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.
Annabelle: written by Gary Dauberman; directed by John R. Leonetti; starring Annabelle Wallis (Mia), Ward Horton (John), Tony Amendola (Father Perez), and Alfre Woodard (Evelyn) (2014): With the budget of a TV movie (about $7 million, which is probably less than the catering budget for an Avengers movie), Annabelle was hellaprofitable both at home and abroad. And while reviled by many of the same critics who praised the first movie in this 'series' (The Conjuring), Annabelle seemed more than adequate to me. It also lacked the almost programmatic replication of The Amityville Horror that ruined The Conjuring for me.
Unlike The Conjuring, Annabelle is "completely fictional." Ha ha. That creepy doll drove its own sub-plot in The Conjuring. Here, it's the star! The film takes place in the studio's version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- a horror universe based on the career of the regrettable Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were at least pretty good at selling themselves as ghost-busters. They're referenced in this movie but aren't part of the main plot, which is instead an origin story for that creepy doll.
Ah, that creepy doll. In 'reality,' the creepy doll was a large Raggedy Ann. Such a representation would aid with my suspension of disbelief, but the copyright holders of the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls wouldn't allow the producers of The Conjuring or Annabelle to use their doll in the movies. So instead we get a doll which looks ridiculously malevolent even before it turns into a Hell-powered terror-machine. Anyone who wanted this doll would have to be insane. There is probably a better movie in that concept somewhere.
The plot revelations and narrative beats of Annabelle are familiar, though delivered with a certain level of competence. The lead actress (hilariously named Annabelle in real life) carries the weight of the often ridiculous narrative well; the other actors don't have a lot to do, though old pros Alfre Woodard and Tony Amendola do as much as they can with the material. I wish the creators of movies that use Roman Catholicism would at least take time to read Roman Catholicism for Dummies. I really do. Lightly recommended.
Strange Highways by Dean Koontz (1995): Short novel sees the prolific Koontz on a rare foray into supernatural horror. It's pretty bad. Things start off promisingly, as a 40-year-old never-was returns to his small Pennsylvania hometown for the first time in 20 years to bury his father. Something happened two decades ago to drive him away from home, something he doesn't want to think about. But think about he will, as visions and supernatural events begin to point him towards a long-delayed reckoning with Evil. Evil so Evil it is the Fruits of the Devil, it is.
The first forty pages or so of Strange Highways are quite promising, establishing a real sense of place in Pennsylvania mining country, in an area where underground coal-vein fires have forced the evacuation of a village near the protagonist's hometown as the ground begins to crack, explode, and subside.
However, the supernatural events, when they really start coming, quickly veer into complete goofiness. Why? Something wants our protagonist to change the past. So it sends him into the past. And it provides a magical way for him to know whether or not he's changing the past for the better. And then, at the climax, after numerous speeches in which the protagonist is guilted by another character for not Having Faith, time keeps resetting itself until he gets everything right. It's like Live Die Repeat, Now With 100% More Satan.
We're left with a hero who seems like a dunderhead. Given the supernatural events going on all around him, he doesn't really need to have faith: empirically speaking, God does seem to have been proven to exist. And two plot devices ripped from the headlines of the early 1990's -- Satanist teenagers! Repressed Memory Syndrome! -- look awfully threadbare with the benefit of hindsight. So, too, the repeated and increasingly mawkish sermonizing. Koontz is a lot of things, but an interesting philosopher he is not. Not recommended.
