The Conjuring

Okay, time for the unpopular opinion: I don’t like The Conjuring.  Everyone knows the spin-off sucks (update: the reaction to Annabelle 2, released the same weekend I’m editing and uploading this for later posting, has been better), and I somewhat enjoyed the second film.  But the original is just unenjoyable to me.  My problems boil down to three things:

* I don’t buy Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) or their worldview.  It’s a black-and-white way of looking at the world that kills my suspension of disbelief.  This is a personal thing, yes, but if God, the Devil, demons, and angels are all real, I think they have more interesting things to do than knocking on a door three times, over and over again, to mock their opposing faction.

*While the era was great at producing horror movies, I find that horror movies set in the 1970s often don’t work.  It’s something about the hair and the clothes.  The entire world just looks unreal to me, like a sitcom with no budget for wardrobe.

*More specific to this movie, we get the parts of both a serious thriller and a B-movie.  We spend most of the film building up with investigation of the paranormal, and then get a cheesy, over-the-top CGI-fest of a climax.

Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t scary moments.  There certainly are, and I honestly would have preferred that the movie stick to its boring but creepy dramatic route.  Many real-world haunting stories are scary because they ultimately don’t make a lot of sense, while The Conjuring movies seem quite determined to wrap things up in a neat little package, even when the actual events that inspired the movie were far less clear-cut.

Roger and Carolyn Perron (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) move into an old farm house with their five children.  Strange events start happening, with the usual knocks, movements, and kids reporting imaginary friends.  There is a particularly frightening sequence in which Carolyn plays a version of hide-and-seek called “three claps” with one of her daughters, and finds herself drawn into another room by an unexplained clap.

Ed and Lorraine are called on the scene, however, and ironically do exactly what they always did in real life: give everything that happens a demonic explanation in terms of their interpretation of Catholic theology.  Rather than the male ghost indicated earlier, we now have a nominally female demon who possessed a previous owner of the property and forced her to kill her own baby in a sacrifice to the devil (but for some reason they keep referring to the demon as “Bathsheba,” the name of the woman).

In the final act, the witch possesses Carolyn Perron in an attempt to kill her children.  This kills any remaining suspension of belief as suddenly every half-baked theory the Warrens put forward is completely confirmed, and all ambiguity is gone.  It also turns the evil force into something that can be tangibly fought, as Ed Warren attempts to perform an exorcism himself.

This is something the real Ed Warren claims to have done, but I know enough about exorcisms to know they’re never really the fast epiphany therapy movies portray.  Here, however, we get the standard gross-out, hurt the victim, and it’s all fixed by the power of love ending.  It’s too tangible, too easy, and generally too Hollywood for a truly scary movie.

So, do I recommend The Conjuring? No.  I didn’t like it in theatres, and I don’t like it now.  Whether you want drama or B-movie, there are far better choices available.  The Conjuring 2 is among them.

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is a movie that couldn’t be made today. Nothing about it is calculated or planned, and often times the scenes don’t even seem to fit together. We go from outright spoof to feigned drama scene-to-scene. The actors often seem to think they’re in totally different movies.

That isn’t to bash our current crop of movies. I think the 2010s will be well-remembered for producing some truly great art. However, all of that art is very meticulous. Studios often know exactly what they’ll be making years in advance, and put all the necessary preparations. With films of the 80s, however, there’s a real sense that much of the plot was probably made up on the fly.

I’m not sure how much of it truly was, however, as the film was clearly fueled by the meta-joke that a horror host is suddenly stuck in the same kind of bad films she normally hosts. The style with which this comedy is delivered is a bit hard to explain. On the one hand, no one can claim that Cassandra Peterson is playing her role as Elvira straight. However, she also avoids the modern spoof tendency to wink too blatantly at the audience. This is a story that makes logical sense within an illogical universe.

Elvira, leaving her television series, needs money to finance her new Vegas show. At just the right time, she receives notice of an inheritance from an unknown aunt. Traveling to collect, Elvira finds herself in a puritanical town surrounded by Conservatives horrified by her manners of speech, dress, and behavior. Elvira, being herself, does nothing to alleviate their concerns, generally acting like some combination of a bratty child, and an obnoxious teenager.

The first half of the film is largely a comedy about the town, while the second turns into a supernatural story as Elvira discovers that her aunt was a witch, and the powers have passed onto her. It’s also worth noting that the backstory makes no sense, an aspect which I suspect was intentional. There are also plenty of scenes that just sort of happen, without advancing the plot at all.

The sexual politics are firmly rooted in the 80s, with parts of the movie dealing with Elvira as an object of teenaged fantasy. The other actors all seem to be generally aware that they’re in a comedy, but not one quite as blatant as the tone Elvira is going for, and this allows her to fully take center stage. If she has any competition at all it comes from her Great Uncle Vincent (W. Morgan Sheppard), who seems to be channeling the age of Universal Horror with his evil schemes to use their family’s magic to bring about the end of days. Daniel Greene gets his job done as the love interest, although Edie McClurge is a little too on-point as “Chastity Pariah,” the local leader who tries to turn the town against Elvira.

The last fifteen minutes or so somehow become even more insane that the rest of the film. Elvira not only gets magical powers, but a rocket launcher, to duke it out with her uncle. Somehow the movie maintains a dramatic level of tension in spite of this.

It isn’t easy to summarize this movie, because so many scenes are just a series of jokes. Suffice it to say, it’s worth checking out. Highly recommended for parents with kids who are just crossing the threshold into more mature content.

Deathgasm

Deathgasm is a movie with sincerity.  In a day when movies thrive on subversion and deconstruction, this is a horror movie about teenagers and heavy metal.  It’s a movie that looks at the emotions of a young person without mocking them, or considering them petty.  Our main character, Brodie (Milo Cawthorne), is a child from a broken home living with his conservative Uncle (Colin Moy), and bully cousin David (Nick Hoskins-Smith).

However, whenever Brodie listens to metal music he flashes into a power fantasy, matching the artwork he constantly draws.  While these fantasies are, obviously, contrasted with Brodie’s real life, his real life is never used to diminish his fantasies.  They’re a real, positive part of his life that brings him joy amid pain.  That’s treated as a truly significant part of his life.

Brodie makes a total of three friends in his new life.  The first two are Dion and Giles (Sam Berkley and Daniel Cresswell), two nerds who love D&D.  While we don’t get the same vicarious power trip from the game that we do from Brodie, I’d say this is largely because we only see the game from Brodie’s less-than-interested perspective.  His remaining friend, Zakk (James Blake), is another metalhead a few years older than Brodie, who talks the trio into forming a metal band with him under the name Deathgasm.

Zakk convinces Brodie to seek out the home of a metal legend named Rikki Daggers (Stephen Ure), who he claims lives nearby.  The two find Daggers, and escape with what they think is a record of importance to him, just as Daggers is killed by a mysterious, well-dressed man (I haven’t been able to figure out from the credits).  Instead of a lost record of Daggers, it’s a Rick Astley album (ha ha), with some strange documents in Latin.  Brodie is able to translate them to discover it’s “The Black Hymn,” a medieval prayer to summon demons.

A romance begins to blossom between Brodie and Medina (Kimberley Crossman), who isn’t especially interested in metal music, but finds Brodie to be a sweet and fascinating person.  However, when David threatens Brodie for associating with her, Brodie decides he’s finally had enough, and writes the Black Hymn into a song for the band, leading to much of the town being possessed by demons.

Naturally, this leads to a lot of gory action, as Brodie and Zakk rip through the zombified townspeople (and also his non-possessed cousin, because why not?), while trying to find a way to reverse the possession.  Meanwhile, some human villains do some things.  Honestly, the human villains seem like something of an afterthought.  Above I was unable to even give the actor who played the first of them...he’s then killed by his boss who takes over for a fleeting time, before being killed by his mistress.  However, they’re cheesy, they’re silly, and they do their job until they die.

The final confrontation sees Zakk merging with the demon (he possesses the most evil person present, and that happens to be Zakk).  After a battle, Zakk is returned to human form via metal music, and killed, along with Dion and Giles.  Brodie and Medina become a couple, and live together enjoying metal.  The final scene shows that Zakk’s soul survived, still merged to the demon.

This movie is pure power fantasy.  A lonely, bored teenager gets to be a hero using his favorite thing: metal music.  But, it’s a very positive fantasy.  It’s the story of a teenager who makes a selfish decision to summon dark forces, and then defeats them by becoming a better person.  If there’s a better fantasy that exists than overcoming your own selfish desires I have yet to see it.

Medina’s a classic trophy girl, but far from the worst example.  The movie gives her enough focus for us to see why she likes Brodie, and lets us see how she comes to experience metal music and share his love of it.  We get the motions of her being mad at him, then forgiving him, but it’s a fantasy and it is what it is.

...oh, and it’s a bloody, fun mess of a good time.  Yeah, there’s that too.  I’m sure I could preach forever about how the film portrays gender roles, undercuts ageism, and blah, blah, blah.  But, this is a movie that has a metalhead teenager murdering his demonic aunt and uncle with sex toys and a chainsaw.  This is what gorehounds live for.  You need to see it if you haven’t.

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Pinball Wizard

And so Gary (Ross Hull) returns to tie up the season in an episode that’s...okay.  It’s safely not the worst of the season, The Tale of Jake and the Leprechaun sewed that title up nicely.  However, there have been such high points in this season already that this finale really can’t compete. The Tale of the Captured Souls stands out as a tale head-and-shoulders above this finale.

The opening sequence is a bit more relevant this time.  The Midnight Society are passing around a Gameboy, apparently taking turns playing a game.  The conversation they have seems to indicate that the writers had no idea how a video game works.  I wonder if the actors told them that randomly passing your game system around mid-level without pausing is a fantastic way to lose lives.

Gary, however, asks the ominous question: what if you had a play a game in which you couldn’t just reset.  I found myself asking how such a situation would be “game” specific, rather than simply a description of every important activity we ever do in our lives, or even of life itself.  That said, however, I digress.

The story that Gary tells suffers from one basic problem: the characters seem directionless.  Our main character, Ross (Joe Posca), while not necessarily contradictory, seems to have an almost random assortment of unlikeable traits given to him.  He’s desperate to get ahead, and will steal from a mall wishing well, but when a store owner (AJ Henderson) gives him a single shot at a job, he’s so lazy and game-obsessed that he uses the opportunity to play an antique pinball game he was forbidden from touching.  And lest you think he faked interest in the job to get to the pinball machine, he came asking about the job before seeing the machine.
Yes, such contradictory people exist in the real world.  In fact, almost all of us are bundles of contradictions.  However, in this case the contradictions leave us with no traits to latch onto our main character, and by extension no way to understand what he should or shouldn’t be learning from this life-lesson.  There’s also a love interest (Polly Shannon) thrown in because...reasons…

The boss, Mr. Olson, is even more confusing.  Mr. Olson agrees to hire Ross if he can mind the shop while Mr. Olson is at lunch.  However, Ross is forbidden from touching the cash register, or any of the merchandise.  How Mr. Olson expects him to help a customer I don’t have the first clue, and naturally this suggestion is ignored.  To make it even more confusing: Mr. Olson fearfully warns Ross away from the pinball machine, but the ending of the episode indicates that trapping Ross with it was his intention.

To circle back around: Mr. Olson, having recently fired, another teenager, is reluctant to hire Ross.  His concerns prove to be well founded, as Ross begins playing his antique game the instant he’s out of sight.  The writers seem to confuse pinball with video games, as Ross describes a story he can apparently follow from the ball whizzing around in the machine.  Before Ross knows it, it’s night, he’s locked in the Mall, and Mr. Olson has not returned.

Then, Mannequins in suits begin attacking him, and it soon becomes clear that he’s in the storyline of the pinball game...why a pinball game about medieval fantasy involves mannequins in a modern shopping mall is another thing I don’t know, but there’s also an Executioner (Normand James) and a Witch (Nathalie Gauthier), and his love interest returns as a Princess...also, the characters are afraid of water for some reason…

The final twist: after fighting a series of villains, Ross discovers he’s physically inside the pinball game, and Mr. Olson appears above him to tell him he’ll be playing the game forever.  Given that he learned the first time through “smash the glass, take the super soakers, and you can take out all the enemies easily” I imagine he could hold out for quite some time, unless the rules change in every repetition, which makes the ending seem far less frightening.

Was he supposed to learn to be less selfish from this?  Or less lazy?  More honest?  I’m not sure, and in a half-hour show like this I really shouldn’t have any doubt about the nature of the lesson.

The closing sequence gives minimal indication that’s it’s a season finale.  A standard ending, the Midnight Society are now scared of a Gameboy, and the meeting closes out.  Gary says “till next time” while breaking the fourth wall for a split second, and dousing the fire, but that’s it.  I suspect that they didn’t want kids to know they’d be watching reruns for the next few months, but looking at it in the day of serialized storytelling, it just seems strange for a season finale to not be remarked on.