Grounded :(

  Before I allowed myself to find my seat for TRAP, M. Night Shyamalan appeared and told me something. He said it would "make the experience better" if I just "went with it." As I watched him walk out (with a weird limp[??]) I pondered what he said over and over.

   So many people balk at how "ridiculous" Trap is but that absurdity is presented very plainly in the trailer and the synopsis on paper sounds so silly that you have to have some kind of "WTF" rattle around. So, since it's honest about what it is, I feel like one should be honest about their experience with it; you either went in with the express purpose of shitting on it afterward or you knew absolutely nothing about it. You don't go see a movie with a premise that absurd expecting it to hold up to objective real-life scrutiny in some attempt to ground it in a concept as flimsy as reALitY.

  I knew what I was in for and thus I laughed quite a bit. It's imperative to note that that laughter wasn't ironic or anything: I had genuine fun. At times Trap feels like if DePalma made a Naked Gun movie, which I'm still not entirely sure works 100% of the time but, as far as the 'realism' goes, I have no complaints - nor would I. The massive leaps in logic are definitely a feature, not a bug. My speculation is M. Night is just saying "fuck it" and letting himself get away with murder, with a murderer. Hell, even after so many narrow escapes it doesn't end with Cooper being caught and facing justice. Instead, it ends with Cooper getting out of handcuffs and laughing while briefly breaking the fourth wall; Shyamalan couldn't be more blatant here.

  For so long he's been a joke to be picked apart and mocked and, this time, he's deliberately breaking the rules with a smile on his face; one might say the whole movie...is a Trap. It's incredibly refreshing to see a movie this radically stupid because we've been 'grounded' for far too long with 'smart' movies. From Richard Brody's review of OLD, "just as it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken, it takes a smart filmmaker to make a stupid movie, which I mean in the best possible way. " Shyamalan truly is The Butcher, the freakin' nutjob who goes around just choppin' people up.

  George Miller seems to be sick of this cultural obsession with nitpicking, too. One of the most lasting things about 3000 Years Of Longing for me is how Idris Elba's Djinn can't survive in our world. The more his magic is explained away using science, the weaker and sicker he gets, until he gradually withers away because 'realism' seems to kind of...unmake him. The thesis basically being "let [movie] magic be magical." You don't enhance stories when you make them more believable, you destroy them.

  So many other filmmakers have had their own responses: 

• Joe Dante showed what he thought in Gremlins 2 when the control room dude could barely finish his little monologue about time-zone minutiae before a Gremlin popped out and bit into his neck

• When the cinematographer for Lord Of The Rings was asked by Elijah Wood where the light was coming from, during the The Battle Of Helm's Deep, he gave the most logical response, "The same place the music is coming from."

• On the set of Jaws Spielberg was told that shooting the tank of compressed air wouldn't actually blow up the shark, because that's unrealistic. He responded "But it will be cinematic."

  Those quotes have always meant a lot to me but even moreso after I saw this growing sentiment: "The John Wick movies must take place in an alternate universe because they're so unrealistic." That idea is disheartening for so many reasons but chiefly because yes, movies and TV shows and books take place outside of our universe: that's the point. In a sense, every piece of fiction is in its own pocket universe because "a writer crafts their ideal world." Writers are, in the abstract, Gods, so to criticize a movie for being Unrealistic doesn't make sense because what Realism are you applying to it besides its own?

   Another favorite is the notion that "People don't talk like that, the dialog is unrealistic," well, that's how the writer wants them to talk, it's a deliberate choice. Beholding a movie to your idea of Realism is so needlessly limiting. It's a rejection of curiosity that's so disapproving of Imagination it makes my head spin. It's a form of engaging with art that's so purely a dilution of magic that it brings to mind a mass amputation of unicorn horns. Like, how long have you hated fun? You're the villain in every '80s comedy.

   Unless a piece of media is actually going for real-world realism, like a work of Non-fiction, no one should expect it to adhere to real-world rules; journalistic integrity doesn't apply to make-believe. Hell, sometimes 'realistic dialog' is a fallacy unto itself because I've had/heard conversations where I've wondered "WHY does this person talk like that??" There is no uniformity because people enunciate differently and have weird cadences and inflections and pronunciations and even say unexpected things because people are unpredictable fucking oddities with interiority formed by experiences outside our own.

   The Lion King (2019) went for 'realism' and ended up being one of the most bland, unimaginative, ugly movies ever made; a cold and synthetic simulacrum of the colorful, expressive original and of any nature documentary you can find on streaming right now. There are so many moments in Planet Earth where David Attenborough will be narrating the craziest shit I've ever seen and it's better than any frame in Lion King (2019). And that's the thing: 'Realism' Folks need to give Real Life a little more credit. I mean, fuck, we have the idiom "truth is stranger than fiction" for a reason. When Jon Favreau was making his Lion King remake he actually admitted, proudly, that they used bland lighting because "when you really want to get a shot of a sunset you have to be lucky, they don't just happen like that." But as Youtuber YMS points out: a quick Google search of African Sunsets will yield plenty of gorgeous shots of colors and clouds taken for decades. Jon Favreau has millions of dollars, creative freedom and even real-life inspiration at his disposal but he actively chose to reject beauty. It must be so miserable for him and people like him to think life is so bland and uninteresting. The CGI in The Lion King is incredible, photo-realistic even, but without art direction and inspiration it means fucking nothing. 

  And while, thankfully, Cinematography has been incredible this year, for a good part of the last—almost—20 years there was this mounting push for more 'realistic' night photography. Thus began an onslaught of some of the most dim, hideous visuals committed to the screen. In so many movies and shows there'd be an ugly, muddy blue hue and nothing else because there's no 'realistic' light sources allowed, besides their version of moonlight. It was perpetually frustrating because there wasn't even any effort to find interesting ways to utilize practical light sources, ala how Spielberg shot the flashlights in E.T.'s night scenes. So many movies and shows were met with deserved scorn because audiences couldn't see anything. While I like to see what's going on, Lol, that's not what upset me most: I was annoyed that there was no push for artful imagery at all. So this isn't a screed where I bitch about media illiteracy online, it's about a philosophy that's been seeping into the actual production of movies, which is worrying.

  Audiences and filmmakers need to disabuse themselves of the CinemaSins-y mythbusting of movies and just embrace Artistic Expression, otherwise you're atomizing art itself until it doesn't exist.

Ghosts For Christmas

When the trailer for Nosferatu first dropped promising a Christmas release, I scoffed at the release date. Nosferatu belongs to October. Vampires in general are a Halloween theme. As are the rest of the ghoulish monsters that populare the lovely season. Ghosts however, are different. When I think of ghosts I think of the chilled winds of winter. The draft coming in the creek of the door that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The flame of a candle being whisped out, rendering a shuddering darkness in the room. British scribes MR James and Henry James have mastered the ghost story.

Telling ghost stories around Christmas time was a popular tradition in Victorian Britain. Before the advent of electricity, long midwinter nights meant folks had to stop working early, and they spent their leisure hours huddled close to the fire. The oral tradition of telling ghost stories during this time of year became a timely trend. The Industrial Revolution allowed these stories to be printed. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol becoming the most famous. 

Thanks to Shudder, I have been going through the BBC Christmas Ghost Stories, a strand of short television films made for the BBC between 1971 and 1978. The first five are adaptations of MR James tales while the sixth, The Signalman, is from Charles Dickens. The final two stories are original tales. 

So throw another log in the fireplace and sit in a semi circle as your favorite uncle opens his tome of stories to tell. 

Oct. '24

 Late Night With The Devil ★

  A lazy clout-chasing found-footage hackjob that so wishes it could be Ghostwatch. There's some lean-in-and-grip dialog and the cast has great chemistry but every engaging conversation is cut off at the knees by some stale attempt at Horror; every trick in the demon possession book is employed here. Even worse: the 'documentary' aspect, especially the behind-the-scenes footage, all feels so gimmicky and unearned. There's also the unforgivable use of A.I., the ugly cgi, and an insultingly predictable twist. Nearly every aspect of this movie reeks of laziness.

Milk & Serial ★★★

  Though a little far-fetched at times (and I don't mean Realism), this is one hell of an admirable accomplishment. Made on an $800 budget, propelled by a twisty script, engrossing pacing, good suspense, and impressive performances, this YouTube indie short about gaslighting is also a portrait of ambition in front of and behind the camera (both diegetically and non-diegetically).

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things ★

   Speaking of low-budget filmmaking: I got virtually nothing out of this. It looks terrible (when you can actually see anything), the zombies aren't scary, and the hangout aspect is so boring because the characters range from punchable to boring. That said, there's a moment at the end that gave me an unexpected jolt, and while that was too little too late, it has stuck with me.

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon ★½

  Starts strong! It's funny, creative, and sometimes admirable (especially the scenes with Scott Wilson, because I couldn't look away) but it deflates around the end of the the second act because it gives in to the genre trappings it was making fun of. The entire third act is Zzz...and I don't remember the ending, couldn't remember to save my life. Put a gun to my head, I'll have to die.

Azrael ★★½

  Held my attention but it never felt like it got going. Aside from a couple of bits, the tension is almost non-existent and, in a thriller, that really sucks a big one. The lack of dialog ends up feeling pointless and it doesn't look great, either. The ending is kind of interesting? If anything, it ends where it should have started. That said, Samara Weaving is typically fantastic and I like some of the world-building and practical effects.

Stowaway (v/h/s/beyond) ★★★★★

  Every Halloween season we get a v/h/s sequel and they're usually an assortment of highs, lows, and in-betweens (except last year's v/h/s/85, which was the series' most consistent). This year's, v/h/s/Beyond, has three stinkers and three highlights, so they broke even. Two of those bright spots are Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel's STOWAWAY and Live And Let Die. Stowaway is a segment so literally outstanding that I was fucking rapt, so much so that I forgot it was a v/h/s segment. When it ended and cut to the frame narrative, I impulsively shouted "DAMNIT!" because I could have watched an hour or two more. In fact, it might be my favorite segment of the entire franchise and we're seven movies deep. Even the concept of this being Found Footage is unpacked because what was on the tape prior, and the decision to record over it, is important to our character's journey. Taking advantage of desert dusk gradient, infrared settings, and zero gravity, Kate Siegel's direction is a marvel unto itself, giving us one of the most visually interesting entries in the found-footage subgenre. She finds so many ways to keep things fresh instead of the typical mounted GoPros or Shakey-Cam or cheating with a multi-cam set-up. The sound design is also gorgeous, utilizing shimmering glitter and thunderous chimes, so while the script is incredibly horrific, there's a great contrast between what we see and hear in the confines of this tragedy.

Live And Let Dive (v/h/s/beyond) ★★★½

  The potential is limited to the anthology format but what they do with their slice of the runtime is so entertaining: skydivers cross paths with a UFO and it leads to a brief creature feature. There's some monster CGI that doesn't look great but the initial skyfall is so thrilling and the plane explosion feels so authentic. The eventual setting—an Orange Grove in broad daylight—is so inspired and unexpectedly unnerving. Every tree looks the same so it becomes a kind of labyrinth and the oranges are so slightly surreal that it makes the horror more nightmarish. And, with the chaos of falling debris and screaming people whose parachutes never opened, there's added tension on top of the extraterrestrial monsters scurrying around. It's a short full of good ideas, one after the other, and they consistently payoff.

Tales From The Darkside: The Movie ★★★

  Been putting this off for years and it was...fine, for the movie that's been dubbed Creepshow 3 I wasn't impressed (Cat's Eye is a better nominee for Creepshow 3). The real star is KNB Effects for their monster, their mummy, and the gore. All three stories left me wanting more but the effects work made me perk right up. There's so much potential in the three of them (especially the last two) that isn't fully capitalized on. The second one, Cat From Hell, creates a fun dynamic of Assassin vs. Assassin but it's much more fun on paper than in execution and that sums up the whole thing.

Kenny & Company ★★★½

  Affable coming-of-age indie that goes down nearly every avenue you'd expect but so many sequences are fucking delightful, in particular a bit where a kid gleefully points a gun at his gym teacher's head and pulls the trigger. Don Coscarelli explores death in such a straightforward way and you can see the seeds that would sprout into Phantasm. Something I appreciate the most about it is that it's not nostalgic for a bygone era, it's a snapshot of its current time and place. I see it growing on me in the future because we have virtually no Halloween hangout movies.

Lady In White ★★★½

  Starts off like A Christmas Story for Halloween but then takes a turn into a pretty bleak murder mystery that goes to some uniquely uncomfortable places (one moment toward the end I would love to forget but seriously doubt I will). It's a bit of a mess, both tonally and narratively, with unsatisfying loose ends. But it still has potent fall atmosphere, incredibly charming family moments, effective suspense and some wonderful performances. I just wish it had been more cohesive and had better visual effects.

Little Sister ★★★★

  This a nice, breezy family dramedy based around Halloween that is aptly referred to (by the 5 people who've seen it) as "John Waters meets John Hughes." There's nothing spooky or supernatural or even remotely scary here, it's just a bunch of people realizing they suck which, yes, is what's actually scary.

  It's the kind of movie that I wish was a TV show instead because a movie's runtime guarantees that any ending is unsatisfying. The characters are all so well-drawn but they're all so interesting and...well, I enjoy being in their company and selfishly feel entitled to more laughs and tears with them.

Something Wicked This Way Comes ★★★★½

  After searching all over (as it's not streaming anywhere and out of production on physical media) I finally got to see this. It's not only one of the most autumnal movies I watched this season but there's a threatening magic to it as every moment cascades into the other. There are also some...almost... proto-Flanagan monologues here about aging, death, and the regrets that mold our hearts. The acting is typically great from this cast (Jonathan Pryce and Jason Robards always deliver and Pam Grier is stunning and creepy as The Dust Witch). This is one of those special movies, like Burton's Sleepy Hollow, that could get by on atmosphere and spooky vibes but also manage to just be simply great.

The Witches Of Eastwick ★★★★

  I remember one of the first moments I felt a kind of simpatico with Roger Ebert was in reading this bit from his Practical Magic review: "too grown-up for children, too childish for grown-ups." Witches Of Eastwick is real grown-uppy while maintaining a childish whimsy that only George Miller could conjure. I had so much fun with this; a perfect cast, deliciously catty and sexy dialog, enduring direction (especially the car chase in the last act), and some gruesome effects make for such an entertaining movie.

God Told Me To ★★★★

  This completely stumped me - I have no idea what I feel, to be honest. There's a lot to peel back and flake away. It's not just unpredictable but the places it goes feel so unbelievable and insane. It's definitely disturbing and I respect it for taking the swerves that it does, just...lots to unpack. The flip-flopping I was doing, over and over, loving it, hating it, perplexed by it, unsettled by it, amused by it, annoyed it, baffled by it. Usually that's the mark of something truly great but I'm not sure where I stand. I went in expecting something along the lines of Q: The Winged Serpent and it starts that way but it eventually morphs into something else entirely. I appreciate being able to chew on something long after it's over.

Alligator ★★★★

  As far as Creature Features go, this isn't on the level of Jaws, the Blob remake, Tremors, or Nope but it's pretty close, about on par with Slugs. Strong direction, well-crafted effects, Robert Forster, and a pleasantly cynical script about animal testing & toxic waste anchor this movie that, otherwise, would be disposable and silly. I took too long to get around to this because of bad faith dismissiveness but I'm so glad I finally gave it a chance. Every shot of the 'gator looks great—occasionally creepy, even—and the last act is a fun showcase, especially if you just want to see nature as an antihero just fucking shit up for the bourgeoisie.

Salem's Lot ★★★★

  Scratched this one off the Tobe Hooper list and I continue to be enamored with his filmography. This is so dense, atmospheric, creepy and, occasionally, so tense that it's frustrating. The best stuff is the dialog and character beats, breathing with full chests because the 3-hour runtime gives them room. It's engrossing from beginning to end and perfect to throw on in the afternoon and let the dusk take you to the climax. Extra credit for the jagged ending that denies any easy resolution.

A Return To Salem's Lot ★★★★½

  Hahaha, well, okay: Salem's Lot is a spooky, character-driven, almost noirish folktale about vampires with an ever-deepening well of sadness that closes in around you in its 3-hour runtime. A Return To Salem's Lot is the complete opposite! In every way it does its own thing; funny/satirical, kooky, campy, and fucking brisk. Like, this fucker just soared by and, unless I was cackling or cheering, I generally had a huge grin on my face the entire time. It's about an anthropologist being tasked, by vampires, to write their Bible while his son is enchanted by their nocturnal way of life. The rest is insanely unpredictable bananatown cinema that only Larry Cohen could, would, and should make. There are so many strange pleasures and unintended charms that only grow in the compost heap of pure low-budget warts-'n-all entertainment; bad ADR, funny puppet monsters, odd line deliveries, and a complete disregard for the first movie. Larry Cohen carves his own path with some help from Michael Moriarty and an extra-surly Sam Fuller for one of the most enjoyable movies I've ever seen.

Terrifier 3 ★★★★½

  Yes, it's as sickening and brutal as you've heard but it's also a sincere portrait of PTSD and the True Crime parasites who feed on victims for 'Content'. It never reaches the highs of Zombie's cut of Halloween II but it's not far, either. Seeing Sienna and Jonathan as these cracked shards is so unexpectedly sad, which is a shade I never expected this franchise's greasepaint to have. And it won't get the recognition it deserves, but this one of the most gorgeous movies of the year, just absolutely stunning to look at. And the make-up effects are also worthy of awards they won't ever win. As much as I like the second movie, my biggest gripe was the sluggish pacing and this one wisely tightens things up. But, at the same time, it manages to be deliberately slower (with lots of great dissolves and cross-cutting). There's also a lack of humor; plenty of people were laughing during my screening but I found myself wincing and tense, especially the last act which was so upsetting that I was actually buzzing from adrenaline - I nearly left the theater. This gave me everything I wanted in a demon possession movie, unlike Late Night With The Devil, because it reaches a point where the movie itself feels evil. A huge step up from the sequel (and a leap from the first one), hopefully Leone continues to sharpen his craft for the next one.

The Sixth Sense ★★★★½

  Revisited this after about, I don't know, two decades and was floored. The editing is brilliant while, stylistically, this is one of Shyamalan's most striking movies and the script is achingly short of greatness. I say that because, while the twist is great (and foreshadowed in many clever, inspired ways), it happens too late: we see Malcolm realize he's dead and come to peace with it in a montage that's overwrought and a bit rushed. It's especially clunky because it comes after the Bee Pendant scene, with Cole and his Mom, which is the movie's true crescendo, so it feels like an afterthought. We should have gotten the twist reveal and then ended on Cole and his Mom, it would give the movie a much stronger punctuation mark. Other than that this is absolutely stellar; engaging, scary, and existentially rattling.

The Hidden ★★★★★

  Oh, I fucking loved this. It's as if Men In Black met Grand Theft Auto and is exactly as fun as that sounds. The way it marries sci-fi action schlock and earnest drama in a perfect union is remarkable. It's just absurd enough and just serious enough without ever slopping over on either side. The dialog is crisp, the characters are all well-rounded, the villain is a scene-stealing comic gem and the action is thrilling. One of the best action movies of the '80s, or any decade, for that matter. In absolute awe of this perfectly measured elixir of fizzy entertainment.

Dream Sequences: What Movies Are Really All About

“...it was all just a dream.”

It’s funny that the “it was all a dream” trope is considered the textbook example of bad storytelling across fiction because not only do you almost never actually see it show up in popular media (or at least I rarely do), but when it does show up it’s usually employed in pretty riveting and highly regarded movies — The Wizard of Oz, Mulholland Drive, Jacob’s Ladder, to name a few. And part of what makes these movies so riveting is exactly that: they adhere to the “rules” of dreams, which is where the best filmmaking resides. 

I love dream sequences. They’re usually my favorite part of any movie because they’re a perfect, seamless intersection of abstract and cerebral: 

• They can be used to further the story or give insight into a character without any exposition or character development.

• They’re visually-driven, yet their inherent substance in the context of the story is immediately recognizable to the audience. 

• They allow the writer to be ‘direct’ with his pen, and they allow the director to ‘write’ with his camera. 

• You can get away with damn near anything in a dream sequence - all rules go out the window. Those are the rules. Even the most stringently ‘logical’ moviegoers (you know the type) will accept it. They’re a free pass to do surreal shit in mainstream fare. 

Dream sequences are, for all intents and purposes, what cinema is really about. The brilliance of movies like the ones I mentioned (Jacob’s Ladder, Mulholland Drive, etc) is that the entire movie is a “dream sequence.” 

Below are some of my favorites (emphasis on ‘some’). There are too many to put them all in one post, but these are a handful of examples of what I consider to be pure cinema:  

Anomalisa (2015)

The whole movie is surreal, as you’d expect. Charlie uses stop-motion animation to accentuate the lead character’s existential crisis by literalizing his numbness to other people’s humanity - every other character has the same face and is voiced by Tom Noonan. However, this quasi-meta approach goes full-tilt meta during a dream in which Michael (our lead) imagines his plastic face falling off. We get to literally see inside him, all of the plastic inner-workings. It’s like seeing ‘the Man behind the curtain’ but creepier. 

The Exorcist (1973)

Few films are able to achieve what this scene does: dreams depicted in movies rarely feel like they’re actually taking place inside the character’s mind. I can’t explain exactly how this scene pulls off that distinct ‘feel,’ but that’s why I love it. I suspect it has something to do with the sound design: we think we can sort of ‘hear’ what’s happening in the dream, but we can’t. We feel far away from it yet simultaneously and paradoxically trapped in it. And when the scene is over, it feels half-remembered, vague, illusory, which only adds to its spookiness. 

Friedkin’s best shit was always the abstract stuff in my opinion. If you haven’t already, check out Sorcerer and make note of the “Where am I going?” scene toward the end. Peak cinema. 

 

The Conversation (1974)

This one brings me to another point I want to make about these types of scenes: they can sort of embody a film’s entire aesthetic/vibe/atmosphere in its most potent and distilled form. The heavy-handed execution of this particular scene would never work for the entirety of a feature-length picture, but if you do it just once then it can permeate the rest of the film in a palpable yet intangible way. This scene depicting Harry’s paranoid nightmare is definitely what the entire movie feels like, but this is the only part you can actually point to and say “See?!” 

Amour (2012)

Another Conversation situation: this sequence encapsulates the film’s whole vibe. It used to be one of my favorite movies all-around, and this scene was 99% why. The movie as a whole is extremely depressing - like everything Haneke does - but also like all of Haneke’s other films, the high points are when things get explicitly frightening. He never made a ‘horror film’ in the traditional sense of the word (I suspect he feels such a thing would be ‘beneath’ him), but if he ever did, I don’t think I’d survive it. 

Okay, here’s the scene: Jean-Louis Trintignant is getting ready for bed when his doorbell suddenly rings. He asks who is there but gets no response. He exits his apartment to find that the elevator has been destroyed and his neighbor’s front door has been kicked down. He calls out for anybody but no one answers. Further down the hallway he finds that the floor is completely flooded - the water is up to his ankles. Before he can call out again, a disembodied hand reaches from behind his head and muzzles his mouth. No music sting, no score, only ambient sound.

Hellraiser (1987)

It feels strange to say, but I always forget about this scene. Not because it’s bad, but because this is the opposite of Amour and The Conversation: it doesn’t feel like the rest of the movie at all. The rest of the movie is a hard and fast plunge into gooey body horror and salacious sexual humidity, but this part feels so much more artful and delicate in its execution compared to the incendiary maximalism of everything else. Whenever I put the movie on I have a moment where I go “Oh yeah!” once I realize we’re in Kirsty’s dream. 

The scene in question depicts a premonition of sorts: Kirsty envisions her dead father covered in a sheet adorned with candles and falling feathers from God-knows-where. Gradually the sheet begins to soak through with blood before the corpse rises and reveals itself. It’s shot in slow-motion and features the sounds of a crying baby - I wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired Silent Hill to some extent. 

Enemy (2013)

This is another Anomalisa situation: the entire film is abstract, but there are some sequences that are explicitly dreams - more than one - and they are among the most impactful movie moments that I’ve experienced in my entire life. The first involves a recreation of a scene from a fictional movie that Jake Gyllenhaal’s character watched earlier in the film, except there’s no dialogue or sound FX aside from some frighteningly raucous horns and drums courtesy of Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans. Aptly titled “The Dream,” this piece of music remains, to this day, one of the scariest pieces of film score I’ve ever heard.

The second dream - or nightmare - is more terrifying to me than 99.99% of horror films. Partly this is due to my own arachnophobia, but I don’t wanna pin it just on that; I’ve seen tons of horror movies that employ spiders as a scare tactic but none of them affected me at all whatsoever. Really it’s the execution that makes this so deeply unnerving: the formaldehyde-yellow color filter, the chiaroscuro lighting, the eerily gentle music, and most importantly: the design of the ‘head,’ which I find more hellish than just about any demon or Devil ever put on film. This is the kind of stuff that Denis should be doing instead of hanging out with sci-fi nerds.

Plunderpics

 

God's Reject

  

  I thought I'd eventually outgrow The Devil's Rejects but I rewatched it last night and realized I've actually never fully grown into it. Here's this movie I've loved for damn near 20 years and suddenly it has a cranking, whirring and sliding Murphy Door to a winding staircase of Dr. Robert Zombie's most accomplished lab experiment. On the surface Rejects is a spectacular Frankensteinian monster that appears to be a simple 'throwback' to '70s exploitation movies but it's also a unique and measured satire. It went from being one of my casual favorites to edging into my all-time Top 10 because it's pretty much perfect on all fronts.

  First off, visually, it's almost a prototype for me. If I'm dissatisfied with a movie's aesthetic, Rejects is either first or second on my wishlist of How Most Movies Should Look. Every single aspect of the color, the contrast, the lighting, the grainy texture — I adore every frame so much. Even the way he blocks scenes, utilizes the frame, slow zooms, and the energy he brings to handheld is all so casual without being aimless or one-note. There's a distinct style here that's complimented by the sharp control in the editing, especially the use of slides and dissolves.

  But more than that is how he navigates the varying tones and shifts in narrative framing, achieving an uncanny harmony that's pretty remarkable. RZ has as much desire to entertain as he does to horrify. None of the horror is ever undercut by a joke nor is any of the horror intrusive on the humor — which is important considering the upsetting places that this movie goes. 

  Our 'Antihero' (a dubious designation), John Quincy Wydell, is a deeply angry person who jumps to threaten someone with brutal assault simply for insulting "The King" Elvis Presley. So when it comes to his 'righteous' mission for vengeance and Frontier Justice, it's obvious his intentions have little to no nobility. He's full of faux-badass one-liners and monologues, even hypocritically balking when others do the same bullshit posturing that he does in front of a mirror at home. And that hypocrisy is what defines his arc: he becomes who he hates. Again, he's aware of this, but he thinks it's a necessary part of his mission, "walkin' The Line," instead of delusional entitlement to violence. Yeah, The Fireflies are irredeemable monsters, no doubt, but them being awful doesn't absolve Wydell of his own accountability just cuz he's got a badge.

  When no other police are around, Wydell slithers in and murders a handcuffed Mother Firefly but with the added venom of sexual violence since he initiates it with erotic coercion as he 'fucks' her stomach with a knife. He even uses this later to taunt Baby, saying "I bet that old whore came before I took her miserable life." This isn't any different than the graphic sexual assault of Gloria Sullivan by Otis Firefly as he shoved his gun into her panties and, later, uses it to taunt Roy Sullivan with "I think I can still smell your wife's pussy stink on my gun." The only difference is choice of weapon.

  The parallels and flip-flopping tones constantly challenge the very idea of any binary Allegiances. One of them is working for The Lord and the others are doing The Devil's Work; they're all scum but at least the Devil's Rejects are honest about what they are. There's even a specific point where Zombie shows his hand: the turn happens after Wydell has an incredibly tender moment with the Rejects' traumatized maid. Zombie holds on her pained face as Wydell walks away, making her and her pain feel significant rather than a backdrop. Right after this, though, Wydell meets up with The Unholy Two, a couple of scuzzy bounty hunters he's paid to track down the Fireflies. They look as gritty and fringe as the Rejects themselves and Wydell doesn't mince words as he makes it known he thinks they're beneath him, which means he's embraced a 'necessary evil' — nevermind the fact that he's turning toward evil. And right after their exchange we cut to the infamous Tutti-Frutti scene, the first moment where these sadistic murdering necrophiliacs are shown in an endearing light. This is a brilliant editing choice because, from here on out, The Line is completely blurred as Zombie challenges us to enjoy the Fireflies' company as Wydell becomes a more annoying, embittered killjoy.

 The ethos of the bottlenecking narratives is for us to ask ourselves when and if we're okay with Sadism and Torture, and we even get to laugh along the way.

  The chill hangout aspect to the character building brings the much-needed light that gives this movie balance. With rhythmic dialog that sounds naturalistic because of the cast's chemistry—they all sound like people who've worked together for years—playing off of each other with funny asides that also reveal enough to humanize them. Again, RZ never tells us what to feel, but he refuses to let any character, no matter how small, feel insignificant. Miraculously, the pacing doesn't suffer when we get a bit about how one of the deputies has low blood sugar or the roadie for Banjo & Sullivan wishes he was a rodeo clown instead (or a prostitute who thinks she could really make some money cosplaying some "Star Wars shit" and her pimp not wanting to do it because he doesn't have the patience for nerds). With expert precision we're thrown from that back into terror and bloodshed without getting whiplash.

  With this movie alone Zombie proves himself as a dab-hand juggler who's capable of never dropping any balls he throws up in the air. His coordination and everything he achieves with it makes for one of the most underappreciated American films ever made.