The Witch (2015): written and directed by Robert Eggers; starring Anya Taylor-Joy (Thomasin), Ralph Ineson (William), Kate Dickie (Katherine), Harvey Scrimshaw (Caleb), Ellie Grainger (Mercy), and Lucas Dawson (Jonas): Just about as dark as it gets for a horror movie. Robert Eggers riffs on everything from "Young Goodman Brown" to Kubrick's The Shining in this tale of dark Christianity, Satanic goings-on, and extreme isolation.
Set in New England in 1630, The Witch begins with its family of protagonists being exiled from a Puritan settlement for their religious beliefs (which may be even more Calvinistic than the Puritans). We see the first steps in that exile subjectively, from teen-age girl Thomasin's point-of-view. Her POV will dominate what comes after, though there are scenes that she isn't witness to. Probably.
Eggers drew on folktales, witch-trial court documents, and period testimonials for his inspiration. The film itself can withstand multiple, sometimes contradictory readings. Is it a paean to feminism? Is it a straight-up piece of Satanic horror? Is it a tale of madness in the woods? Is it a commentary on Calvinism? Is it a light-hearted romp? Well, no. It's not a light-hearted romp. Unless you actually are a Satanist. OK, so it could be a light-hearted romp for a certain type of person.
Filmed in the dark and humanless woods of Mattawa, Ontario, The Witch is ultimately a disquieting and unnerving 100 minutes of film-making. That it got a major release in theatres is something of a miracle -- audiences expecting another Blumhouse boilerplate horror movie clearly didn't like The Witch. So it goes. I think it's a major work of art from a young film-maker I'll be watching. And Anya Taylor-Joy is superlative as the sympathetic, frustrated Thomasin.
But the actors are all really good, from Ralph Ineson as the bumbling, weak but well-meaning patriarch and Kate Dickie as the increasingly paranoid (towards Thomasin) matriarch through Harvey Scrimshaw (what a last name!) as adolescent Caleb all the way to the two kids playing the unnervingly carefree, creepy young Jonas and Mercy. A black rabbit delivers a fine performance, as does a black goat.
Blood and gore are minimal, but when they come, they shock. Even the minimal score is creepy. This is about as good a film as one could hope for, and one that will probably spark conversations for years to come. Highly recommended.
Deadpool (2016): written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick; Deadpool created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicienza; directed by Tim Miller; starring Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson/ Deadpool), Stefan Kapicic (Voice of Colossus), Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenage Warhead), Ed Skrein (Ajax), T.J. Miller (Weasel), and Morena Baccarin (Vanessa): Deadpool's success suggests that people wanted funnier, raunchier, R-rated superhero movies. And can you blame them? Deadpool may not be as funny as it seems to think it is, but it's still pretty funny.
It's also a perfect showcase for Ryan Reynolds' brand of smirky hunkiness. The script is still a bit too boilerplate for its own good -- the romance, the origin story, and the vengeance plot are all things we've seen before, though Deadpool's ongoing meta-commentary on everything that's going on keeps things lighter than the usual superhero movie: he's Bugs Bunny as Wolverine. It might be nice to see a bit less programmatic story for Deadpool 2, which looks like it's going to be Deadpool and Cable and not another revenge story.
The supporting turns from CGI Colossus -- finally used to good effect in what is, technically, an X-Men movie -- and the hilarious, angsty Negasonic Teenage Warhead (thank Monster Magnet via Grant Morrison for that name) as unwilling sidekicks/frenemies to Deadpool are quite funny. And while this Fox-Marvel movie doesn't share the same universe as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's also pretty funny to see a climax that really does seem to occur on, over, around, and ultimately under what looks an awful lot like a SHIELD helicarrier someone dumped in a junkyard. Recommended.
Deep in the Darkness by Michael Laimo (2004): Solid and enjoyable horror-thriller walks in the footsteps of Arthur Machen and some H.P. Lovecraft (specifically "The Lurking Fear" in the latter case). A Manhattan doctor gets an offer he can't refuse: take over the rural New England practice of a recently deceased M.D. and get out of the city with his wife and 5-year-old daughter. What a deal!
Ha! The only place more dangerous than the city in a horror novel is the country (and paradoxically, vice versa). It might be more accurate to say that wherever you go, you should have stayed away.
Laimo chose to tell this story within a frame narrative that establishes that something really terrible has happened from the beginning of the novel. I"m not sure it's a great choice -- it primarily explains 'where' the first-person narration comes from without adding much in the way of suspense.
The antagonists of the novel straddle a line between 'natural' cryptid and supernatural boogeyman until very late in Deep in the Darkness. All is (sort of) revealed in a mostly satisfying manner. And Laimo has his sometimes muddle-headed protagonist of an M.D. realize that muddle-headedness, and ponder the source, as the novel progresses. People do some oddly stupid things in the course of the narrative, but there's actually an explanation for that, one that makes sense. And one that the narrator realizes, perhaps too late.
Laimo describes both the antagonists and their woodland haunts viscerally and grotesquely. The novel seems especially oriented to the smells of horror. It also gradually orients itself towards sexualized body horror as it progresses, leading to a couple of extremely graphic and disturbing scenes as the novel moves to a climax. And is a child in danger throughout the novel? Well, yeah. That never gets old.
Deep in the Darkness would probably work better if it were shorter. There's a dragginess to the middle section, a need to get on with it already given what we've seen so far. And while the first-person narration allows for both unreliability and a refreshing dose of unlikeability in the narrator, it also makes the late-novel objectification of the female body more problematic than third-person would. Characters other than the narrator never really achieve any depth, making what happens to them, especially the wife, verge on gruesome exploitation rather than carefully constructed body horror.
That there's a sequel to the novel makes a certain amount of sense -- Deep in the Darkness throws a twist in towards the end that allows for further expansion of the narrative while also recontextualizing everything we've read to that point. Though given that this is a first-person narrative recorded 'after' the fact, the revelation may unsuspend the disbelief of a certain portion of readers. Would a narrator lead with the revelation and explain things in terms of it? It certainly could be argued that this would be more believable, especially as the narrative is also framed as a warning to whoever finds it. Lightly recommended.
