what’s necessary” deputy sheriff. Relaxing in his patrol car, he spots the pre-credits running man, now bloody and crawling through muddy woods. Carter hurries him to a nearby hospital. It’s in this hospital, reminiscent of John Carpenter’s Halloween 2 setting, that characters converge and the tale blossoms.

The characters: Carter, his estranged wife, a hospital nurse (Kathleen Munroe), a pregnant patient and her grandfather, an aggressive state trooper (Art Hindle), staff/orderlies, patients, and outwardly kind and experienced Dr. Powell (Kenneth Welsh, who played Windom Earle in the wonderful second season of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks).

A night nurse becomes possessed. She murders and mutilates a patient, disfigures herself, then starts to attack Carter, who is compelled to shoot her. The directors don't use a lot of camera movement, but the editing is clean, as the homicidal hooded and possessed man surrounds the hospital grounds.

The murdered patient starts sprouting otherworldly tentacles through his eye sockets in the style of Carpenter’s The Thing. Quick in-camera images of roiling kinetic atmosphere, and perhaps the personification of a central malevolence, are depicted. This, accompanied by reedy musical tones, induces a lurking fear in the viewer.

What is driving the pre-credits action? Why are homicidal hooded figures with black triangles surrounding the hospital grounds? How are people in the hospital becoming possessed? What monstrous transformations are happening to the dead? Is there a force of some kind causing all this? What is the cosmic process of rebirth? Will these mysteries be resolved, or will darkness remain? I dare not say more … but I must, I must.

I must say that the pacing here feels right, the actors, and the sense of potential doom are palpable. With a limited budget, Kostanki and Gillespie employ the time-tested practice of “less is more” with great results. Murky colors, fleeting images, and effective camera angles all contribute to building tension. The themes of cosmic horror, as explored by Lovecraft, Campbell, Kneale, and Carpenter, are notably on display.

See this dark, underrated picture. We gave it 4 out of 5 stars at our biweekly Bloody Horror Friday screening.

POSSESSOR

Brandon Cronenberg’s terrific mind-controlled assassination drama, superb acting, four stars. 1HR 43Min Arclight Films PTY Limited, 2020

Writer/director Brandon Cronenberg said he had trouble seeing himself in his own life. He would wake up feeling like he was in “someone else’s life.” It could be said that, in part, Brandon’s inspiration for Possessor stemmed from being the son of David Cronenberg. There are thematic similarities in their works. The ideas of mind and body possession in Brandon’s Possessor can be traced back to the psychokinetic mind domination in David Cronenberg’s Scanners, the mind and body control by the “other” in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, and the loss of the body as self in The Fly. In further developing his ideas for Possessor, Brandon researched Dr. Jose Delgado’s experiments in the stimoceiver, a brain implant that could potentially control human functions.

All of that sounds really hairy, but in Possessor, a story about a rising star operator in an assassination agency who works through brain possession science fiction technology, Brandon Cronenberg has made a cracking good horror picture.

The film begins. It appears that a woman voluntarily inserts a several-inch-long metal probe deeply into her scalp. She adjusts a potentiometer and smiles, then breaks into tears. Why would she do this? As discordant tones play, the camera follows her along a giallo-esque murder path, periodically broken by opening credits. The woman’s voice, “Pull out.” Who is talking?

We move to Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), who is in patient garb, sitting up from a prone position on a medical gurney. She’s coughing and flinging off the high-tech equipment that had been covering her head. Agency chief Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) aids her in a recovery procedure.

And with these few broad strokes, we begin to gain an understanding. Cronenberg has brought us into a cold world of mind-controlled murder for hire.

The process is only briefly outlined, and I will attempt to provide some additional information. A victim is kidnapped, brain implanted, then possessed by an assassin, a possessor. The aforementioned probe self-insertion isn’t voluntary. It calibrates the control. The ingenious relevance of the possessed and the product of that control is revealed in the film.

That’s how it works, but as time passes, the possessor suffers strain and a loss of self. Cronenberg’s script realization suggests this, as Vos, the possessor, delicately touches and sniffs things to help bring herself back to her senses.

Although separated, Vos has a family. During the post-contract evaluation, she states that she has been talking to her husband. In a portentous exchange, Girder doesn’t think Vos’ relationship with her husband and young son is, let’s say, productive.

We see long shots and panning shots of Vos traveling. She is talking to herself, practicing how to converse with her estranged family. We have a series of rehearsed but happy family interactions.

Okay, back to business. Meeting with Vos, Girder details the next contract. It’s big, lucrative. It means the agency can ultimately take over a huge corporation run by John Parse (Sean Bean). I’m not going to describe more. I hope you’ve gotten enough to be intrigued.

Brandon’s Possessor has comparatively little science fiction apparatus and uses a classic horror movie-inspired effect of dissolving and reconstituting a body to depict possession. The film contains an unusual amount of bloody violence, but unlike some of his father’s films, there isn’t an abundance of grotesque body horror. The gut-wrench here is more script-driven, psychological.

The cinematography is stylized, feels post-modern, and Cronenberg uses deep focus scenes throughout, drawing us into this austere world.

With a cast like this—Riseborough, Jason Leigh, Bean, and Christopher Abbott—the acting is superb, and it's a major reason the film is a must-watch for horror fans.

Prepare yourself. This one may stay with you. As yet, we haven’t screened it at our biweekly Bloody Horror Friday Club, but I hope we do soon. I give it a strong 4 out of 5 stars.

See you next month!

POSSESSOR

THE WRETCHED

THE VOID