The Pure in Heart: Simon Serrailler Crime Novel #2 by Susan Hill (2005): Realistic in its depiction of a police search for a kidnapped child, often melodramatic and overly determined in its depiction of everything else: welcome to the world of Susan Hill's Detective-Chief-Inspector Simon Serrailler and the relatively small English cathedral town in which he works. This is an improvement on the first Serrailler novel, which featured an improbable serial killer doing unprecedented things for a serial killer and virtually no Simon Serrailler. Of course, more Simon Serrailler in this novel means more space to notice what a drip he is. Hill has labelled these novels 'crime novels' rather than mysteries or procedurals. That's mainly because the novels don't focus exclusively on the solving of a crime, but rather the effects of horrific events on everyone pulled into that crime. So if you like mysteries and family melodrama but don't like closure, this series may be for you. Lightly recommended.
The Unborn: written and directed by David Goyer; starring Odette Yustman (Casey), Gary Oldman (Rabbi Sendak), Cam Gigandet (Mark), Meagan Good (Romy), Idris Elba (Wyndham), and Jane Alexander (Sofi Kozma) (2009): Poor Odette Yustman has to spend the first half of this movie as a scantily clad victim who shows an awful lot of camel-toe in one scene. The cheesecake doesn't do the movie any favours. Writer-director David Goyer has actually fashioned a pretty interesting horror movie that uses Jewish legends to good effect. It also throws several startlingly distorted monsters at the viewer.
Yustman does a good job with an occasionally thankless role. The movie would probably have benefited from not air-lifting Gary Oldman and Idris Elba in to play surprisingly small parts that might have been better served by character actors (the more rumpled and lived-in the character actor, the better). Still, this is a surprisingly good modern horror movie, especially from a major studio. It would actually be better if it were about a quarter-hour longer, so long as those fifteen minutes were spent on plot and character and scares and not more camel-toe. Lightly recommended.
The Possession: based on "Jinx in a Box" by Leslie Gornstein; written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White; starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Clyde), Kyra Sedgwick (Stephanie), Natasha Calis (Em), Madison Davenport (Hannah) and Matisyahu (Tzadok) (2012): Quarter-baked horror movie about a Jewish demon in a box and the family that encounters it.
Mom, Dad, two daughters. Virtually all characterization in the movie is as follows: Mom and Dad are divorced because Mom is a shrew and Dad is always away coaching his college basketball team. Daughters are mad at Mom and Dad. One daughter dances with her high-school dance team. One likes funny hats. The latter daughter gets Dad to buy her a wooden box at a yard-sale. Now you know as much about these characters as the film-makers seem to.
Oh-ho! That isn't just any curiously alluring, seemingly unopenable wooden box. It's a box with a Dybbuk -- a Jewish demon or spirit of malevolent intent -- imprisoned inside!
Hijinks ensue. Many of them seem to involve the belief that moths are really scary when in fact they really aren't, or at least the moths chosen for this movie aren't. Unless you're made of upholstery, I guess. This may be the first movie possession that could have been solved with a $2 box of moth balls.
As no one involved with this movie sat down and came up with a reasonable list of powers for the Dybbuk, it's one of those supernatural beings whose powers are exactly configured to the requirements of the plot. And it seems to be just as dangerous inside the box as it is outside. This is what Republican cutbacks on governmental oversight for Dybbuk-box construction have brought us to.
About the only thing the Dybbuk can't do when it's in the box is move its own box. You'd think this would make it really easy to get rid of. You'd be wrong. In place of interesting, intellectual explanation and exposition of matters supernatural, the movie simply has the father read about Dybbuks and possession on the Internet. Probably on Wikipedia. He learns it all in one night.
Of course, one thing may occur to you very early in the film. If we don't want the Dybbuk out of the box, why put a secret latch on the box? And if the thing is so dangerous even in the box, why does the woman at the beginning have the box sitting in her living room? Is this some sort of Free Will for Dummies thing? In any case, Fyvush Fynkel was much scarier as a possible Dybbuk in the Coen Brothers movie A Serious Man. If his face showed up on an MRI of your stomach, then you'd be a-scared. Based on a true story in much the same way, I expect, as Shrek was based on Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Not recommended.
