Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Written by: Guy Busick & R. Christopher Murphy
Produced by: Tripp Vinson, James Vanderbilt, William Sherak and Bradley J. Fischer
Executive Producers: Chad Villella, Tara Farney, Tracey Nyberg and Daniel Bekerman
Starring: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O’Brien, with Henry Czerny and Andie MacDowell.
The family known as Le Domas has been playing Le Bail’s Gambit since Great Grandfather Le Domas made a pact with Le Bail himself.
Marrying Alex (Mark O’Brien) and into the ‘dominion’ that is the Le Domas family (that fittingly made their fortune out of board games), the pact demands that initiate Grace (Samara Weaving) (and any new addition to the family) must play a game at midnight on the night of her wedding.
She loves Alex despite his weirdo, super-rich family.
So playing along with strange traditions to get along? Pft! Sure, why not?!
But when she draws that, ‘Hide and Seek’, card; and that playful, ‘Hide and Seek’ record starts spinning, the weirdo family hunting the new bride through the gothic rooms and corridors of the house, to capture her as a sacrifice, takes issues with the in-laws to a whole new level with each armed and at the, well, ready:
Mother to Alex and kinda sweet, Becky (Andie MacDowell): Bow & Arrow
Rich and crazy dad, Tony (Henry Czerny): Winchester Rifle
Tormented and alcoholic brother, Daniel (Adam Brody): Rifle
Ops, I did it again, sister-in-law, Emilie (Melanie Scrofano): Pistol
How does this work again? Fitch (Kristian Bruun): Crossbow
I was born evil, Charity – there’s the irony (Elyse Levesque): Spear Gun
The adage that people look like their pets but here I look like my weapon, Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni): Battle Axe.
If you’ve read this blog before you’ll know I like a good bloody horror with a dry sense of humour.
I can say there’s certainly some bloody moments here, tending to the visceral.
And the humour, although slightly over-done, had me smirking with a few snorts (not unlike Grace herself who isn’t against a snorting laugh when called for): brother in-law, Fitch Googling, ‘getting to know your crossbow’ before his attempt to murder his new sister in-law. And then there’s death-stare Aunt Helene giving the salutation to niece, Emilie (Melanie Scrofano), ‘You continue to exist’.
Perhaps not a laugh-out-loud tickle (more WTF is going on but I guess I’ll just have to roll with it), there’s a lot of fun here, played with wide-eyed and cool appreciation from Samara Weaving as the fighting-for-her-life and screaming-when-necessary, Grace.
And there’s a decent storyline that edges towards some twists but really more about the beautiful and self-deprecating, Grace. You want her to get out alive, which is the kinda the point of the movie.
‘That one extra bit of summer fun was going to take Bobby through hell.’
Violence Voyager had its Australian Premiere at the recent MIFF – I thought it would be a good idea to review something different for upcoming Halloween. And yes, Violence Voyager is certainly something a bit different.
Set-up like a childhood adventure story, Bobby (the foreign American kid) tells his sick mother he’s going out to find flowers for her empty valse sitting on the windowsill. But really, he’s going to the mountain with his best buddy, his blood brother (sporting stitched cuts on their hands to prove it) Akkun – who also, strangely has what looks like scars on his forehead.
Added to the childlike voice-overs and the adventure aspect that includes Bobby’s cat, Derrick who tags along, the whole film is painted cardboard cut-outs with static facial expressions, the movement made by hand like kids playing with a shadowbox filled with toys.
But when the trio, Bobby, Akkun and Derrick-the-cat find a run-down Fun Park, the film becomes a nightmarish hell where kids never escape: they either become modified with all their nerve endings on the outside and their eyes pulled out of their sockets and placed on horizontal sides of their now square face, or they get dissolved to become food for half-robot hybrid human monsters under the command of park-owner but really scientist, Dr Binobo and daughter and navigator, Siori.
There’s a deceiving simplistic feel about this film, the voice-over slow and deliberate, the timing of the dialogue giving the most affect.
But there’s plenty of splattered blood and vomit and naked kids hung like hocks – the theme horrific and the images of those cardboard cut-outs bizarre.
Definitely not one for the kids to watch this Halloween. I wouldn’t classify Violence Voyager as ‘Family’.
Yet, for all its horror, the film was palatable because I was always delighted to see another clever technique giving texture to this bizarre tale like blue vapour rising around the cardboard Dr. Binobo making him look evil, a rising shadow over the cardboard Bobby to depict a pending doom and the kids armed with a super-soaker and dolphin water pistol squirting real water onto those monster robots giving the scene another dimension like those pop-up books I read in primary school.
And that juxtaposition lent another layer to the bizarreness of this simply, horrifically clever film.
With a bat, monkey and cat on your team, you can’t lose – well you can still become a deformed robot, humanoid monster, but in the world of Violence Voyager, that’s a win.
Screen story by: Guillermo Del Toro and Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan
Based on the series by: Alvin Schwartz
Produced by: Guillermo Del Toro, p.g.a., Sean Daniel, p.g.a., Jason F. Brown, p.g.a., J. Miles Dale, p.g.a., Elizabeth Grave, p.g.a.
Executive Producers: Peter Luo, Joshua Long, Roberto Grande
Starring: Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, and Lorraine Toussaint.
“Sarah Bellows, tell us a story.”
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark pieces together the fabled fiction of Alvin Schwartz (who wrote the series), where screen story writer Guillermo Del Toro (along with Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan) hang the film on the idea that: “Stories can hurt, and stories can heal”.
Set in 1968 where, ‘If it’s in the newspaper it has to be right,’ but really there’s a lot wrong, like the Vietnam War and the fact Stella’s (Zoe Colletti) mum has left her with her dad (Dean Norris); Stella’s only friends in the world, Chuck (Austin Abrams) and Auggie (Gabriel Rush).
But having buddies makes life easier to live until they decide to show new-kid-in-town Ramón (Michael Garza) the Mill Valley haunted house. On Halloween.
The story of the haunted house being the young daughter, Sarah Bellows was a child killer. That she killed the children of Mill Valley who listened to her scary stories on the other side of the wall of her locked room.
Her family hid Sarah away because they said there was something very wrong with Sarah.
So when Stella finds Sarah’s book of scary stories in the haunted house, she thinks it’s a good idea to take it home to read. She’s a writer too.
Then new stories start appearing in the book. New scary stories like, ‘Who took my toe?’. It’s worse than it sounds. Particularly when the stories start coming true.
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark feels like one of those coming-of-age movies but really, it’s a scare-fest with body parts that come to life and bugs crawling out of empty eye-sockets.
The monsters are impressive with director, André Øvredal not holding back on the nightmarish imagery, while adding subtle details like the skin chewed around Stella’s fingernail.
I was absorbed and surprised as monsters came to life in cornfields and glaring red-lit corridors… But then the film became a crusade.
The story still holds and hey, it had to go somewhere; but I just couldn’t put myself into the shoes of Stella because there didn’t seem to be any fight or build to the strength of her character. How did this kid suddenly get to be so strong?
Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Archie Madekwe, Ellora Torchia, Hampus Hallberg, Gunnel Fred, Isabelle Grill, Lars Väringer, Henrik Norlén, Anders Beckman.
‘I’m sure it was just a miscommunication.’
Following the success of his debut feature, Hereditary (2018), director and writer, Ari Aster shares the same attention to the discord of strange ritual in a modern time.
The more ritual involved, it seems, the darker the deed.
Midsommar focuses on the pagan celebration and nine-day feast the small community of the Hårga partake in every ninety years: the purification ritual.
Before we’re introduced to the slow corruption (purification) of the idyllic village in Hälsingland, filled with wildflowers, people tending gardens, getting high on magic mushrooms and dancing around in white tunics, we see a relationship falling apart. We see Dani (Florence Pugh) clinging to the only stability left in her life after a family tragedy, Christian: her boyfriend who’s been thinking of breaking off the relationship for a year.
Christian’s mates don’t understand why he’s still with her.
All the boys want to do is live the life of students, go to Sweden to sleep with as many Swedish chicks as possible, while Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) shares the unique ritual of his home, a once-in-a-life-time experience with his friends while Josh (William Jackson Harper) writes his thesis about the celebration of the Summer Solstice.
So when Christian invites the distraught Dani to come along on the trip, the awkward tension of the relationship becomes the undercurrent of a journey that unravels like a bad trip. A trip that keeps getting darker played-out in the constant sunshine and reassurance of the Hårga explaining this is what we’ve always done. This is our tradition.
It’s the out-of-control pull of the constant bizarre behaviour of these villagers, that twists the perception, to see the warp of reality as the visitors are seduced into a culture so different to their own, to be swept along into the trance, helpless to stop what comes next.
It’s the subtle details that drew me into this new world, Aster and his creative team piecing together the culture of the Hårga based on James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, paganism and the spiritual traditions of philosophers such as Rudolf Steiner. The team created a culture with its own language, history, mythology, and traditions. Bizarre and violent traditions with the added trip of seeing grass grow through feet, to see the trees breath; to see flowers open and close in time with a heartbeat.
There’s brutality and beauty, like the extreme of long nights and never-ending days. The beauty cloys. Like blood clotting. It’s too bright. The flowers are too pretty.
Yet, the ritual makes the violence seem natural.
‘It does no good, darling, looking back at the inevitable. It corrupts the spirit.’
The many shades of darkness and light are used like a theme through the film, like a reflection of the person telling a lie, the truth shown in the focus of foreground. Showing the shades of Dani and Christian’s relationship is these subtleties is the genius of the film for me – the deliberate pulling away, the discord when Dani tells Christian, ‘That was just really weird.’
And Christian replying, ‘Was it?’
Then there’s the artwork and paintings and symbols hinting of what’s to come in the story, making me wonder how dark the film will get.
However, I didn’t find the film too confronting, the film not horrific because the senses have been saturated with sunlight and flowers and flutes and song; like the characters, I felt a little drugged by the grassy fields, lulled into the natural progression of the wrongness because the village becomes closed-off, the modern world, shut-out.
Without the outside world to compare the behaviour, the ritual becomes embraced, so the violence doesn’t hit as hard. I guess making it all the more disturbing. But for me, more thought-provoking because eventually, all those subtleties add up to show an interesting truth of human nature.
I’ve been thinking about writing this article since watching the thought-provoking horror, Us (2019).
Featuring doppelgängers, the film shows the horror of a reflection taking the place of our self. Scary stuff. But what I enjoyed most about this film was the humour.
The film juxtaposes normal behaviour set in a bizarre world where a copy of self is killing all the other selves.
Seeing a family fighting for their lives to compete to sit in the front seat of the car, the winner based on who has killed the most people/doppelgängers? Hilarious.
There’s also the additional delight of husband Gabe with a tissue stuck up his bloody nostril stating things like, ‘Almost looks like some kind of fucked-up art instalment.’
Director, writer and producer Jordan Peele states, “Horror and comedy are both great ways of exposing how we feel about things […] The comedy that emerges from a tense moment or scene in a horror film is necessary for cleaning the emotional palate, to release the tension. It gives your audience an opportunity to emotionally catch up and get prepared for the next run of terror.”1
Winston Duke really nailed the father character, Gabe; and I appreciated this layer of bizarre humour to lighten the strange – as Jorden states above, to, ‘clean the palate’.
But what does this ‘clean the palate’ actually mean?
And what is it about gallows humour that I find so funny?
An article published in Nature Reviews / Neuroscience, ‘The Neural Basis of Humour Processing’ (Pascal Vrticka, et al (2013)) concludes there are, ‘two core processes of humour appreciation: incongruity detection and resolution (the cognitive component); and a feeling of mirth or reward (the emotional component). Whereas the cognitive component seems to rely principally on activity in the [temporo-occipito-parietal junction] TOPJ, the emotional component appears to involve mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic pathways and the amygdala.’ 2
Yu-Chen Chan, et al summarize and further research the comprehension-elaboration theory of humour in their article, ‘Segregating the comprehension and elaboration processing of verbal jokes: An fMRI study’ (2012)3. Highlighting that ‘not all situations involving the detection and resolution of incongruities are humorous.’
They go on to quote Wyer and Collin’s comprehension-elaboration theory of humor (1992), where ‘The elaboration follows comprehension, involves the conscious generation of inferences of features not made explicit during comprehension as well as further thoughts stimulated by the newly understood situation, and elicits the unconscious or conscious feeling of amusement. These elaborations effectively involve appraising the stimulus event for their humourous content.
The amount of humour elicited is a function of the amount of elaboration of the event and its implications that occur subsequent to its reinterpretation.
The affective feeling of humor results from, and may overlap with continued elaboration of the event.’
So, humour in the setting of a horror evokes further elaboration not just because of the incongruent, it’s the nature of the incongruent: normality in a setting of the horrific.
The elaboration, further cognition of the joke makes the humour darkly funny.
In the setting of a horror film, there’s also a layering to dark humour that sparks the cognitive on the foundation of a previously evoked response, like fear.
As stated in the article, ‘The role of the amygdala in human fear: automatic detection of threat’ (Ohman. A (2005))4, ‘Behavioral data suggest that fear stimuli automatically activate fear and capture attention. This effect is likely to be mediated by a subcortical brain network centered on the amygdala […] When the stimulus conditions allow conscious processing, the amygdala response to feared stimuli is enhanced and a cortical network that includes the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula is activated. However, the initial amygdala response to a fear-relevant but non-feared stimulus (e.g. pictures of spiders for a snake phobic) disappears with conscious processing and the cortical network is not recruited. Instead there is activation of the dorsolateral and orbitofrontal cortices that appears to inhibit the amygdala response. The data suggest that activation of the amygdala is mediated by a subcortical pathway, which passes through the superior colliculi and the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus before accessing the amygdala, and which operates on low spatial frequency information.’
This is interesting with the view that further processing of a scene in a scary film, provoked by an incongruent behaviour, will break the activation of the amygdala and be, ‘mediated by a subcortical pathway, which passes through the superior colliculi and the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus’ and would give the effect of tension relief (‘cleansing the palate’) and therefore, humour.
The article goes on to describe the activation of the fear response, like increased heart-rate and respiration (as we’ve all experienced in particularly scary movies): ‘The amygdala consists of several separate cell groups (nuclei), which receive input from many different brain areas. Highly processed sensory information from various cortical areas reaches the amygdala through its lateral and basolateral nuclei. In turn, these nuclei project to the central nucleus of the amygdala, which then projects to hypothalamic and brainstem target areas that directly mediate specific signs of fear and anxiety.’
You can imagine sitting in the cinema, immersed in a scary scene that has evoked the fear response: the rapid heart-beat, sitting on the edge-of-your-seat. That automatic response has kicked in.
So, those jumps you get in a horror are from that ingrained automatic response – like a reflex.
With conscious processing the fear is either enhanced through a clever script that gives layers to the idea of the horror (mediated through the amygdala), or is consciously processed as being, just a film (activation of the dorsolateral and orbitofrontal cortices that appears to inhibit the amygdala response): this isn’t real.
So either the data is further processed, where, ‘a cortical network that includes the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula is activated.’
Or isn’t: ‘the initial amygdala response to a fear-relevant but non-feared stimulus (e.g. pictures of spiders for a snake phobic) disappears with conscious processing and the cortical network is not recruited.’
I think dark humour occurs somewhere in this cognition. In the further elaboration.
The fear response is already activated, through something that automatically evokes the fear-response, doppelgängers for example; then the data is further analysed when the setting is incongruent to the behaviour of the character, leading to a release of tension on the background of an already evoked fear response. With further cognition and elaboration the incongruent is resolved by processing through memories, past experiences, so the data is personally related in the context of a horror making the humour: darkly funny.
So, humour instead of a fear response including that extra processing leads to tension release and to a layered emotional response giving a fear response, mirth, therefore creating dark humour that tickles because of its complexity, its, elaboration.
But dark humour isn’t just humour in horror.
Dark humour can be satire. Dark humour can be about a cop trying to perform a dance in memory of his lost mother… At her funeral.
I recently reviewed the film, Thunder Road (2019), finding the performance and script from writer/director/lead, Jim Cummings genius. I’m still giggling about this cop falling apart because the character is so sincere and so tragic, it’s funny.
Jim was interviewed on a Podcast by Giles Alderson, and he talks about his intention to straddle both the tragic and humour of this cop having a breakdown, stating the audience will reward you when more than one lobe of the brain is engaged.5
The writing and performance of this film is brilliant because of the empathy evoked by seeing this guy grieving against the incongruity of his abnormal behaviour.
It’s the processing involved while seeing this super-nice guy, doing his absolute best in the worst of circumstances, then just lose his grip that tickles: standing, about to throw a child’s school desk, the teacher subtly pocketing the school safety-scissors included.
His mother is dead, his siblings don’t show at the funeral, his wife has left him, his daughter can’t stand him and is acting out, making statements like, ‘I hope I get mum’s boobs.’ And his job as a cop is emotionally draining and stressful.
His life is eating him alive.
But Jim continues to try to do the right thing only to end up with ripped pants.
Don’t get me wrong, the humour here is subtle and complex – like the way Jim is described, ‘Everyone grieves differently. Everyone’s unique.’
You can just see it – how the nice people describe someone losing the plot at a funeral.
I’m still giggling because the film shows how difficult life can be and how ridiculous.
So based on the same principle of processing the incongruent on the foundation of a fear response, here the emotional centre is engaged, in empathy for this guy at his mother’s funeral.
The humour is based on the incongruent because this guy is not functioning as a normal human being.
Then the nature of his behaviour is elaborated, because of the sadness and tragedy and empathy for this guy doing his absolute best.
The sadness and tragedy is modified by the incongruent behaviour, leading to further cognition, coming back as humour on a foundation of sadness that leads to elaboration creating that dark humour.
It. Just. TICKLES.
Taking the idea further: if there’s not enough tension for humour to release through incongruity, or if the difference isn’t enough; and if there’s no attachment to the character (leading to further elaboration), the attempt at humour will miss the mark.
The response will be flat: it’s just more data that flows through, marking time.
And if the humour doesn’t require further processing, and really misses that tension relief, it becomes simple. Like slapstick. And that’s if there’s a good performance from the actor.
If not, the end result will turn the audience against the storyline because the film will be a boring experience or the laughter will be directed at the film, not with it.
Watching a film that gets dark humour just right, for me, is a genuine pleasure – who can forget the gloriously funny, bad luck of, O. B Jackson (James Parks) in The Hateful Eight (2016)?!
Tarantino is definitely one of those writers and directors who knows how mix up the violent, the unexpected warmth and intellect with the incongruent.
Think about the relentless violence in John Wick 3 (2019) that saturates to the extent it’s funny.
It’s the unexpected bloody action happening to a well-liked character that absorbs with the incongruent of a deadly killer who loves his dog making John Wick a memorable and likable character adding those touches of joyful dark humour.
I acknowledge that not everyone enjoys this style of (sometimes bloody) humour – and there’s further research about the different theories of humour; think of humour used as aggression (and why people will feel superior and laugh at a movie, perhaps) and humour used in sexual selection (I found that funny too! Maybe we should go out…).
As a side note, the sexual selection theory is a concept well illustrated in the Coen Brothers’ film, Burn After Reading (2008), with the character Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) taking online matches to the movies to see if they laugh at the same joke.
A nice illustration and frankly, not a bad filtering method to find the right partner.
Whether you like dark humour or not, I’m sure all would agree that those added complicated interactions of cognition and emotion make watching a film a more rewarding experience, and one that certainly keeps me coming back for more.
2. Vrticka P, Black J. M. and Reiss A. L. 2013 ‘The Neural Basis of Humour Processing’ Nature Reviews / Neuroscience, Science and Society PERSPECTIVES 14 860 – 868.
3. Chan Y, Chou T, Chen, H and Liang Kl 2012 ‘Segregating the comprehension and elaboration processing of verbal jokes: An fMRI study’ NeuroImage Dec, 61: 899-906.
4. Ohman. A, 2005 ‘The role of the amygdala in human fear: automatic detection of threat’ Psychoneuroendocrinology, 10: 953-958.
5. Giles Alderson (2019) ‘Jim Cummings On Writing, Directing and Starring in Thunder Road’, The Filmakers Podcast May 29, available at: apple.co/2EydVIz
Starring: McKenna Grace, Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife, Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga.
‘Not all ghosts are bad, right?’
In this third instalment of the Annabelle series, we find Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) taking the doll, Annabelle off the hands of some very frightened nurses – circa the end of The Conjuring (2013).
The relationship between Ed and Lorraine is as always, close and personal and sweet – unlike their life’s work of containing the demons infesting the lives of those still of this world.
It’s a familiar feeling, seeing the Warrens return, and the doll, Annabelle.
James Wan (director and co-writer of, The Conjuring 2 (2016) and also co-writer of the original, The Conjuring) co-wrote this instalment, along with Gary Dauberman. But the direction is all Dauberman – his debut after successfully writing the two previous Annabelle films.
And the atmosphere is tense.
There’s something about Lorrain’s eyes that’s used so well here – the expressive concern compared to the doll’s wooden cracked stare. This is just one of the many techniques used to ramp-up the tension.
The demonologists leave their young daughter Judy (McKenna Grace) in the hands of the ever-reliable baby-sitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) while they venture out to another job.
Most of the film is set in that 70s style house of laminate kitchen, low hanging lights and orange and brown decor. Back to the house holding the room with three locks and a sign asking, Do Not Touch Anything; filled with all the objects touched with evil, to have a priest pray over every week to keep the demons where they’re supposed to be: contained.
This is the focus of the film, the Occult Museum and the misguided friend, Daniela (Katie Sarife) who releases all within in it.
The film isn’t about Lorraine and Ed, this is about the three young girls fighting for their souls and sanity while the demon that controls the doll Annabelle acts as a beacon that calls all the other spirits.
The suspense is built on the creepy atmosphere of the house, bit by bit – the sounds of static and touches of orchestral sounds keeping up the edge. And the turn of light through blue, green, yellow and red cellophane revealing hidden spirits turn the house into something like a freak show – all set to a sometimes still silence while you wait and wait for that next scare.
There’s some lightness to break the tension, ‘Don’t touch her, you’ll get obsessed,’ says one kid at Judy’s school.
And there’s a kind of sweetness to the relationship between the girls and the want-to-be-brave boyfriend that manages not to be cheesy, making Annabelle Comes Home not horrific but still scary because of the suspense.
Some of the objects in that room really get the heart pumping – who would have thought a reflection seen in an old tube TV could be so creepy.
So there’s plenty of tension but the violence doesn’t evolve. It’s more the threat that kept me on edge.
In the end, the film felt more like a homage to the Warren family, with the recent passing of Lorraine Warren: 1927 – 2019.
I wonder if she’s still floating about, haunting anything – like ringing her spirit bells, just for fun.
Produced by: Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg
Executive Producer: Chris Ferguson
Starring: Gabriel Bateman, Aubrey Plaza, Brian Tyree Henry and Mark Hamill as the voice of Chucky.
‘Are we having fun yet?’
‘I guess.’
‘Yay!’
Child’s Play (1988) is a classic horror movie I remember watching when I was about twelve-years old.
I remember it was about a doll and it was scary; and I remember cringing and trying to get to sleep after seeing feet hanging out the end of a bed getting sliced by a knife.
So, I knew I was waking into a movie about a killer doll. But was somehow surprised by the horror, meaty horror at that, where the writing and the performance of single mom Karen (Aubrey Plaza) and son Andy (Gabriel Bateman) suspended reality enough to get a decent scare going when this life-like Buddi doll, doesn’t get possessed or start off being evil, but becomes a serial killer by mimicking what people do; by doing what he thinks his best buddy Andy wants him to do.
Afterall, he is a Buddi doll.
Chucky would do anything for his best mate. Including ripping the skin off faces, hanging people, stabbing and setting up angle grinders to saw pesky people in half.
Child’s Play re-imagined manages to give a classic horror, but somewhat hard to swallow concept, a believable hook.
Here, we have ‘Chucky 2.0’ based on the technology of today – where electronics are interconnected, wireless and activated by voice command.
So all we have to believe is that Chucky is an animated doll capable of responding to commands like Siri or Alexa.
Sure there were contrived moments like a person with broken legs, bones broken through skin, still able to crawl rather than writhing in agony; and rope around a neck suddenly loosened when a body falls to the ground. But it still kind of hung together.
And that had a lot to do with the tone of the film, director Lars Klevberg balancing the gore and horror with some dark humour that really hit the mark, like the question of why is there fruit involved?!
Just think watermelons being a similar shape to a decapitated head.
Yep, Child’s Play is gory and funny with Mark Hamill voicing the evil doll that is Chucky, surprisingly effective on so many levels – childhood, Star Wars, evil doll. Why not? If the voice fits.
There’s enough essence of Chucky-the-original to keep fans happy, while the fresh take lifts the original concept somewhere the audience can laugh with and not at – a close call for me at the beginning of the film, saved by the wry performance of Aubrey Plaza and the likable Brian Tyree Henry as Detective Mike who lives down the hall.
Produced by: James Wan, Gary Dauberman and Emile Gladstone
Starring: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen and Roman Christou.
Based on the Hispanic folk tale of La Llorona, The Weeping Woman, the film begins where the curse began – the 1600s, Mexico.
Llorona, famed for her beauty, catches the eye of a rich man who rides into her small village. Marrying the man of her dreams, she bares two children. The folk tale describes Llorona flying into a jealous rage when she finds her husband in the arms of a younger woman; her revenge, to kill those he prizes the most. His children.
She drowns his children. But when she realises what she’s done, guilt consumes her so she throws herself in the same waters, to drown. But her spirit remains to haunt, looking for children to replace the ones she has lost.
The film starts scary, with some surprising, brutal moments and angled camera shots that tilt the view through the eyes of the spirit, Llorona (Marisol Ramirez).
Yet as the film progresses, those creaking doors start to lose effect.
In present day Los Angeles, 1973, Anna Garcia (Linda Cardellini) lives as a single mum with two kids, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen).
Working as a social worker, she struggles to balance life, to spend enough time with her kids and to take care of everything on her own.
But it’s a happy family.
Until, visiting Patricia (Patricia Valásquez), a client she knows through work, where she finds children locked behind a closet door covered in drawn eyes.
Thinking she’s saving the children, Anna unwittingly catches the attention of the Weeping Woman. A spirit determined to drown her children.
It all sounds like a good scary story. But l lost focus along the way with moments that left me wondering, how does a baseball bat scare off a spirit?
And social workers don’t investigate other colleagues when it comes their children’s welfare. Well, not officially.
Then along comes the ex-priest – not the one still with the church who loses all credibility when mentioning his dealings with the evil possessed doll, Annabelle. But the faith healer, Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz).
I just could not take him seriously. And neither could the Garcia family he’s trying to save when he gets them to rub intact eggs along the frames of doorways.
It was like the director realised the film was turning from horror to ridiculous and then used an incredibly dry humour to lift the film from drowning in a wash of boredom.
The film becomes borderline silly with lace and doe-eyed moments stated in dialogue like, ‘She’s come to drown us.’
I felt pretty water-logged.
But then I realised the irony of the faith healer’s humour against the murderous crazy spirit who drowns kids.
Overall, a lost opportunity that turned a horror movie into, something else.
Based on: the Dark Horse Comic Book, “Hellboy” Created by Mike Mignola
Produced by: Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin, Mike Richardson, Philip Westgren, Carl Hampe, Matt O’Toole, Les Weldon, Yariv Lerner
Starring: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim.
This is the third instalment of Hellboy, a franchise based on the comics created by Mike Mignola.
Here, we have a new Hellboy and before the screening, I wondered how David Harbour (known for his starring role as Police Chief Jim Hopper on the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things”) was going to fill the iconic role previously played by Ron Perlman.
Without issue, we get that same dry delivery of one-liners like, ‘Hellboy? No, it’s Josh. People mix us up all the time.’ He says, drool rolling out his drunken mouth.
What I’ve always enjoyed about the Hellboy films are the incredible effects. This re-boot is all what the previous films delivered, and more.
Opening on a scene of black and white, we’re introduced to the appropriately named Nimue, The Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), her red cape the only colour to be seen in the foreground of an ancient tree.
This splash of red is a good indicator of what’s to come – when I say bloody, I mean that visceral, bloody flying through the air with bits of brain and bone, the marrow of people sucked out by giants, limbs torn off monks by a pigman and children eaten by witches.
Hellboy number three is rated R for a reason.
So yes, it’s gory. But jez, it really is a LOT of fun.
This is a story of Hellboy’s true nature, and why he was brought into this world.
He’s never fit in, looking like the devil himself. Breaking off his horns doesn’t hide his demonic appearance. Hellboy admits his, ‘Therapist says I rely on jokes to normalise.’
This is his weakness. He’s a monster living in a world of people who hate and kill monsters. And have hunted monsters for centuries.
You can only have people try to kill you so many times before it gets personal.
The Blood Queen understands this. She’s a monster too.
Bringing Hellboy to her side, to become King would mean the end of the world: the apocalypse.
Starting again, to re-build Eve together; to bring the monsters out of the shadows, doesn’t sound so bad.
So does Hellboy give in to his true nature? Or does he side with the ones he loves, his adopted father, Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm (Ian McShane) and friend Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), whose life he saved when she was a baby?
The script is a collaboration between the creator Mignola and Andrew Cosby.
“It was important for us, and for the fans as well, to really stick to the roots and origins of Hellboy,” says producer Les Weldon. “No one wants somebody else’s Hellboy — they want Mike’s…”
And it’s one hell of a ride with non-stop action as giants and demons and witches and humans are fought with constant asides from Hellboy to break the, at times, intense tension and scary bits.
There’re monsters that reminded me of the demons from Hellraiser.
Talking of monster’s, we also get the character B.P.R.D. Team commander Major Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) adding another dimension to the film. He’s a conflicted ex-soldier-turned-agent also from the Mignolaverse but has never been on the same page as Hellboy.
So bloody and scary, yes. But then we’ll get Hellboy asking how a terrifying, one-eyed, wooden-legged witch can have hair on her tongue.
And a moth escaping from a cave, deep underground, rising, into the air, high above, only to be eaten by a raven.
We smoothly segue from one entertaining scene to the next that’s both visually stunning and brutally absorbing.
A worthy re-boot that blurs the line between horror and action.
Produced by: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Steven Schneider, Mark Vahradian
Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz and John Lithgow.
Opening on a scene above the trees, it’s like looking above to shed light on the below, on the woods that surround the new home of the Creed family.
When Dr. Creed (Jason Clarke) and his family, wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two children, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (Hugo Lavoie) move to Maine, all they want is peace and quiet.
The next-door neighbour, Jud (John Lithgow) seems like a well-natured old codger. But the kids who bury their dead pets in the so named, ‘Pet Sematary’, included in the Creed’s newly acquired land, not so much.
Kids wearing animal masks, beating a tin drum while wheeling a dead dog towards a woodland cemetery can be intimidating to a mother still grieving, processing, terrified of her dead sister – remember her? The one with spina bifida who hated her sister? Who still haunts her?
I found these bits scarier than the other more supernatural moments.
So, there’s a cemetery and an old codger who knows of an ancient Native American burial ground that brings back those buried there. Like a dead cat named Church, for example. Dead things get buried there. They comeback. But not the same.
Pet Sematary is a remake of a familiar story.
While watching, I was reminded of the original, Pet Sematary (1989), an, ‘oh that’s right, that happens…’
But also, ‘that’s different. I don’t remember that bit…’
I watched the original film during the day, about thirteen years old, and had to sit outside on the swings till someone came home after. Didn’t think I’d get that scared. Then, I read the book, and that was much better, much scarier.
I’m so glad the transfer of the mind of Stephen King and his stories – the telepathy of stories, he might even say – is becoming more successful.
I still don’t think the films get that creeping suspense of the characters slowly losing their mind. There’s just not enough space to get the build.
The novels are slow, subtle and ultimately terrifying because of the creep.
Here, the film has character, setting and story; the film more story than character. But the condensing is successful, covered in the dialogue. Not the same effect, but with a different perspective from screenwriters, Matt Greenberg and Jeff Buhler; the story remains solid.
It’s a push at times with throwaway remarks like: ‘How far back is the acreage?’
‘Further back than you’d like to go.’
And there were moments where I wondered why you’d bury the dead somewhere you know they’re going to come back? Bad? Which is where we get the dialogue to explain the call of the Windego.
This is where the film glosses over character and where the novel digs deep.
What I like about this re-make is how visceral the scenes get when it matters.
And there’s some great devices used here, the montages of dripping blood, the movement of feet while compressing the heart to the flashing of red lights to entice the unsuspecting in front of an oncoming grill of a runaway truck – the red flashing because the ground is sour and woods are calling.
Look, I wasn’t completely blown away, probably because if felt familiar; yet directors Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch have taken this known tale and refreshed the storyline. A solid storyline with enough scares to satisfy this horror fan.
