The Devil's Doorway (2018)

The Vatican sends a team of two priests, Thomas Riley and John Thornton, to investigate a possible miracle in 1960 Ireland. At a remote Magdalene Laundry, a statue of the Virgin Mary supposedly cries blood. Father Thomas expects its nothing, but more idealistic and young Father John sees the possiblility of an expression of the divine. As they stay longer, children can be heard playing at night and more and more about this place shows that there is much to hide.

The Devil's Doorway takes the very real horror of the abusive Magdalene laundries with the supernatural. This institution within in the Catholic church hid "fallen women" (meaning sexually active, pregnant out of wedlock, or sex workers) from their communities, abused them, forced them to work, and keep them confined. In the last few decades, the mental, physical, and sexual abuse of the women by priests and nuns who ran the laundries in addition to taking thousands of children born and selling them overseas. All of this is much more horrific than anything supernatural writers can come up with, so I thought some of those aspects fell flat.

The whole investigation starts because of a statue of the Virgin Mary crying blood and it turns out to be so much more than that. Strange sounds are heard at night including the eerie sound of children playing. All of the Mary statues cry and then explode in one of the most effective scenes of the film. A particularly violent pregnant woman is chained up in the basement, apparently possessed. These aspects could have been a bit more streamlined. It's a lot of supernatural just thrown around that don't really seem to be connected to each other. The possession in particular seems to be there just because it's expected to be rather than furthering the story. The payoff for the creepy children voices wasn't executed very well and seemed rather cheesy even though it pointed to the reality of children dying in the "care" of these institutions.

Father Thomas and Father John are the duo sent to investigate the miracle. Thomas is borderline atheistic and jaded while John is idealistic and fairly innocent. This type of pairing is pretty typicaly in possession movies and works well here. They are a bit shocked when the Mother Superior directly calls out the corruption of priests and points out that quite a few girls at the laundries were abused by priests. Her character had great promise, but she remained one dimensional and villainous. The priests are the most likeable characters as they stumble around trying to solve this mystery and getting caught up in the deeper, sordid secrets of the laundry. I didn't like the nuns are basically painted as what's wrong in this situation (even though they aren't blameless) considering that they have no real power in the church as a whole.

The Devil's Doorway does some interesting things. It's a found footage film set in the 1960's and has the visuals to match. The atmosphere can be suspenseful and the plot is fairly well crafted. With the subject matter, I was hoping for a much more critical view of the Catholic Church and it turned out to lay the blame to the nuns who are partially at fault, but don't make the overarching decisions that made the institution and its abuse a reality. Having the priests clutch their pearls about the abuse didn't ring true to me at all, let alone anything else. Overall, it's a decent horror film, but I left disappointed at the tired tropes and random grab bag of supernatural.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins 

The Sin Eater's Daughter

* spoilers*

Twylla isn't like other seventeen year old girls; she's the embodiment of the daughter of her people's gods. She ingests poison at regular intervals mixed with her blood to prove her divinity and keep her powers that allow her to kill people with a touch. Her origins are much humbler than her present life. Her mother was a Sin Eater, one who eats a feast representative of the deceased's sins in order to purge them and allow the dead into the afterlife. Her whole childhood was taking care of her sister and learning to be the next Sin Eater. Now, Twylla lives a rich, but lonely life with the king and queen of Lormere. The queen is cruel, irrational, and volatile. She kills at a whim and manipulates those around her into silence. Because of her abilities, almost everyone fears Twylla and stays away from her. She's set to marry the prince who she barely knows and eventually rule her country as its queen. Then she meets Lief, her new personal guard. He treats her like a normal person and they quickly becomes close. Who will she choose? Will she abandon her destiny to have the life she really wants or will she attempt to save Loremere?

The first thing that drew me to this book was the gorgeous cover. The second was the cool premise. Twylla (I kind of hate this name) is the embodiment of the offspring of her gods, which is kind of complicated. The gods are the embodiment of day (Daeg) and night (Naegt), where the female night steals from the day out of jealousy. She commits the first sin and must be punished. Although it reflects many real life religions, the misogynistic myth bothered me, especially when the two main mother figures (and 2/3's of the main female characters) are one dimensionally awful and cruel. Anuway, Twylla has dedicated her life to the gods and, by extension, to the royal family who claim to be chosen by the gods. Underneath her piety and dedication, she's just a teenage girl. She wants normal things like friends, a real family, and a life she actually wants to lead. All of her life, her mother figures have told her what to do. Her biological mother chose her as the first born to take up the mantle as a Sin Eater. When presented with the opportunity, Twylla chose to abandon her family and become Daunen Embodied, but once there, the queen's whims command what she does: who to poison, who to marry, where to go, etc. It's only natural that Twylla falls for one of the first people to treat her like anyone else and see through all the craziness.

Much of the book was quite atheistic which is pretty rare to see in teen fiction. Lief points out how his country values science and logic over religious fairy tales. They are more technologically advanced and have made more advances in medicine than Loremere has dreamed of. Loremere's royal family uses religion to placate the masses and solidify her place as ruler. Things were going terribly when the queen's brother/husband died and she saw Twylla as a away to legitimize her place by citing the gods' will in Daunen Embodied. There's this whole weird thing with Loremere where the bloodline must be pure and siblings have married for years and years. It's convenient that the royal family has no physical defects after generations of inbreeding. This part seemed a little clunky and I felt it was only included to ride on the popularity of Game of Thrones with their incestuous Lannister family. Anyway, I appreciated that religion is used for a sinister end here and shows that the religious leaders aren't exempt from committing horrible acts. This is especially relevant today.

Overall, The Sin Eater's Daughter is an interesting book that takes on unique subject matter and explores different themes than usual in YA. I dislike the misogynistic elements of the book and I also hate that this interesting story boils down to a love triangle. It's such an overused trope at this point and it takes away from the novel. I would definitely read other books by Melinda Salisbury because the things I liked left an impression.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins

The Sacrament

* spoilers *

Patrick, fashion photographer, receives a letter from his drug addict sister Caroline that she has found utopia in South America with a drug and alcohol free religious group that has sold all their belongings to set up a commune there. Patrick's co-workers, Sam and Jake, who work for Vice, want to do a story on the group and go with him to document and report about the trip. When they arrive, things are less than hospitable when men with machine guns stop them and demand a donation. Caroline arrives, they are let in, and everything seems idyllic. Everyone they talk to loves the place and has story after story about how they were saved and how it's the most perfect place ever. A party is thrown in their honor where they will get to interview Father, the leader of the group, and just enjoy themselves for the night. The interview doesn't go as planned as Father is a charismatic, talkative man who can talk around any question they ask. Sam is handed a note that says "Help us" at the party and they know everything isn't as wonderful as it seems.

I had basically written off Ti West as a horrible director because I've hated pretty much everything he's done up to this point except Cabin Fever 2, which he wanted to remove his name from. I decided to give him one last chance and I'm glad I did. I didn't realize going into it, but the film is a fictionalized retelling of the Jonestown massacre where a religious cult committed mass murder/suicide with poisoned Kool-Aid after moving to South America to flee "persecution." I have heard vague accounts of the event, but no real specifics. The film does a great job of presenting the story pretty accurately with an artistic flair without filling in all the gaps for the audience. For instance, the inhabitants talked about the abuse that would be administered should any of them break the rules or go against Father, but it isn't seen and only a little of the aftermath is shown. Anything not explicitly explained in the film can be researched and discovered for oneself since it's a pretty well documented event. The film starts normally enough, but as the film goes on, suspense and tension is built perfectly toward the grisly resolution. Ti West has always been good at building suspense, but has failed to make the resolution worthy of the build up until now.

I find religious cults to be particularly frightening because of how easy it is to manipulate religion to an agenda and manipulate people who are down and out to follow it. Father is a fascinating character and Gene Jones gives the best performance of the film. The scariest thing about him is how jovial and sincerely nice he appears. His likability and charisma are what draw people to him in the first place. Ti West wanted to make the character portrayed as genuine and well meaning, but his paranoia drove him to evil. The second most frightening thing about him is his ability to manipulate. He convinced a huge group of people to give up all their earthly belongings, give him all their money, move out to South America, and build Eden Parish. Then he convinced the majority of them to kill themselves, their children, and the dissenters. He also blamed the deaths of his people on the Vice crew, insisting to the end that it wasn't his fault and it was the only way out. I've listened to part of the tapes recorded by Jim Jones, the real life Father, and Gene Jones captured him perfectly.

The film is in found footage style, but doesn't overdo the shaky cam effect or forgo having a satisfying ending as many of them do. The style makes sense with the story. My only gripe with the film is that the blood looks too orange and very fake. It seems a few people take offense to fictionalizing a real life event, but I disagree. A horrific event like this is morbidly fascinating and a film like this gives us the opportunity to experience a situation like it safely while exploring how it could happen and the motivations of the people involved. I think it's more offensive to turn victims of the Chernobyl disaster into monsters like Chernobyl Diaries or turn the innocent victims of the Salem witch trials into actual witches deserving of execution in The Conjuring.

My rating: 9/10 fishmuffins