Fear Itself: Episode 11 The Spirit Box

(I've officially decided to reverse my stance from last-year's Christmas Review.  Going forward regular reviews will be moved to the day before, so that holiday reviews can go on the correct day.)

To start out, new rule: If you start a ghost story on Halloween, most of the story should take place on Halloween. Somehow the writer of The Spirit Box thought it would be a good idea to place the first few minutes at Halloween, and then spend most of the episode in November.

I like the idea of two girls making a Spirit Board from a pizza box. The idea of seances and mysticism has been so commercialized that it's pretty cool to see some teenagers who just make do with what they have. It's not the main point of the episode, but it is probably the most interesting thing that happens. I can imagine the Producers of Ouija freaking out at the suggestion that teenagers don't need their board game to talk to the dead.

That said, the rest of the episode is...passable. There's nothing especially scary about it, but the actors mostly do decently. I enjoyed it reasonably well my first time through, but was bored for most of my second viewing, already knowing the twist.

That's not to say the twist is bad, just that most of the episode lacks a strong sense of tension. The episode could have been great with better atmosphere for the scares, but as it is it's merely adequate. Alternatively, it could have worked if it had been presented as a mystery without the ghost story trappings, rather than trying to be a mystery where a ghost occasionally pops up. Or, it could have tried to go full-on ghost story, and limit the setting entirely to Halloween.

Shelby and Becca (Anna Kendrick and Jessica Parker Kennedy) are bored on a Halloween, and want to do something special before Becca leaves for Taiwan. They decide to make a Spirit Box to contact a suicidal classmate, Emily (Samantha Hill). I'm pretty sure everyone reading this review already knows that the spirit box reveals that Emily was murdered, or we wouldn't have a story.

After the initial séance, we vary between scenes of mysterious ghost-things happening (a ghost reaching out of the water, Becca throwing up a necklace that belonged to Emily, etc), and scenes of the girls being suspicious. A mysterious masked individual follows Shelby around the school pool in the wee hours of the morning while she's training. Shelby's father (Martin Donovan) is a police officer, and she's able to sneak into his office and find evidence in his files that Emily was drugged before apparently driving her care into a lake.

After enough of the episode's runtime has passed, they hold another séance, going to Emily's grave for a better “signal” as Becca calls it. This time Emily fingers their gym teacher Mr. Drake (Mark Pellegrino). The guy is a fairly creepy individual, and Becca recalls him constantly flirting with Emily. So, Becca talks Shelby into breaking into his house, leading to a confrontation that leaves him dead.

And so, with Becca off to Taiwan, we get the final twist (or two): Shelby discovers that Emily's grave was fake, and realizes that Becca killed Emily (Becca admitting this over the phone, since Taiwan has no extradition treaties with the US), because Emily had stolen Mr. Drake from her. Becca had pushed the Spirit Box to give the answers she wanted, to lead Shelby to kill Mr. Drake in a completion of her revenge. Becca had also been the masked individual, and faked some of the paranormal events, while assuming the rest were Shelby's mind playing tricks on her. Even if the twist isn't anything special, it works because Becca's portrayal for most of the episode is subdued enough to be read either way.

But, those few remaining events were completely real. Emily's ghost comes back and kills Becca by locking her in her car and turning on the carbon monoxide. The episode ends to Becca screaming. The final scene is easily the worst part of the episode, with Kennedy under-acting badly in response to the situation. Ironically, the very downplayed portrayal that makes the rest of the episode works ruins it here. She sounds, at worst, annoyed.

A 40-minute long episode really has no excuse to feel this slow. None of the scares really hit home, and while I can understand the lack of passion coming from Kennedy, Kendrick should really show more emotion. Even if this show had been a success, I don't think anyone involved in production intended this to be the episode people remembered, just one more story to get them to 13.

Masters of Horror: Episode 22 Right to Die

I'm tempted to start this review by asking “who let Rob Schmidt direct an episode?” However, that seems a little unfair, since I haven't seen Wrong Turn as of this writing. Still, this is one of the lesser Masters episodes, although it never falls to the depths of Deer Woman or Fair Haired Child None of the scares are anything special, and the story didn't do anything especially creative with it's own premise. The major scares the episode is built around are “skinless person,” “ghost,” and “unwilling organ (skin) donor,” all of which have been done before and better. The twist, while not awful, is carried out in the laziest way possible.

I've heard people complain about films that avoid focusing the camera on “mysterious” characters until the filmmakers are prepared to reveal their identities. While that is a lazy cliché, this episode takes it a step further. Large portions of the opening scene are simply not shown to us. There is no in-universe reason for this. We're not being shown a glitchy recording, and the camera doesn't follow other events. Parts of the scene are just missing. Why in God's name the episode didn't just skip this scene, establish the needed information through dialogue, and show the full scene at the end I will never know.

The episode opens with dentist Dr. Cliff Addison (Martin Donovan) and his wife Abby (Julia Benson) in a car crash. Cliff gets out safely, but the car catches fire before Abby can escape, burning her severely. For the remainder of the episode she's skinless, lying in a hospital bed, psychically attacking Cliff. He has visions and dreams of her skinless corpse attacking him. He gradually grasps that if she dies, he'll be going with her.

Cliff is told that she's in a coma, but the episode has her look at him so blatantly that there's no ambiguity about it. We also see images in her eyes when the camera zooms in on them, like something out of a Saturday-morning cartoon. Abby is awake, in pain, and attacking Cliff. Cliff is told that she'd be OK if they could find a skin donor, but without a complete body transplant she'll be dead within a few days.

The episode is obviously inspired by the Terry Schiavo case, with Cliff trying to get a Do Not Resuscitate order, while Abby's mother (Linda Sorensen) keeps appearing on television, calling Cliff an abuser. There are no actual courtroom scenes, so the mother seems to only appear to remind us that this is just like the Terry Schiavo case, because god forbid this episode not be exactly like it's inspiration.

We find out partway through the episode that Cliff had an affair with his assistant, Trish (Robin Sydney), and that Trish wants to continue it now that Abby is out of the way. Trish provides us with gore fodder when Cliff harvests her skin, desperate to save Abby and keep his own neck intact. How the hell a dentist has the skill to do that, or how he even knew Trish was a compatible donor, I haven't a clue.

The eventual twist is yet another example of a horror plot line that would have been better if it had been revealed at the beginning. Abby was pregnant, but leaving Cliff because of his affair. So Cliff intentionally set the car on fire. In retrospect, that makes his situation much more interesting. If Abby dies, her spirit will kill him. If she lives and regains consciousness, she'll be able to testify that he attempted to kill her. Instead of this story, we get boobs, as he has sex with both Trish and ghost-Abby.

I'm a bit confused about the final scene, which shows Cliff arriving and home, throwing Trish's remains in the trash can, and being greeted at the door by Abby giving him a death glare. He hangs his head and walks inside. Is he dead now? Or just haunted by her spirit? Is she stuck with him as much as he's stuck with her?

...oh, and the episode has Corbin Bernsen as Cliff's lawyer, projecting evil everywhere. I love Corbin Bernsen, but this is not his best work.

Overall, the episode just isn't worth your time. It's ill-conceived, not scary, and doesn't have a lot of original ideas.