Amulet (2020)

Tomaz is homeless and haunted by memories of war until he meets a nun that gives him direction. He is brought to Magda's dilapidated home where she cares for her dying mother who is confined to the top floor. Over time, he helps them out, softens emotionally, and falls for Magda, but strange events keep happening surrounding her mother.

Amulet is an interesting movie that keeps its genre a mystery right up until the end of the film. We follow Tomaz and his story jumps around in his timeline. While he's awake, it's the post-war existence where he's much more hardened and haunted. While he sleeps, flashbacks to the war play out where he was a sentry at a pretty deserted location. He runs into a woman desperate to escape and he lives with her for a while. The present day timeline echoes the past with Magda and her situation trapped with her mother. In both scenarios, Tomaz falls for what he views as the damsel in distress (which ends up not being reality) and ends up showing his true colors in the end, a turn that I enjoyed. A lot of this part of the film feels more like a drama or romance, which I didn't always connect with. It also makes the film a little slower paced.

The aspect that I especially enjoyed is the mystery around the mother, the creatures, and Tomaz's shaky mental state. The mother seems more than ill with preternatural strength and an overwhelming urge to kill herself to the point where they can't even use power in the house. She's horrifically violent to anyone within her reach and Magda takes care of her as best she can. Tomaz finds skeletal bat-like creatures in the plumbing that he's forced to kill. The practical effects of the creature and the mother look detailed, creepy, and delightfully disgusting. How they connect isn't explained until much later and it's pretty shocking. Tomaz also sees signs and figures appear and disappear, making him question his own sanity. I love mystery, cool creature designs, and questioning the main character's reality. 

Amulet is completely different than I expected, skating a line between drama and horror before running headlong into the latter. The horror elements are well crafted and make big twists to the narrative. I wasn't on board with every development, but I had no idea where the story was going and the conclusion definitely surprised me. It was both incredibly disturbing and satisfying at the same time. I recommend Amulet if you aren't in the mood for something fast paced and are in the mood to be surprised.

My rating: 3.5/5 fishmuffins

Women in Horror: The Hunger by Alma Katsu

The Donner Party started out with prosperity, happiness, and hope for a new future on the west coast. Unfortunately, these feelings are short lived since the mysterious death of a young boy acts as an omen for worse things to come. Normal, expected things happen such as depleted rations, drought, hidden secrets threatening to ruin relationships and reputations, and plain bad luck in choosing to take a supposed short cut. However, something isn't right. Members of the group start to disappear. Is it madness, animals, or something much more sinister?

The Hunger takes a horrific historical event and infuses it with supernatural dread and rich backstories for each character. The Donner Party was comprised of several different families, but the most influential and powerful were the Donner's and Reed's who fight for supremacy. Through the narration bouncing from person to person, each character's inner thoughts, feelings, secrets, and motivation. Everyone has some sort of earth shattering dark secret from cheating to financial ruin to closeted homosexuality that leads each person to find a new life so far from established civilization. Being inside each character allows us to see why they might not take completely logical choices and opt for ways to safe face, keep themselves above others, and keep the masses appeased, which is the most important since not much gets them to be at each others' throats.

My two favorite characters are Charles Stanton and Tamsen Donner. Charles is the main character of the novel and he is harboring a deep dark secret about the woman he loved who died. He promised her in life to never tell it and he's shockingly noble in doing so to the detriment of his own reputation. This on top of not being associated with any of the major factions in the party lead to him being an underdog who runs the risk of being ostracized despite his sound, logical advice. Charles is so easy to like and root as the party goes off the rails. Tamsen, on the other hand, isn't the most moral and pure character in comparison, but it was refreshing to see a woman who isn't a shrinking violet She is completely sure of herself and manipulates those around her with confidence. Her good looks and ability to fake being what people think a woman should be serves her well even though underneath, she is much different. She's unsatisfied with her marriage and her worth being tied to a man. Of course, she's eventually suspected of being a witch due to her penchant for seducing men and her use of protective charms. This character could have easily been a flat seductress, but she proved to be so much more.

The supernatural elements make the already insane story even more terrifying. The party faces starvation, little access to fresh water, dwindling resources, and extremely cold temperatures. On top of these practical, realistic things, a sort of disease can be contracted by both animals and humans that causes them to have an insatiable hunger. The condition is a hybrid of a zombie and a wendigo where the infected slowly succumbs to complete inhumanity and hunger. They can survive much more extreme conditions and injuries than uninfected. Although I felt it took a bit too long to get to them, these creatures are so creepy and threaten these already very vulnerable people. Since they wear the faces of loved ones and people they've been travelling with for literally months, it's hard for the otheres to see them as a threat instead of just sick friends or acquaintances until it's too late.

The Hunger is a chilling story of ill advised travel, creatures, and survival. Each character has a rich backstory and unique motivations. However, the fact that literally everything about this is spelled out and nothing is implicit or left for the reader to fill in even some small details felt weird to me. Other than that, Katsu does such a good job of portraying the hopeless nature, desperation, and eldritch horror of this situation. It also makes me interested in researching the historical event and seeing how exactly she blended the real history with the more fantastical elements.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

Women in Horror: Cam (2018)

Alice is a cam girl who puts on elaborate shows for paying men on a website as Lola. She seems to have her life and work well balanced, gaining enough money to rent a nice house and support herself while still buying luxuries for herself and her family. She also comes up with different stories, concepts, and themes for her show to keep it fresh, attract new viewers, retain old ones, and go up the rankings. After going to the Camgirl Clubhouse to do a joint show with a friend, she suddenly can't sign into her account and sees Lola recording live. Then, while struggling to get her livelihood back, her job and her personal life collide in ways she never expected.

Cam is a film that tackles a type of sex work from the point of view of sex workers. Writer Isa Mazzei worked as a cam girl and wanted to "create a film where an audience would empathize with a sex worker." So many films dehumanize sex workers and treat as disposable objects or murder victims. In Cam, we see all facets of Alice's life. We support her as she tries to rise in the ranks of the website and are as horrified as she is when she is somehow copied. She wants to be the best at what she does and Mazzei (in the interview linked above) says the audience shouldn't be expect Alice to do something else and walk away from her career, but there are also other implications at play that affect her private life.

During the first scene of the film, Alice is in a bubblegum pink room as Lola. Her viewers vote on sex toys she should use, but one insistent user suggests a knife and others follow suit with few outliers. Lola slits her throat complete with blood everywhere, acts dead, shows the prosthetic, and says goodnight to her viewers. This scene shows the kind of fantasy Alice is trying to create where unpredictable and make-believe things happen. Her persona Lola is almost always happy. sweet, funny, and flirty except when trying to make her fake suicide look real. To rise in the ranks of the site, Alice wants to provide a show that no one else does and keep her viewers guessing. It also shows the scary side of it where the men seem to want to see her get hurt and play into that fantasy in order to become popular. This is the most memorable scene of the film and could have been a short all by itself. 

Alice in real life is gaining enough tips from her cam job to support herself and still have time to spend time with her mother and her teen brother Jordan. He knows what she does, but she wants to tell her mother when she's higher in the ranks.  In real life, Alice is much less glamorous than Lola. Lola must always look perfect while it's ok for Alice to go without makeup or bite her nails. Alice is a real person while Lola is a perfectly manufactured male fantasy who has nothing profound to say and does whatever she's told. She puts so much into her work and strives to be the best despite hiding her profession from everyone in her personal life. Before anything supernatural happens, her cam life and real life collide in one of her regulars seeing her at the store. It's a brief, uncomfortable interaction that leaves Alice shaken.

The cam community, performers and viewers, are a varied group. Some performers are happy to share methods and tips or do a combination show for views and tips. Alice's relationships with them seem pretty superficial, but it's a job. Not everyone is going to be best friends with their coworkers. On the other hand, Princess_X, a non-nude cam girl, tells viewers to lower Lola's rank and she will strip for them. The campaign is successful and hurts Alice's earnings and feelings. The viewers are essentially faceless behind screen names unless they want a private video with Lola. The two who do so are shown to be pretty scummy. Tink, a hypocritically religious man, stalks her and knows that something is going wrong. He does nothing about it and happily masturbates to the double's show after he promised he would help her. The other man, Barney, seems to think he controls these women's success and has power them even as he throws gobs of his own money away. Alice willingly meets him in person, but is careful to meet him in a public place and not in his room. When he sees the double on her feed, he attacks her. The ones who stay online, get their fantasy, and leave her alone until the next show are preferable to these two men.

When Alice can't get into her account, a double of her, essentially what the persona of Lola is, still performs on her channel. Every attempt to reclaim her account is stymied and nothing is done when she calls law enforcement after running out of options. Alice's image, earnings, and livelihood are taken in one fell swoop. The Lola double is also Alice being unable to control her image or income. The double breaks her three personal rules blatantly, sending viewers to her door and sharing things about herself that she would never do. Her videos are passed around to people she knows, leading to an embarrassing revelation at her brother's birthday party and outing her as a sex worker in a way she would never choose. As a result, her family abandons her in her time of need while they are also mocked by others over the revelation. She loses agency to this double who is even better at her job, eventually rising all the way to the top of the rankings.

The film brings up other issues about sex workers. To stay relevant on the site, cam girls have to put in long hours and keep their shows interesting. Their income is entirely dependent on the viewers, so time could go uncompensated. The social stigma of being outed as a sex worker has a significant part of the story. An awkward interaction with a high school acquaintance has Alice looking successful in comparison to the other woman works a retail job. When that woman witnesses the revelation at Jordan's party, she smirks and doesn't feel so bad about her own minimum wage job. The cops who come to her house judge her for her chosen profession and objectify her while they dare her to admit to outright prostitution, giving them the slightest reason to arrest her. That scene disgusted me the most because sex workers are seen as less than others and less than deserving of basic human decency to many, including law enforcement.

* spoilers *

Where the film stumbles in resolving the issue of the double. Alice finally talks directly to the double and makes a bet with her to get the password to the account. After smashing her face on a table and having the double copy her, the viewers choose her as winner, being entertained by the weird situation and injury, and gets the password. She deletes the account. I was underwhelmed by the method of beating the double. While I liked the metaphor, it seemed a little confused and underdeveloped. The other woman who was copied had died, but it wasn't clear if Alice would die or if the death was incidental. The research seemed to be leading to a big reveal, but proved to be pretty useless. I do like that the phenomenon still exists after the finale and affects other girls, as all those things about having presence as a sex worker online does. After recovering from her injuries (and sporting some new scars), Alice has a new ID and persona, choosing to keep doing what she likes and what she's good at despite the dangers. When her mother asks what she'll do if the bot copies her again and Alice says she'll just make another account and another. She won't let these drawbacks keep her from the job loves and excels at.

Cam is a film about sex work written by a sex worker, showing her own experience. It's a varied portrayal that shows many of the bad things and some of the good things too. From beginning to end, we are on Alice's side even when those closest to her are not. While the double metaphor didn't always work for me, most everything else did. Madeline Brewer does a wonderful job as both frantic Alice and empty Lola. The directing doesn't objectify the cam girls even if their bodies are exposed. The cam girls seen are incredibly varied and not all one body type or skin tone. This is an important film and rewatching it made me re-evaluate my first judgment of the film. Knowing the background and focusing more on what's underneath the plot and characters changed my opinion. This film is readily available on Netflix and is well worth your time.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

Women in Horror: The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

Okiku died 300 hundred years ago and roams the earth killing men who murder children. She travels all over the world, largely unnoticed, ignoring everyone except her targets until she sees a boy with moving tattoos. His name is Tark and she finds herself drawn to him. For the first time in centuries, she becomes embroiled in his life and cares about protecting him from another spirit who follows him wherever her goes.

The Girl in the Well takes a trope, changes the perspective, and makes it feel fresh and new. Okiku, a vengeful spirit, tells this story directly from her own point of view. She travels as she likes around the earth, not always truly conscious, and kills murderous men. The spirits of those he has killed are tethered to him and unable to escape for the duration of his life. It's a truly chilling prospect for those poor spirits to not only die horribly, but to be forced to witness others dying the same way and following around their own killer for decades. When Okiku kills the men, the spirits are freed while she is still stuck on earth, looking for more spirits to free. Her descriptions feel a bit detached because she's lost much of herself in death and views most things with little emotion. My favorite part of her narration is the dramatic page breaks that both slow the tempo of reading and accompany a rare glimpse of intense emotion within her (usually followed by her attacking or scaring someone).

The legend of Okiku, or at least her image, is familiar because of Japanese films and American remakes like The Grudge and The Ring. She has long black hair, usually obscuring her face, and wears a white dress. In life, she was a servant who tried to serve her king well by warning him of treachery by a trusted advisor. The traitor broke one precious plate in a set of ten and in turn accuses Okiku of breaking it. The king believed him and allowed her to be tortured and killed, thrown down a well to drown. There are a few variations on this story, but she always ends up in the well in the end. Because of her background, she targets murderous men and continually counts everything: people, cars, dolls, ceiling tiles, anything in any given place. If she ever counts only nine, she has a violent outburst to destroy one of the objects to change the offending number. This trauma from her past hundreds of years ago persists to this day.

Even Okiku is surprised when she's drawn to Tark and the ghost woman in black tethered to him. She forms a sort of friendship with him as she becomes entrenched in his life. Callie, his older cousin, doesn't quite warm up to her and set to remind the audience that Okiku is still dangerous, not quite human. The plot involving Tark takes a lot of surprising turns, subverting the tropes of Okiku type stories. My favorite development was looking into his mother's background as a shaman. She gave up a life of protecting people and capturing evil spirits to be with Tark's father. She came from a powerful collective of women that served their community for the greater good that Tark later returns to for help with the spirit bound to him. The conflict between Okiku and the masked woman is pretty epic and leads to inner growth in Okiku.

The Girl from the Well definitely surprised me with its change in perspective and complex view of Okiku. On one hand, she's an avenging death angel who kills murderers without remorse and on the other, she's rediscovering her humanity and connecting with living humans. Her point of view is refreshing because this figure seems to always be painted as a malevolent presence when she was wronged in life and didn't start out that way. Her journey and narrative in the novel are fascinating and it took me almost no time at all to read. There is a sequel called The Suffering that I immediately bought and I can't wait to get to.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

The Howling (1981)

Anchorwoman Karen White is being stalked by serial killer Eddie Quist. She's separated from the police following her and she ventures into an adult bookstore to meet him. After some traumatic events that lead to Eddie being shot by police, Karen is struck with amnesia, not able to remember what happened. She and her husband are sent to the "Colony" by her therapist for treatment. The place is inhabited by strange people and even stranger things start to happen, like her husband being attacked by a wolf.

The Howling is a classic werewolf movie that I somehow haven't seen until now. Even though I've heard about it, it doesn't seem to have the same love or appreciation as other werewolf movies such as An American in London. The Howling isn't perfect, but there are things to appreciate here: the atmosphere, the creature design, the practical effects, the use of TV, and the ending. So many scenes here are classic gothic fare with forest landscapes, fog, and fear. It's especially interesting to see this oler aesthetic merged with modern 80's aesthetics. Some scenes are intercut with scenes from a TV of big bad wolf cartoons or The Wolfman film. It acknowledges its roots and gives some humor at times. Even though it's a little meta, I loved it.

The werewolf design and transformation scenes are incredibly well done and all practical effects. Some parts of the makeup look a little fake, but most of it looks amazing. The sound of the bones breaking was disturbing as well as one werewolf digging around in his skull for a bullet lodged there. The claws and snout elongating looked realistic and very creepy. Even small details like wounds are kept through the transition. Newer films have worse looking werewolves and transformations. I'm a sucker for an idyllic setting with a dark secret and the ending was a surprise to me even through a lot of the typical tropes used. I was happy to see different types of werewolves: ones who love killing people and being werewolves, others who were coerced into it and want to die (which is sadly passed off as a joke), and still others who are satisfied fitting into human society.

Some things fell a little flat for me. The characters are all one dimensional and don't feel real. Karen is the epitome of the damsel in distress until her last scene. She barely changes through the course of the film. Her husband Bill is the slimiest guy ever and cheats on her without a second thought. Marsha, an inhabitant of the Colony, is a one dimensional seductress and it's apparent from her first appearance that she's a werewolf. While I though most were interesting, she is the one exception that I find too obvious and flat. The human characters are supposed to be the good guys, but they simply aren't as interesting.

The Howling is a fun film that is very steeped in its time. The continuing of werewolf tropes, the acknowledgement of the background, and the merging with modern aesthetics is one of the best parts of the film for me as well as the werewolves, their look, and their transformations. The ending is shocking and surprisingly sad followed immediately by a visual joke. This film is unpredictable at times and keeps you guessing which parts will follow tropes and which will diverge. I enjoyed it and I consider it required viewing for fans of werewolf films.

My rating: 3.5/5 fishmuffins

Terrified (2017)

A suburban town in Buenos Ares experiences supernatural occurrences that put its residents in danger of death or going mad. A group of police and doctors mobilize to try to pinpoint the cause of all this chaos and find a way to stop it.

Terrified is unlike other supernatural films of its kind. First, there isn't really one central protagonist. Each house has its separate phenomenon with a different effect on the residents. One woman dies horrifically from an unseen force ramming her against her shower walls. A man is tormented by a tall nude man that lives in his closet and under his bed until the house consumes him and he loses all mental faculties. Yet another woman's son comes back to her, but as an seemingly inanimate corpse that moves only in short bursts, when no one is looking at him. These incidents are inextricably connected to each other, making a web of paranormal activity. The neighborhood's residents are also connected, complaining about damage caused next door or whispering about each other or even inadvertently causing someone's death.

These superatural occurrences are terrifying to watch, making childhood fears of things lurking down drains, under beds, and in closets scary for adults. Seeing the characters regress and hide under covers to escape is the perfect response and channels what I was feeling. The scene at the beginning with voices coming from the sink and a bubble on the drain pulsing like a breath are only some examples of unique little details that enhance the chilling atmosphere. Many of these scares are restrained and more psychological. Others have elements of body horror or are jump scares. I don't normally like jump scares because they feel so cheap and unearned. These ones are well placed and earned with the sustained tense and chilling atmosphere. Very few of the scares are gory, one very early in the film where it isn't really expected. All types proved to be affective and only one fell a little flat to me. Very impressive.

Most films like this have authorities denying the strange events and blaming family members for deaths or injuries. This one has the creation of a team of various professionals trying to figure this whole thing out. It is outside their respective institutions, but they have gathered to help this neighborhood. I love this departure from a fundamental trope that is so deeply ingrained in the subgenre. I don't even think of authorities as a possibility anymore because it's seen so little. It's so nice to see people realizing something is terribly wrong and actually get together to do what they can to help, even at great expense to themselves. It's heartwarming aspect of a frightening film.

Terrified is such a fun film. The tropes of each situation are slightly off kilter, defying my expectations and keeping me on my toes. The relationship between the people and the scary things that happened to them seemed completely organic and realistic. The only slight disappointment was in the jump scare in the last scene of the film. It was the only scare to feel unearned and a bit of a disappointment to end on. Everything else is so well crafted from the characters to the scares to the story. I genuinely felt for these people and quickly grew invested in the story. There's one moment that was so heartbreaking. It's impressive to go from emotion to emotion and stay effective. I highly recommend this gem and I look forward to more from Demian Rugna.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

The Bright Sessions Season 3

Dr. Bright's plan to save her brother fell apart because of Damien, who kidnapped Mark, used his manipulative power, and lied to him about everything. Joan and Sam are distraught and have no way to find Mark. The AM is all over Joan and her patients, making sure she won't step out of line again. Caleb and Adam are back together. Chloe continues to help Frank and struggles with Joan's hypocrisy. Unresolved issues between many are brewing beneath the surface and threatening to explode.

The Bright Sessions becomes more complex as it goes on. The characters continue to develop, grow, and create new relationships. Joan is worried for her brother since he was kidnapped by Damien. She also struggles with her ties with the AM that simultaneously allows her to help Atypicals live normal lives and puts her patients in danger if their abilities prove too interesting for the AM to ignore. The AM also forces her to work with Wadsworth, her former friend and colleague, who she still finds herself admiring and achieving breakthroughs with. Chloe criticizes Joan for chastising her for being unable to give people privacy with her ability to read minds while Joan records people without their knowledge and feeds information to the AM. This situation isn't black and white, so there's debate on all sides with good points.

The AM is seen in more detail this season. It's always loomed in the background but now we get to see how it operates on an everyday level and its deeper recesses. Every day, they take in Atypicals to test them and assess if they need help on a more intense level to control their ability and blend into normal society. On the surface, this seems normal and even altruistic to help people. If you probe deeper, they are conducting unethical experiments and trying to find people with specific, rare abilities to exploit. Mark fills in many of these gaps with the abhorrent way he was treated while confined to the AM that includes mental torture, physical torture, and threats to his family to comply. Each season, the veil gets pushed back a bit further on this organization and it's not pretty.

The character who grows the most is Frank. He's always been in the periphery of the show and only appeared in person last season. Joan talks through some things with him and it's truly heartbreaking. He reveals details about his military service and the experiment his unit consented to. They all had an artificial empathic connection to one another that lost focus over time. Their shared decision to not tell anyone about the complication so they could stay together had devastating consequences, but was understandable in the situation. The fact that a huge revelation about Mark's story line happened the episode right before took away a bit from this emotional episode.

The last few episodes of this season went places I didn't think the show would go. It was surprising, devastating, and hopeful all at the same time. Damian goes from fairly harmless to dangerous through his rocky journey. The ending is explosive in a variety of ways. Many characters who have kept their feelings hidden have meaningful conversations with others to hash out feelings, articulate what has been unspoken, and get issues out into the open. It's also the most violent episode from an unexpected source. I'm hyped to see what happens next season both in the relationships and in the main action of the show.

The scope and cast of the show continues to grow. It's wonderful to see representation in so many different spheres. A glimpse of a new Atypical is seen. Rose travels through dreams and doesn't know whether to be honest with her girlfriend about her ability. I'm interested to see how she will fit in with the group and how the group will move forward in the face of the traumatic events of the last episode. The next season is ongoing so I'm excited to listen as it's being produced.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

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 

Hereditary (2018)

* spoilers *

Annie Graham is not very sad when her mother dies. They always had a rough relationship and became estranged before she succumbed to dementia and other ailments. At the funeral, a surprising amount of strangers attend along with Annie's daughter Charlie, her son Peter, and her husband Steve. They all go on with their lives while Annie feels unresolved about her chaotic childhood rife with family deaths and mental illness. Then, the family experiences a new tragedy that begins the unraveling of their lives.

Hereditary has some wonderful individual scenes that hit extremely hard. The first hour or so of the film is memorable, uniqely filmed, and well done. It establishes the Graham family and their relationships with each other. Annie is an intense woman who creates miniature art. She dotes over Charlie, her daughter who constantly draws and makes figures out of found objects. Peter, Charlie's older brother, seems have girls and pot on his mind at all times. There is an awkward tension between Annie and Peter that could be normal teenager-parent conflict. Steve is on the periphery, but has positive relationships with everyone. The focus is on Annie as she attends a grief support group and reveals her sordid family history full of mental illness, suicide, and abuse. When she befriends a woman from this group named Joan, she later reveals a horrifying incident where she covered herself, Peter, and Charlie in paint thinner and lit a match while sleepwalking. This incident is the most telling as to why Peter and Annie don't get along.

Then a devastating accident tears their family apart. Charlie is killed due to a chain of events involving allergies, nuts, and a dead animal in the road. This scene blew my mind. We don't really see what happens, but we see Charlie hang out of the car, the approaching telephone pole, and the oppressive silence that follows. The car had been loud with her wheezing, trying to breathe around her swelling throat. After that, the camera focuses only on Peter as he goes through a number of emotions on his face: shock, hope, realization, sadness, and finally a numb calm. He drives home without looking in the back seat, parks as usual, and goes to bed only to lay there awake for hours. This scene had so much emotion. The carnage isn't seen there, but we know something terrible happened. The dread built over the night when he lay there is like a crazy amped up version of dreading your parents are going to find something you did when they wake up. I couldn't believe it was happening. The tension and dread didn't let me look away from the screen.

The aftermath is equally devastating. Annie is inconsolable, screaming and crying for hours. Peter is numb and doesn't seem to say anything or react. They collide during dinner one night when Annie explodes, claiming that Peter didn't take responsibility for his actions and that she hates him and his disdain. This seems to be the first time Charlie's death was discussed as a family, showing that their norm is not to communicate at all until it becomes a fight. A dream sequence also shows her revealing to Peter that she never wanted to be his mother and tried to miscarry him with a repeat of the paint thinner incident. These two scenes in particular show Annie's tendency to lash out and continue the cycle of abuse started by her mother. She also has built up resentment over Peter's very reasonable feelings of fear and distrust towards her. Instead of working through them or being honest in a constructive, nonaggressive way, she opts to hold grudges and leave all of it unsaid. Even with her husband, Annie chooses to keep even her need for support a secret and leaves room for doubt since she has been lying. Her only outlet for emotion is her miniature art where she constructs scenes from her life. Steve proves to be the most decent character of the film who offers emotional support without judgment or anger.

Unfortunately, I feel that the film falls apart after this. The seance scenes completely obliterate any tension or emotion that was built up. What follows is typical cult tropes that are scene in films from Rosemary's Baby to The Omen. Some of the horror elements are well done, but felt silly and compelely disconnected after the bombshell of Charlie's death. All of the truly shocking events were part of the family drama and not part of the supernatural aspects at all. While I enjoyed how all events were connected and essentially predestined, it also made the movie much more predictable, along with the tropes, so very few scenes were a surprise. Another thing that bothered me was how simple logistical things seemed to be ignored. Why did the family never have an epipen when Charlie was allergic to nuts? Why was Peter going to school so soon after his sister's death and why weren't people talking about it everywhere? Why wasn't he offered therapy? Why wasn't Annie's mother's whole deal a little more established so the ending made more sense? The last scene was a bit frustrating as well. If you need a whole exposition bomb right at the end of your movie, maybe you're doing something wrong.

Hereditary has some undeniably amazing scenes and masterful direction and acting. I wish the ending of the film would have had the same emotional weight as Charlie's death, but it seemed silly in comparison. The ending had too many typical horror tropes that cheapened it and made it predictable. A reveal about Charlie's character also made it quite ablist, implying that she is odd and/or disabled because of a possession. It left a bad taste in my mouth and yet another example of outdated, ignorant ideas still having a presence in modern day horror. I did enjoy all the performances, particularly Toni Collette as Annie, Alex Wolff as Peter, and Annie Dowd as Joan. Ari Aster has a unique vision as a director, but I found his writing not as impressive.

My rating: 3.5/5 fishmuffins

Providence by Caroline Kepnes

In a small New Hampshire town, Jon and Chloe were best friends in high school, on the way for their relationship to become something more. Then, Jon was kidnapped by a substitute teacher when he was taking a shortcut through the woods to school. Chloe is frantic and eventually rebels when no one seems to care. Eventually, she returns to her popular friends and acts like everything is normal. Four years later, Jon wakes up in a mall basement with no memory at all of the time elapsed. He finds that he somehow hurts people by being near them and runs away until he can get a handle on the power after he kills someone. Chloe goes on to be a successful artist and a detective named Eggs starts to follow mysterious heart attack deaths with interest. Will Jon ever have a normal life or will his crimes catch up with him before that can happen?

Providence is a  much different book than Kepnes' previous two book, You and Hidden Bodies. Some fans of those books are going to be disappointed with a Lovecraftian, supernatural story. However, the mutual obsession between Jon and Chloe brings in that intense point of view that she did so well. I love supernatural books, so this wasn't an issue for me. The plot has a lot of positive elements. I can't help but feel for Jon, abused by others as a child, kidnapped, robbed of four years of his life, and saddled with toxic powers to those around him. The Lovecraftian elements are well done and friendly to those not familiar with his work. Passages from The Dunwich Horror are provided for context and integrated into the story as Jon's obsession because it was the only thing left by his captor. His actual powers are mysterious for much of the book, but make sense and something I haven't seen before. I also enjoyed how unhinged Jon became nearing the end of the book.

Unfortunately, I had numerous problems with the book as well. First, the book plods along and my interest phased in and out as it went. Second, Chloe is always defined by Jon and never really moves on unless it's to a toxic ex from high school. She never seems to know how to survive alone or find someone completely outside of her hometown and her trauma. It was incredibly frustrating to witness because of her potential and talent for art. Third, the way Chloe treated Jon when they were teens was pretty awful. She would hang out with him and treat him nice alone and then act like she didn't know him in front of popular people. She would never call anyone out for teasing or bullying him and seemed to just be using him. Fourth, so much would have been solved with a simple phone call, text, or email from Jon to Chloe.

Providence is an interesting novel that combines Lovecraftian horror with a mystery thriller. It's a bit out of the box for Kepnes and I enjoyed it about as much as her You series. Even though I have mixed feelings about most of her books, I enjoy the unique ideas she brings to her novels. I would still be curious to read whatever new releases she comes out with, particularly if it has a more fantasy or horror angle.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

The Bright Sessions Season 2

Dr. Bright continues to help her patients while she plans to save her brother. Her current patients include the empath Caleb, the time traveler Sam, the mind reader Chloe, and Damian, who can plant commands in people's minds. Her goal is to undermine The AM, a manipulative and dangerous company that experiments and spies on atypicals (or people with special abilites).

The Bright Sessions is a podcast that is usually confined to therapy sessions with her patients. The world opens up in this season with different modes of story telling, new characters interactions, and a plot outside of simple therapy. The audio recordings do include therapy sessions and expand to voice messages, recorded conversations in person and by phone, and verbal notes from several characters. I especially enjoyed learning more about each character, seeing them meet each other, and forming their own relationships. Sam and Chloe become good friends while both of them agree to help Dr. Bright in her quest. Caleb and his boyfriend Adam decide to stake out Dr. Bright's office to see other atypicals and meet all the other patients. Everyone becomes good friends except for Damian.

Damian was only mentioned in the previous season. From the impression on Chloe and Dr. Bright as well as his name, I expected an ice cold sociopathic murderer. He's not the most pleasant person and delights in forcing people to do his will, but his power could be abused much worse than he uses it. He gets things he wants like attention without crossing major lines. I grew to begrudgingly like him a little bit even through his smarmy nature and manipulation because his lonely interior is exposed underneath the annoying bravado. That all is obliterated with his actions at the very end of the season. Damian is the only main character with a grey morality that brings something else along with his awful personality.

The AM is delved into during this season as well. It's supposedly a non-profit organization that works with government agencies. However, they use therapists like Dr. Bright to keep tabs on atypicals, assess their usefulness, and basically kidnap them to perform experiments. Dr. Bright's brother Mark was one of these with the unique ability to replicate anyone else's ability. As a result of their cruel experiment, his consciousness was stranded in time while his body stays comatose in the present. Dr. Bright is forced to continue to give the AM information on her patients, but she tries to manipulate it to make them seem less unique than they are to avoid their attention. Her past relationship with Agent Green complicates things further and brings more drama than expected.

I devoured the second season of The Bright Sessions in a few days. It has some bizarre episodes, some infuriating episodes, and some heartbreaking episodes. I highly recommend this different view of people with special abilities and I can't wait to see what happens in the next season. The episodes are fairly short and lend well to binge listening.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Pulse (2001)

Two separate groups of people discover a mysterious website. Kudo Michi is introduced to it when a co-worker casually commits suicide while she's in his apartment and finds images of it on a CD of his. Ryosuke stumbles upon the site when connecting to his new internet and sees videos of people acting strangely. Both people struggle to find out about the website and what it means.

Pulse is a strange movie that doesn't feel as familiar as others in its genre. The two parallel stories are a little odd because they don't have anything to do with each other save the website until extremely late into the movie. Both main characters are nice, well meaning people. Kudo wants to know why her coworker committed suicide and in such on odd way, leaving behind a black grease mark. Ryosuke wants to know more about the website that seemed almost like snuff films. He understandable shut off in terror after a man put a plastic bag over his head. He befriends a woman named Harue who drastically changes since he introduced her to the site.

The film brings up the fear of death and the possibility of contacting the dead. Harue is one of the people that can't handle being faced with her own mortality, but becomes comfortable with it when she's convinced she won't be alone as she feared. The situation worsens until it's a complete apocalypse situation. I didn't completely enjoy it because this aspect seemed to come out of nowhere. We follow these two characters' stories and then suddenly Tokyo is deserted. The film also moves glacially slow and didn't have enough scares or interesting events to keep my interest throughout the movie. It started off so well with unnerving images, but couldn't keep up the momentum for me.

Pulse is a unique film in it's approach, tone, and story telling. The concept of the dead returning to create a world wide situation is interesting, but the actual story lost me somewhere along the way. There are interesting concepts and images, including this red duct tape that somehow denotes the involvement of the dead and the stains left on the wall by the dead. However, they didn't seem to connect and weren't explained at all. They came off as a not well thought out collection of unsettling images. It might be a cultural reference or concept that I'm not familiar with. I can't say I recommend it.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins

Strange Practice

Greta Helsing runs a rather unconventional medical practice, treating the supernatural denizens of London and its surrounding areas. Her practice is modest and underfunded, but she works hard to make sure every needy patient gets what they need no matter what kind of being they are or how much money they have. She's called in on an emergency call when a vampire is stabbed with an odd knife with a weird substance that caused the wound to fester. She and her friends, who include vampires Ruthven and Varney, sort of former demon Fastitocalon, and human August Cranswell, figure out this attack is tied to a rash of increasing murders by the Rosary Ripper. Together, they will work to protect the supernatural and human community and stop the killer.

Strange Practice is a delightful and unexpected book. This world is basically our own world with a hidden world underneath of it populated by supernatural being including vampires, mummies, ghouls, demons, and even forgotton, eternal creatures. It's  not all rainbows and sunshine as many of these people eat humans, but their goal is to stay out of the public eye for safety. They, like everyone else, have medical problems from time to time and Greta Helsing (the Van was dropped long ago) continues the tradition her late father set in providing care to any and all. Although physical diminutive, she goes into dangerous situations and treats each of her patients with the utmost care and respect. What they eat or how they act is irrelevant. If they need help, Greta treats them even though her practice is underfunded and doesn't make much income. The way she treated the family of ghouls chased out of their home was particularly impressive. Her dreams for her practice are so unattainable due to money and aren't motivated by her own income, but what she can provide for her patients like a sun room and a 3D printer for mummies. When she is targeted by the Rosary Ripper, she could have easily stopped treating supernatiral beings and holed up for her own safety. Greta fought back for herself and her patients against the odds.

The supernatural characters are just as compelling as the humans. Lord Ruthven is one of Greta's one of the first vampires in literature, seen in Dr. John William Polidori's 1819 short story The Vampire. While he was fearsome in the past, Ruthven now battles boredom by restoring classic cars, renovating his home, and cooking. He's polite, cultured, very rich, and proves to be indispensible to Greta and her group. His home is used as their base because he's a powerful being with superhuman strength, hypnotic powers, and great intelligence. I love how he's just a normal person until he's angered or protecting his friends. Varney is also an early vampire in literature in 1847's The Feast of Blood. Unlike Ruthven, he feels a deep guilt about his existence and his food source with a constant stream of angsty thoughts. He wants to belong and has a bit of a crush on Greta which make him a bit more human. I enjoyed the differences between the two vampires and how they became friends through the experience. My favorite supernatual character is Fastitocalon, who appears as an unassuming, chronically coughing, grey complected fiftysomething year old accountant. Underneath all of that, he has the power to read and cloud minds at will. He was friends with Greta's father and one of her family's oldest friends. His combination of being completelu unremarkable and very powerful with a heart of gold is why he's the best.

Strange Practice is a promising start to a new horror and fantasy series that I hope has many more books to come. The characters are well drawn and memorable on both sides. The source of the Rosary Ripper proves to be surprising and a formidable threat to the world. The use of supernatural creatures as an allegory for real life groups looked down upon for inherent aspects is spot on. I look forward to seeing more Greta, more supernatural patients and friends, and a new threat to London. The only part I didn't really enjoy was Cranswell and the last minute romance at the end of the novel. Everything else made this book a fun read perfect for summer. Even the cover design and interior drawings (which I hope are in the finished copy) lent to the whimsical air of the book. I will be keeping my eyes peeled for the second installment Bad Company.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

Horror Movie Mini-Reviews: My Cousin Rachel and Absentia

* My Cousin Rachel

* spoilers *

Ambrose Ashley raised his orphaned cousin Philip like his own son. As his health failed, he moved to Italy for the more pleasant weather and had a whirlwind romance with Rachel, ending in marriage. Philip receives a disturbing letter from his cousin, saying that Rachel is poisoning and abusing him. An outraged Philip races to Italy, only to find that Ambrose has died. Rachel comes to stay with him and wins him over despite his initial distrust and suspicion that has him being outrageously rude and disrespectful to her. They form a close relationship and Philip would give her anything, even Ambrose's entire estate and business. When she refuses his marriage proposal, Philip spirals out of control, convinced that she will kill him as well.

Based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel is a Gothic story that is a more quiet mystery than horror, but the unease and tension are there. It shares quite a bit with Crimson Peak without the supernatural elements. Throughout the film, the mystery surrounding Rachel is if she's an opportunistic, greedy murderer or a liberated, independent woman. Rachel Weisz plays her excellently and almost every line out of her mouth could be completely genuine or a skilled liar, carefully constructing each one to get the reaction she wants out of Philip. There are also two ways to interpret her relationship with Philip. He assumes that she is as in love with him as he is with her and views their sexual relationship as consensual. I lean more towards the latter theory that she just wants to be independent in a world where women don't have that opportunity. She tells Philip of her desire to stay alone and support herself even if it meant tutoring children in Italian as spinsters would. Her view of their sexual relationship is one of coercion, where she felt obligated due to his generosity and social power over her.

This brings us to Philip, the most insufferable character ever. He is naive, bordering on idiotic. When Rachel gets there, he's irrationally rude to her, making him appear petty to those around him. He falls for her so hard and fast that he won't listen to anyone when they caution him to slow down and think before he declares his intent to marry and gives her all of his worldly possessions. His mercurial emotions dictate his extreme behavior, sharply constrasting with Rachel's calm and collected exterior. If he had only actually listened to her words instead of assuming he knew what she wanted. He also acts like she's crazy when she makes sure never to be in a room with him after he tries to strangle her. His privilege and gross actions combined with naivete make him a disgusting man willing to abuse that power. Even if Rachel is a murderer, I prefer her to Philip any day. The ending punishes Rachel for wanting above her social station and rejecting Philip's marriage proposal while Philip is rewarded with a loving wife (who saw him pursue Rachel over her) and family as if he hadn't caused Rachel's death. I take this film as condemning the society that would allow this to happen. While it is infuriating, the film does a great job keeping Rachel's role ambiguous (as it could be read many different ways) and includes gorgeous cinematography and costuming,

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins


* Absentia

Tricia's husband Daniel has been missing for seven years with no sightings, no communication, nothing. She's about to move on with her life after waiting for closure for so long. Her plan is to declare him dead in absentia, sell their home, movie into an apartment, start a new relationship, and have her baby. Her messy, unpredictable sister Callie comes to stay with her and help her pack. Callie notices that odd things happen around this tunnel near Tricia's house like a deranged homeless man and then a cache of stolen objects appear on her doorstep and then inthe house when she leaves some food for him. Are these weird but explainable events or something more supernatural at work?

Absentia isn't a flashy or gory horror film. It's much more quiet, subtle, and emotional. Although Tricia is pregnant and ready to start a new life with her boyfriend, she's stuck in the past with her husband and the life they had built together. Apparently, they had been fighting and things weren't going as well, but the complete disruption of her life with no resolution left her frozen, waiting. Disturbing hallucinations of her husband with monstrous aspects plague her as she struggles to move on. Her boyfriend, a police officer, is completely supportive and willing to wait until she's ready to start their life together. When her husband appears at their home after seven years, she brushes off his appearance as another hallucination indicative of stress and guilt. Only her boyfriend's reaction tells her Daniel is real.

Callie is Tricia's troublemaking younger sister. She runs constantly and remains secretly addicted to drugs. I find it ironic that her Christian impulse to feed the poor is the thing that brings something monstrous into their lives. She discovers the creature who has taken countless people is similar to those in myths, legends, and fairy tales that eat and abduct people. Or there could be a much simpler explanation based in the real world instead of the mind of a junkie who is high whenever something weird happens. The creature (if there is one) is well handled. The film is low budget, so any large scale CGI creature would look awful. Only shadows and spindly limbs are seen of it in the periphery of the frame. It also lends to the idea that it may be a hallucination. While all of the concepts are not quite fully realized, Absentia has wonderful performances from Catherine Parker and Courtney Bell that make this relatively simple plot much deeper. It's not Mike Flanagan's best movie, but it shows his ingenuity and impressive story telling.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins