The Sentinel came out a year
after Roman Polanski’s The Tenant. It’s a short enough
gap that I doubt Polanski’s film had any direct influence on it.
However, they both rely on the premise of a protagonist moving into
an apartment surrounded by insane neighbors and being increasingly
unsure of what’s going on. However, I personally find Polanski’s
film to be far more effective, as it deals primarily with
psychological horror, rather than Religious, and his ending gives us
fewer answers.
Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) is a
fashion model and actress who fears commitment to her boyfriend,
Michael (Chris Sarandon). Her father was an adulterer, who kept her
mother trapped with financial dependency, and Alison doesn’t want
to repeat her mother’s fate. We’re treated to a flashback of
Alison walking in on her father having a three-way with two other
women, leading Alison to attempt suicide.
Wishing to continue living alone,
Alison moves into a brownstone apartment with a reasonable rent. She
finds her neighbors to be strange, but friendly. The most prominent
neighbor is an eccentric old man named Chazen (Burgess Meredith), who
greets her with a cat in his arm and a bird on his shoulder. They
all seem to dislike a blind priest though, Father Halliran (John
Carradine), who lives in the apartment above Alison. After going to
a party with her neighbors, Alison suffers from nightmares about them
and begins to see strange things.
The real bombshell is dropped quite
casually. Alison comments that her neighbors are noisy to her
landlady (Ava Gardner), and the landlady informs her that no one
except she and the priest live in the building. In a modern film,
this revelation would quickly lead to the protagonist taking some
action, but as there’s nothing for Alison to do about non-existent
neighbors except doubt her own sanity, that’s all she does.
Over time, it becomes clear that the
people she’s seeing are demons. All of them are dead and have been
condemned to Hell for various sins. The building sits on a doorway
to Hell, and Father Halliran is the titular Sentinel who keeps the
demons from escaping. As Halliran is dying, though, Alison has been
selected by God to be the new Sentinel. It’s made clear this is
not an honor. The role of the Sentinel is given to a sinner as a
form of penance, so that he or she can enter heaven. For Alison,
it’s her sin of attempted suicide. The demons hope to avert her
destiny as a Sentinel by driving her to suicide, thus freeing
themselves.
The movie’s major weakness is its
tendency to cut away from Alison. Bringing up The Tenant
again, that film kept us uncertain of reality by never giving us
information from any source other than our (possibly insane)
protagonist’s point-of-view. Whereas on a number of occasions,
this film shows us scenes where Alison is not present, usually to
give us additional information about Father Halliran, the line of
Sentinels or the damned souls. These scenes are mainly through the
eyes of police, or of Michael. I think this was a huge misstep, as
it would have been very easy to have them present the information
which they’d gathered off-screen to Alison, leaving the truth more
ambiguous.
The movie does shine however as a
Religious horror, mainly due to its lack of judgment. Typically,
Hollywood sucks at dealing with Religion. The vast majority of
movies (horror or otherwise), that deal with Religious ideas fall
into one of three categories: 1) Big-budget God is non-denominational
and friendly, 2) Low-budget God likes a lot of Bible quotations and
Kirk Cameron, or 3) Low-budget God is evil and defeated by the power
of Atheist rantings.
This film however simply takes the idea
that the basics of Catholicism are true, expands on them a bit with
the idea of Sentinels and shows us the results. The movie doesn’t
tell us if it’s acceptable for God to damn those who disobey his
will or force the life of a Sentinel on Alison. It also never tells
us if the demons are wrong to call him a “Tyrant.” We’re left
to make those decisions for ourselves.
Beyond the abstract, the movie’s
visuals certainly deliver. A lot of the demon make-up is simple, but
still gut-turning. At one point, Alison sees her deceased father and
stabs him in panic, leading to further guilt and self-doubt. It’s
a perfect mixture of gore and scary ideas.
The moment I find the most unsettling
though is very brief. Father Halliran and another priest show up at
the last moment to chase away the demons and avert Alison’s
suicide. Chazen begs Alison and the demons “Resist! Resist!”
The line is disturbing because, taken out of the context of the story
and visuals, his voice has the sound of both desperation and concern.
He seems to legitimately believe that the power of God is a force
that must be fought against, despite the overwhelming odds. Without
any intense Religious debate, this one line leaves you uncertain if
the good guys actually won at the end.
I think that how people react to this
movie will likely vary heavily according to their Religious
backgrounds and personal experiences. However, I can say that it
left me feeling uncomfortable. I still hold that the movie could
have been far more effective by showing less and telling more, but
even in its current state, it’s a movie well worth checking out.
Not as good as Polanski, but that’s a high standard. Besides, at
least you won’t have to say “I watched a movie directed by a
rapist!”
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