Masters of Horror: Episode 6 Homecoming

Looking back, I really do feel like I’ve been using too much plot summary up until this point. I’ve decided that I’m still not going to avoid spoilers, but I’m likewise not going to dwell on explaining things that don’t directly affect my opinion of the work. This is certainly an episode for which the ending doesn’t seem especially important, as it’s merely an exclamation mark on the themes of the previous hour.

Homecoming is like a time capsule, and it’s not easy to talk about a decade after it was made. It embodies the despair of the mid-2000s, and the backlash against Bush in the aftermath of the Invasion of Iraq. It hits pretty much every hot button topic of that era, including the Florida recount, the ban on photographing dead soldiers, Karl Rove existing and, of course, the WMDs that weren’t there. Practically the only moment of the episode that isn’t politicized is when a zombie is asked for his ID before he can vote, which I find retroactively hilarious.

David Murch (Jon Tenney), a presidential speech writer, who tells a grieving mother on national television “if I had one wish, I would wish for your son to come back, because I know he would tell us how important this struggle is.” This is picked up by the President as a talking point…until it actually happens. American soldiers begin rising from the grave, not to eat flesh, but to cast their ballots for the President’s opposition.

Naturally, this creates chaos in the President’s administration. It’s suggested that only soldier’s discontent with the war are rising, because if they died for a cause they believed in they would be at peace. So, they have hundreds of zombies walking the streets, many bearing obvious death wounds, shocking the American public, and telling everyone that they were “killed for a lie.”

It’s not really surprising that Joe Dante directed this. Gremlins is pretty light on actual scares, and wasn’t exactly subtle in its humor. While Robert Picardo is awesome as a fictional counterpart to Karl Rove, I seriously doubt the real Rove would actually brag to his coworkers that he sold a war on “horseshit and elbow grease!” Hell, the entire episode is full of pundits who yell loudly about how they’ve deceived the American people in the middle of their offices.

The only character who seems remotely believable is “Jane Cleaver” (Thea Gill), and she’s realistic mainly because she’s impersonating Ann Coulter. It’s kind of hard to go over-the-top with that. Hell, I’d actually be more surprised to find out that Coulter did believe the stuff she was saying.

It’s well made, certainly, but the biggest problem with this episode is simply the question of who it would appeal to. When it was made, yeah it was awesome to watch for anyone disgruntled with the Bush administration. I feel that today hating only one side of the political spectrum seems almost quaint to most people, and whether or not we should have invaded Iraq in the first place feels like a debate that’s played out.

For me, personally, the episode is like reverse-nostalgia. As a liberal, I remember the Bush years as a miserable time, and this episode is just a reminder of why I hated those years. I imagine someone who felt otherwise would likely just be offended by the material, and someone too young to remember just wouldn’t have anything to relate to, and would probably just take it as a black comedy.

So, all I really have is, if this sounds like it would appeal to you, awesome, watch it! Otherwise, it probably isn’t worth your time.

Wednesday Review: The Neon Demon

Contrary to a lot of other critics, The Neon Demon is a film I recommend. I enjoyed pretty much every moment of it. It’s an experience I can’t imagine will be for everyone, but if you like art house horror films, this is probably for you.

The film deals with the cut-throat world of modeling. A young woman named Jesse goes to LA to try to become a model, and immediately finds herself the object of lust from everyone she meets. This puts her in a position of great power, while simultaneously making her a vulnerable target to those around her. Saying more than that would give too much away, and this is a movie you need to see for yourself.

The problem with discussing it is that, even talking in broad terms, the movie is open to a lot of interpretation. I’d kind of like to go through the entire movie scene-by-scene to discuss my thoughts, but obviously I won’t be able to do that, even for my eventually regular review. Furthermore, I imagine that pretty much any thoughts I put forward about the movie run the possibility of being countered with “that’s no what it’s about!”

To me, at least, this film was about contradiction. It borrowed visual and auditory cues to tell the audience what we should be feeling, even as the story playing out inspired quite different emotions. It used the periods of long silence to project hopelessness, even as our protagonist was full of hope and strength. It used bizarre, surrealist imagery that would normally imply a protagonist is mentally ill, without giving us any real indication that our protagonist is mentally ill. Indeed, there are some events that couldn’t possibly be her perspective, but are still just as surreal.

Elle Fanning gives us a truly great performance. No, she’s not the beautiful Goddess that the film makes her out to be, I’m fairly certain that’s just more of the contradictions, but she manages to portray a role that falls somewhere strangely between the innocent and the vamp. She occupies a place in the Madonna/Whore dichotomy I’ve never really seen filled before, and she does it well.

By the time this finally goes up (I’m writing it prior to my viewing of either Independence Day: Resurgence or The Purge: Election Year) it’s likely that the theatre count will have already dropped quite substantially for this movie, but if you can see it in theatres do so. If not, catch it on streaming. If it’s the kind of movie you like, you won’t regret it.

Masters of Horror: Episode 5 Chocolate

Chocolate is directed by show-runner Mick Garris, the guy behind most of the Stephen King mini-series. If you told me that this was written by Stephen King, I wouldn't be surprised, but Garris himself is credited as the sole writer here. Presumably, he learned a thing or two from King.

The episode is told in flashback by a man named Jamie (Henry Thomas), who just committed a murder. He's explaining the events leading up to the murder to the police. I suspect the notion of an unreliable narrator was intentional here, as the story he tells sounds like something a stalker would come up with to justify his actions.

Jamie was living an unfulfilled life, surrounded by fulfillment. In his job he developed artificial flavors for snack foods, but he was on a diet. He was also sexually and artistically unfulfilled following his divorce, while his friend and co-worker Wally (the always magnificent Matt Frewer) indulged in all the pleasures he could ever want.

Jamie's tedium is interrupted, though, when he begins empathically experiencing the life of a female artist named Catherine (Lucie Laurier). It begins with the simple taste of chocolate in his mouth before the experiences expand to encompass episodes in which he experiences all five senses.

I suppose since none of this is Jamie's intention, we can't really criticize his morality at experiencing her life without her knowledge. For a time, at least, this seems beneficial to Jamie. Experiencing her life drives him to experience his own more fully, and he's able to get laid and indulge in junk food again without the guilt he experienced before.

However, these episodes also become dangerous. He experiences her sight while driving, and nearly dies because he can't see the road. His ex-wife and child also walk in on him with another woman in his bedroom because he's experiencing Catherine's sex with her boyfriend at the time, and can't intercept them before they enter (why they walk away from him when he appears to be having a seizure I don't claim to understand).

Then, Catherine's boyfriend turns abusive, and Jamie experiences Catherine murdering him. This incident convinces Jamie that he has to track her down. As with Jenifer I find myself uncertain how I should feel about the protagonist at this point, and I suspect the framing narrative was intended to leave us questioning that. The fact that Catherine is willing to hear the full story from a man who shows up unannounced at her apartment, and uses phrases like “sometimes I'm inside of you,” is just downright bizarre. She then gives the impression of falling for him before turning violent, and in his words “makes him” kill her.

I'm not sure what the episode is trying to say, exactly. Perhaps that jealousy and desire should drive us to fulfill our own lives, but we should separate those feelings from the people who we feel them for. Or maybe it's just a really creepy idea for a scary story. Either interpretation works.

The best part of the episode is unquestionably Wally. Frewer creates a beautiful portrayal of a man determined to enjoy every second of his life. He eats whatever he wants without gaining weight. He also plays in a rock band, despite being old enough to know he'll never make it big, just because it's fun. He's attained complete personal fulfillment without the need for outside input.

The idea of empathically experiencing the emotions of others in this way is kind of creepy. Even if everything we're told is true we can still see where Catherine would want to stop a complete stranger from experiencing her life by any means necessary. Overall, though, I'd say the episode works best if we just assume that Jamie is crazy and killed Catherine when she rejected him. It leaves some questions open, like what really happened to her boyfriend, and why he drove so far to find an object of obsession, but I think these questions play very well in our imaginations. This episode should be included in any viewing of Masters of Horror.

Masters of Horror: Episode 4 Jenifer

I was kind of rolling my eyes when I hit Play on this episode, eagerly awaiting my chance to eviscerate it. That chance, however, did not come. I'd say this is a case in which my tastes have changed since I first viewed MoH a few years ago. At the time, I think I wanted to believe myself a refined movie buff looking for substance. Now, having chilled a bit, I find myself relaxing and enjoying the style of this very simple story, driven by the idiotic decisions of its protagonist. It's based on a 10-page comic from the 70s, clearly inspired by EC Comics, and so it does feel a bit like an extended Tales from the Crypt episode. However, that extension comes courtesy of Dario Argento, a man who never let his visual style be constrained by plot or characters, and who pumps it full of every sexily stomach-turning image you can think of.

This episode also benefits from the presence of Steven Weber. All that need be said to establish his horror cred is this: Among all the debate over The Shining movie versus the mini-series, the single point of agreement between both sides is that Weber's portrayal of Jack was better than Nicholson's. I repeat: Weber's performance of a man losing his mind was so good he is almost universally agreed to have made Jack Nicholson look like a hack by comparison.

I should note that this is basically an evil seductress story, and I'm uncertain how much we're supposed to like Weber's character. It plays on the idea of men as completely unable to resist a woman sexually. Weber is ensnared by a woman who is mentally disabled, and who realistically has very little power in the dynamic. I'm here to assess the quality of the material, not my approval of it, but I do think the episode is much stronger if you assume Weber is supposed to be an irresponsible jackass.

Frank Spivey (Weber) is a cop who shoots a meat cleaver-wielding lunatic to save a young woman (Carrie Anne Fleming), only to discover that the woman is severely deformed. She has a beautiful body, but a disfigured face, black eyes, and the mind of an animal. The dying man's last word is “Jenifer,” giving Frank a name for the woman.

Frank, fearing that Jenifer will not be properly cared for in an institution, decides to take her home. Her appearance terrifies his wife and son. Both of them find Jenifer disgusting based on her face alone before she even becomes violent. When Frank is unable to find other accommodations for Jenifer, and Jenifer eats their cat, the wife and son flee. Jenifer then kills the neighbor's daughter, but she keeps her place in Frank's life by having sex with him, apparently as part of an instinct to preserve her bond with her protector.

You're probably already seeing the problem here: Frank continuously blames Jenifer. She acts violently to anyone who isn't Frank, while using sex to sate him when he grows angry with her, and I his mind it's her fault. She doesn't know what she's doing, but it's her fault. Frank seems to be unable to bring himself to return her to an institution, even though it's clear she's highly aggressive, and not responsible for her actions (and unable to consent to sex in any meaningful way), and in need of sedation and confinement.

Eventually, Frank tries to hand her off to someone else. Unable to do it himself, he gives the key to his house to the owner of a Freak Show. He tells the owner to break in, kidnap her, and use her as an exhibit. Jenifer stores the Freak Show owner in the fridge, having disemboweled him when Frank gets home.

After the second murder, Frank and Jenifer go on the run. They live in a shed, and he starts working in a grocery store. Then Jenifer murders the son of his employer (one of the few times in the episode she shows greater-than-animal intelligence, as she knows to restrain his arms), and Frank decides she has to die. He ties her up in the woods, gets an ax, and is killed by a hunter. His last word is “Jenifer,” and the hunter becomes her new protector...so, we apparently have an ongoing line of irresponsible dumb asses who can't bring themselves to put the deeply troubled young woman with nice breasts in the care of medical professionals who can treat for her properly.

The episode works mainly on a visual level. Argento knows how to make Jenifer both enticing and disgusting, and people looking for gore won't be disappointed. However, if the implication was supposed to be that Frank was right to blame Jenifer, then this episode is just messed up. I don't “recommend” it, in the same way I don't recommend skydiving. If it's the kind of thing you're into, you don't need me to suggest it.

Wednesday Review: The Purge: Election Year

I would pay a lot to see the look on Miley Cyrus’ face when she was told that the makers of The Purge: Election Year wanted to license Party in the U.S.A.  I nearly died laughing from the song’s use in this film.  It was the single most ridiculous scene in this series to date, and that’s really saying something.

I love this series.  I think director James DeMonaco has captured the zeitgeist of the 2010s better than any other single filmmaker.  We’re living in an age when we’re angry.  What we’re angry at is incidental.  We don’t trust our leaders, and the idea that they would actually legalize crime for 12 hours every year somehow doesn’t sound that farfetched.

My reviews of the first two films will post around the end of the year, but suffice it to say: I liked the original, but I recognize that Anarchy was a massive improvement, moving away from a Home Invasion thriller to a street-level view of the chaos.  Now, for our third installment, we get a Political Thriller.

While I may reevaluate this later, I currently consider Election Year to be the best film of the series to date.  The return of Frank Grillo as Leo Barnes lets us keep the heart of Anarchy, while also giving us a much stronger narrative.  Anarchy was, for the most part, a series of events that happened on Purge Night.  Election Year, on the other hand, has a real central conflict.

An Independent female Senator is running for President on a platform of ending the Purge through Executive Action (it shouldn’t bug me that a President can’t completely overrule a Constitutional Amendment in a movie already this silly, but it kind of does).  Rather than a traditional assassination, the New Founding Fathers decide to rewrite the rules of the Purge to remove the usual exemption for high-ranking government officials, making the Senator a target for Purge supporters.

On Purge night the Senator finds herself on the run, under the protection of Leo as her head of security, and various other supporters.  The stakes are clear, the story is exciting, and the world continues to be more and more fleshed out as we really see what the nation has come to.  I’d also say this film manages to avoid having any characters that feel redundant or unlikeable, giving it one-up on Anarchy.

While I don’t want to spoil too much (and don’t want to walk into overly awkward territory), I did notice that this film made the racial aspects of the Purge more overt.  The theme of racial tension was there in the first two films, which did show the largest number of Purge victims as minorities.  Election Year, however, actually showed White Supremacists as agents of the NFFA, and had one character make racial jokes that were probably intended to make the audience squirm a bit.  I was also surprised that the film opted to feature the Crips in one scene, rather than a fictional gang.

It’s starting to come out in the news now that this may be the final Purge film, and the ending was clearly written to make the movie a suitable finale, while leaving the possibility of more sequels up in the air.  I have a lot of respect for the fact that the studio let this take us off guard, rather than practically writing “finale” across the moon the way the Saw series did.  It was legitimately surprising when plot threads that have run through the series began to resolve themselves, and the status quo was blow to ashes, primarily because I didn’t expect anything to be resolved.

That said, I do hope there are more Purge movies.  This is a concept that has held up far better film-to-film than many other series that lasted much longer (*cough*Paranormal Activity*cough*).  It’s an idea so much fun that it’s difficult not to make a good movie from it.  It would be a real shame if we only got to enjoy it three times.

Masters of Horror: Episode 3 Dance of the Dead

Returning to this show, there were three epiosdes of Masters of Horror that immediately came to mind before I even starterd watching: Homecoming, The Washingtonians, and Dance of the Dead. Dance stands out for a reason: It's a story about the hororr of giving up on humanity. A post-apocalyptic world where people still go through the motions of keeping the lights on, but beneath it all there's little human decency left.

The story takes place after World War III and a series of terrorist attacks have introduced a new chemical weapon: Blizz. It's a substance that can be mixed with clouds to produce a rain of ashes that burn any living thing they touch. Millions have died, and the rule of law is implied to still technically exist, but be very loosely enforced. Money and property rights still exist, there's even a reference to “paying rent,” but property seems to be just about the only right accepted.

The main character is Peggy (Jessica Lowndes), a naïve young woman who lives and works at a diner owned by her mother, Kate (Marilyn Norry), who sees Peggy as her last hope of normality now that her sister and father have both passed away. They live in a world where owning a diner is the equivalent of winning the lottery. To make them even luckier, it's implied the diner doesn't even turn a profit, but Kate insists Peggy's father left them some money.

Trying to get a better understanding of the world, Kate runs off with a young man named Jak (Jonathan Tucker) to the town of Muskeet, a place primarily inhabited by bikers, gangs, and drug addicts. There, a club called the Doom Room, run by “the MC” (Robert Englund), puts on shows displaying “the Dance of the Dead,” performed by LUEs (Lifeless Undead Phenomenon), the corpses of young men and women who overdosed on a stimulant developed to keep soldiers fighting during the War. Their bodies continue to spasm long after their death, so they use electric prods to make dead bodies “dance.”

Peggy recognizes her sister Anna (Melena Ronnis) as one of the animated corpses, and she and Jak try to tak her body. The MC chases them down, and there's an encounter with Kate who followed them to Muskeet. The MC reveals that Kate sold him Anna when she overdosed, because Kate was tired of dragging her home every week. This sale, not a deceased father, is the source of all of Kate's money. Peggy agrees to trade the wounded Kate for Anna's body, and gives it a proper burial with Jak, joining him as a resident of Muskeet.

This episode says a lot by way of implication. It's probably a better depiction of human nature than almost any other I've ever seen. The apocalypse did not create a Mad Max scenario, because that would be a situation from which no one benefits. Rather, the apocalypse brings a world in which the weak and the old have little recourse for their grievances, as society pushes on just enough to maintain itself. Maintaining a civilization is, ironically, the most primal of human instincts, and we really don't care who gets bulldozed in the construction of that civilation. We see that Blizz survivors are persona non grata, and that the old are used as a source of plasma to keep LUPs functional. Everyone knows that they'll eventually be destroyed by the society they live in, but it's not like an individual's choice to change is going to fix anything, so why bother?

Of course Englund is always amazing. Here he gives us a far more morally dubious character than Freddy. He's honest, but completely and unapologetically out for himself. He comes across as a character above good and evil, despite being completely human. He's effectively the Devil come to collect his due from those who have sinned...which is literally every character in this world. At one point one of Jak's friends says that the Dance is “what happens to people like me.” These people are in hell, with a stay on their punishment for as long as they're strong, young and attractive, or at least rich enough to feed themselves. They either accept or denying that nothing good can come from a world devoid of compassion.

The final scene, Peggy as a Muskeet girl while her mother dances, is probably one of the most touching and disturbing in the the entire series. It's an acceptance of a sad reality. She knows she's doomed, and chooses to live that life. But we still see the conflict in her eyes as she waits for her punishment to come in a world where she knows she can expect nothing different. There is no good choice, no action that does not harm others, and no chance of salvation. The world continues on, as civilization crushes souls.

Masters of Horror: Episode 2 H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch House

I have somewhat mixed feelings about H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House (yes, Lovecraft's name is part of the title). It certainly takes more risks than the first episode, and that alone scores it points with me. It's an attempt to adapt a very non-visual story into a visual medium. It was one of Lovecraft's stories that dealt heavily with the indescribable, and so we can't see a true visual representation. Most writers would have simply taken the name, and rewritten the story from the ground up. Instead, it's clear real effort was made to remain as true as reasonably possible to the source material, while moving it to a modern setting.

Walter Gilman (Ezra Godden) is a graduate student studying String Theory, who moves into a house dating back to Colonial times, that's now used for renting cheap rooms. His two neighbors are Frances (Chelah Horsdal), the poverty-stricken woman with an infant son named Danny (David Racz), and Masurewicz (Campbell Lane), a strange old man who prays very loudly at night. He quickly develops a friendship with Frances, giving her money to pay her rent, and helping her look after her son.

Masurewicz, however, believes that the house is haunted by a Salem witch (Susanna Uchatius) with a human-faced rat as a familiar. Obviously, Walter doesn't take him seriously until he begins to have dreams of the human-faced rat and the witch. He also begins sleep-walking during his dreams. On one occasion, he abandons Danny while Frances is out, and on another he finds himself at the Miskatonic Library, somehow having attained access to the copy of the Necronomicon the University keeps under lock and key (anyone familiar with Lovecraft will know the names).

The full story is eventually revealed through a conversation between Walter and Masurewicz. I think this works better than most exposition scenes because both characters are involved in the exposition. Masurewicz explains the witch's motivation, she uses young men who move into the house to sacrifice children. Walter, being a physicist, is able to clarify how she does this. She “haunts” the house by using it's bizarre architecture to travel between dimensions

This is, however, where the story's real weakness comes in. Geometry that allows for interdimensional travel should, by it's very nature, not be something we humans can visually represent. So, we end up with an apartment that has a weirdly-shaped corner. It's a sacrifice you make, I suppose.

The ending is effective mainly because it allowed neither the hero nor the villain to “win.” Walter is able to kill the witch, but the rat still kills Danny. Walter is blamed for the death, and immediately committed to an asylum, but the rat returns and finishes him as well. So, everyone dies but the rat.

Ultimately, this is a good episode. Director Stuart Gordon has worked with Lovecraft's material before, and he does have a tendency to substitute sex and blood for the scary ideas in the source material (not that I'm complaining), but here there's a nice balance. If you want to just watch the “good” MoH episodes, this would definitely be one to check out.