The Exorcist

THE EXORCIST

(1973)

Dir - William Friedkin

Overall: GREAT

 

What more can be said about a seminal horror film, (perhaps the MOST seminal horror film), that has not already been said time and time again?  The Exorcist is considered a major game changer in its genre, a genre that both its director William Friedkin and star Linda Blair have gone on record as saying does not belong in that genre.  While such a sentiment may seem fundamentally eyebrow rolling, pretentious, and contrarian for the sake of it, there is something to it.  Ironically considering its persistently lauded reputation, The Exorcist does not adhere to the typical horror trope formula.

 

To understand this, one must put it into the correct historical context.  At the time, horror films were seldom if ever done in such a grounded manner.  The term "horror" was a naughty word of sorts for any filmmaker who wished to be taken seriously, especially a freshly established New Hollywood auteur such as Friedkin who was hot off The French Connection.  Horror movies were generally cheap B-pictures by major or minor studios, or even more disparagingly, low-end regional ones made by nonprofessionals and with local crews and inexperienced actors.  They were often meant to be disposable crap that filled drive-in double bills while teenagers lost their virginity or desperately tried to while sitting in their cars with their dates.  Whether shown in conventional theaters, dingy grindhouse theaters, or those aforementioned outdoor drive-ins, horror properties were rarely taken seriously by either the people booking them, watching them, or making them.

 

Just picture this, except the cars are bumping up and down and Godzilla is on the screen.

Of course there were always exceptions to this; horror movies that were done with professional care and made a critical splash if not also a lingering influence over the genre.  After all, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead arrived four years before The Exorcist began shooting and set the template for the type of grim, social critique horror movie that threw the happy ending out the window and presented an inescapable scenario the mirrored the types of hardships and upheaval that people during the late 1960s were going through.

 

The Exorcist's saga of good and evil and the mystery and struggle of faith may not have directly spoke to a disenfranchised public who were fed-up with the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon's unsavory shenanigans in the Oval Office, but it was a horror film done by a hotshot director, based off a hotshot novel, and put into production by a major studio that wanted a major success to make good on the type of films that were such successes at the time.  American Graffiti, Serpico, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Detail; these were the other major works done that year which garnished award nominations and got butts in the seats.  In other words, The Exorcist was not meant to be played along with José Ramón Larraz' Vampyres or Larry Cohen's It's Alive! or Peter Walker's House of Whipcord.  Considering the fact that Warner Bros. brought in Friedkin to direct and allowed for the novel's author William Peter Blatty to serve as a first time producer signifies that enough faith was given to the production to make it a worthy successor to The French Connection, a movie that won Best Picture in 1972 as well as granting Friedkin a trophy of his own for directing it.

 

Little did anyone know, this little Chicago-born pipsqueak was going to be the new face of horror.

One has to remember that this was that all-too-brief era where A-level money was put into "risky" properties that young filmmakers were making.  The New Hollywood produced Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Arthur Penn, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, and of course William Friedkin.  Giving these young bucks the creative freedom to take chances and either adapt or concoct boundary-pushing stories in an unflinching manner that was previously unheard of during the censored studio system had proved profitable by the time that The Exorcist was underway.  Yes Warner Bros., Friedkin, and Blatty were telling a story about a twelve-year-old girl possessed by a demon who was going to spit pea soup, spin her head 360 degrees around, fuck herself with a crucifix, and speak in a bowl-churning voice, but they had no intention of exploiting the subject matter.  They had no intention of making a William Castle camp spectacle.  They had no intention of doing what Blumhouse and David Gordon Green would do with it fifty years later.  Now let us never speak of THAT again.

 

So in this context, NOT considering The Exorcist a horror film is not such an outrageous prospect.  If Friedkin would have adhered to the tropes that were already common within the genre, (incessant scary music, melodramatic performances, a complete lack of subtlety in place of pedestrian sensationalism, etc), the results likely would have been forgettable at best, wretched at worst.  Oddly enough, it was what the film DIDN'T do that ended up influencing what the horror film WOULD do from there on out, to the point of self parody.  The Exorcist established so much in the lexicon of horror that it quickly got copied, recopied, and copied again.  Modern audiences may scoff and laugh at many of the heightened moments that occur during it, but that is both because those moments have been duplicated ad nauseam and because the movie was such a staggering hit and a cultural phenomenon that the initial shock value quickly evaporated into the pop culture ether.  We now say "The power of Christ compels you!" as a joke.  When the movie was being made though and initially seen, a joke was the last thing that it was.

 

Behold, The Exorcist's true legacy.

William Friedkin may have had some dubious directorial methods like firing a live gun on set to shock people and practically crippling Ellen Burstyn, (plus he would eventually turn into the hilarious epitome of old boomer yells at cloud), but he deserves the credit for many choices made in The Exorcist which bypassed how terrible it could have been.  No one involved debated the fact that Blatty's initial script based off his own novel was an overblown mess the heightened the horror elements to schlock proportions.  Also consider that the original score by Lalo Schifrin was rejected for cluttering up intimate scenes with the type of typical ruinous bombast that many, many movie scores suffer from.  Also also consider that they had cast Stacy Keach, (an established and known actor), as Father Damien Karras before Jason Miller, (a playwright who had never acted before on screen and whose work Friedkin just so happened to be familiar with), lobbied and got the part.  Then consider that seemingly everyone involved with the production wanted the prologue in northern Iraq omitted.  Even Bernard Herman who Friedkin allegedly showed a work print to in order to potentially score, said that he should get rid of the opening.  Billy stuck to his guns on all of these decisions though, stripping out the nonsense in Blatty's script to get it back to what worked so well in the book, omitting the score, hiring Miller, and keeping the Iran introduction in order to establish the ideal mood of slowly encroaching doom.

 

There is a level of intimacy to the movie that enhances each aspect of it.  What incidental music is used is used sparingly, usually only between transitions.  When characters are talking, that is all that you are hearing.  When characters are not talking, you are hearing what they are hearing, whether it is the subtle clicking of a clock or all the objects in Regan MacNeill's room flying all over the place, poltergeist style.  Moments of stillness have a gradual tension to them, and they are generally interrupted by bursts of chaos.  This is never done in a tripe "jump scare" sense where a first time audience member will see the loud noises coming a mile away because the music stopped and the camera is lingering on a character looking around slowly.  Since so little music is featured and none during dialog scenes, we witness the characters contemplating their unbelievable situation in the most intimate context.  We panic when they panic; when any brief reprieve that they get is interrupted by demonic fate.

 

You could cut the tension with a knife during this coffee break, per example.

There is a moment during the actual exorcism where Miller and Max von Sydow are taking five, sitting exhausted, confused, and terrified on the steps of the rented MacNeill residence.  Why is this happening to this young girl specifically?  What is the point?  Sydow's Father Merrin proclaims that he believes the idea is to make them despair.  The possession is not about a twelve-year-old girl.  It is about making those who care for her to lose their faith in a higher and better power that would otherwise intervene on her behalf and defeat the forces of darkness wreaking havoc.  The film is asking both the characters and the audience to believe in two things simultaneously; the existence of pure evil and the existence of pure good to combat that evil.

 

This is a profound question for a horror film to ask, and one that has been asked going all the way back to the silent era when the bad guys were almost always defeated by the good guys.  Yet The Exorcist presents the question uniquely in how sobering it is, how quiet, how contemplative.  We have seen a combination of over-the-top possession sequences along with many more minutes of these people living in a world that is palpable.  This was at Friedkin's insistence, to strip the movie of as much cinematic artifice as possible so that we could immerse ourselves in what is going on.  The fact that he was still able to do this while also having a Linda Blair dummy rotate its head all the way around is a testament to how goddamn good of a job he did.

 

Pictured: stripped cinematic artifice.

While horror is a varied genre that can be enjoyable in its many facets, what it often does best is what The Exorcist does best.  That is to ground us in the real world while presenting a scenario that is otherworldly.  If this was merely a movie about a single mother working as an actor who had a daughter struggling with an absent father, cross-cut with a psychiatrist priest struggling with his lack of faith due to the guilt he feels after his mother died, cross-cut again with a different and much older priest struggling from a type of psychological impending doom, it would still be an engaging movie.  There is so much there to examine, so much that could and in effect IS wonderfully portrayed here.  We get all of that in The Exorcist.  Yet we also get an actual demon thrown into the mix and more to the point, we then have to come to terms with what that demon's existence means in this real world.

 

This is also what the characters have to come to terms with.  How does it affect Burstyn's mother, a nonreligious woman who is at her wit's end and going through a nervous breakdown as her only daughter is suffering beyond the means of what science can fix or even diagnose?  How does it affect the story's most innocent player, Blair's Regan who becomes the unwilling vessel of evil in order to break the spirit of those around her?  How does it affect Miller's Karras, a man who is devastated by the loss of his own mother and feels as if his faith has left him when he needs that faith the most to save a child that he has never even met?  How does it affect Sydow's Merrin, a man who knows that he is not long for this world, has done battle with this same demonic entity before, (implied but never directly stated in the film), and yet is determined to vanquish this evil again, falling victim to it instead?

 

"Christ, not this shit again" - actual line of dialog.

Friedkin said that another theme of the movie was that of ritual.  The exorcism itself of course is a ritual, specific phrases and mannerisms passed down in the Catholic faith in order to call on the name of a higher force so that a human body can be rid of a demonic presence.  There is also the ritual of science, when doctor after doctor examine and perform tests on Regan in order to determine what is causing her alarming and increasingly volatile behavior.  They put her through all types of contraptions, resulting in the film's most disturbing sequence where she undergoes an angiography procedure that can still make audience's wince, (Blatty included).  None of these medical "rituals" produce any satisfactory results.  Instead, their purpose is to push Burstyn to the breaking point where she reaches out in desperation to the only avenue left for her, that of the spiritual and in effect, the "unbelievable".

 

Both Billy's, Blatty and Friedkin, are believers in their respected religious faiths.  Blatty was a devout Catholic and was coming from such a place when he wrote the novel, presenting a story where biblical good triumphed over biblical evil.  Friedkin was raised Jewish, labeled himself an agnostic, yet also fully adhered to various teachings of Jesus Christ.  He too was coming from a place of belief in a higher power that would win out when up against the nefarious opposite of that power.  One can read the ending of The Exorcist in different ways, ways in which both Blatty and Friedkin differed.  The former insisted on Father Karras resorting to his "normal" facial features after temporarily becoming monstrous, signifying that he makes the leap out of the window based on his own accord once inviting the demon inside of him.  Friedkin adhered to the author's wishes, yet he also saw it as a compromise and took issue with it.  Why would Karrass willingly commit suicide, (a grave sin in Catholicism), as his final act?  More to the point, why would the demon bother to adhere to his invitation in the first place and even if it did, why not just jump right back into Regan's body after Karras tumbles down all those steps to his demise?

 

Demonic constipation be like.

So, who is right?  Did good win because Karrass welcomed the demon inside of him and then curtailed it out the window, committing a selfless act that in turn would doom him in the afterlife according to his own faith?  Was that enough to sway the demon not only out of Regan, but also out of the entire situation since it failed to cause the level of despair that it set out to?  Did the demon just have its fun and skedaddled, or was Karras' final act the one thing that the demon could not return from?  Perhaps in Friedkin's mind, this would not be enough.  Perhaps to him, it is too far-fetched in a story that is already asking a lot of its audience, a lot of supernatural bologna to buy into.  Since Regan survives, one can view the film as having a "happy" ending in that respect, but both Karras and Merrin meet their doom at the hands of the demon.  So, who wins; good or evil?

 

Though it is not necessary, many a great story has an air of ambiguity to it.  The Exorcist may seem cut-and-dry in some respects, but there is a level of uncertainty here.  This makes it a more weighty film.  We do not even have to take into account that Blatty would eventually follow it up with his 1983 novel Legion and his subsequent and excellent sequel adaptation The Exorcist III.  Just viewing the initial movie, we are left with lingering feelings and questions as to the very nature of the material, the mystery of fate and of faith.  Two characters, (both unknown to each other and both entrenched to a point in the spiritual world), are continuously shown to be drawn to two other characters apart from that world who are inexplicably brought into it against their will.  Their stories converge, fate has brought them together to wrestle with the existence of good and evil.  Once that wrestling has finished, half of them are dead and the other half are left ravished by the experience.  Evil certainly did its damage, but that same evil has also seemingly left the premises, and now the viewer is stuck to ponder the meaning of it all.  The Exorcist encourages such discourse, as many of the best movies can do.  Call it a great horror film or just a great film, but great is assuredly is.

 

The Exorcist definitely RISES to the occasion?  Eh, eh?  Ah, shut up.

2025 Horror Part Thirteen

MOTHER OF FLIES

Dir - John Adams/Zelda Adams/Toby Poser

Overall: MEH

 

The latest from the delightful mother/daughter/father horror team of Toby Poser and Zelda and John Adams, Mother of Flies stays in their lane for better or worse.  As usual, the Adams Family, (as they humorously dub themselves), craft some grimy and striking visuals, their own gloomy goth songs are solid, and the story where Zelda's young protagonist seeks out a woodland witch to cure her of a terminal tumor indulges in plenty of earthy folk horror motifs, the kind that they frequent at least to some extent in each of their movies.  It also raises some interesting questions about the purpose of faith and the belief in the unbelievable when nothing else seems to be doing the trick.  While Zelda and John effortlessly channel their own father/daughter chemistry, (even if John's performance is curiously weak), Poser comes off like an eccentric caricature.  Her dialog is exclusively made up of Wiccan adlibs; long-winded poppycock that is vapid, overwritten, simple-minded, and pretentious, and she unfortunately gets a whole lot to say, her rhyming platitudes providing narration that is meaningless at best, maddening at worst.  Such kooky mannerisms and some arbitrarily strange and grotesque sequences forgive the ridiculous prattling on, but the premise itself rests on shaky ground.  Why a father would casually indulge his daughter partaking in such increasingly concerning shenanigans is a tough pill for the audience to swallow, and even though their script addresses these issues, it still undermines the film's nasty, unforgiving, and more impressive aspects.

 

BUGONIA

Dir - Yorgos Lanthimos

Overall: MEH

 

Renowned Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos collaborates with screenwriter Will Tracy while taking on his first remake, Bugonia serving as an updated adaptation of Jang Joon-hwan's 2003 oddball sci-fi black comedy Save the Green Planet!.  Those genre labels apply here as well, filtered of course through Lanthimos' auteuristic eccentricities, reuniting him once again with Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and even Alicia Silverstone to a lesser extent, (the latter given a minor part as a quirky mother, something she likewise had in The Killing of a Sacred Deer).  Stone is outstanding as always, playing a corporate matriarch who comes off as perpetually manipulative and full of shit as she finds herself held within the clutches of Plemons' cartoonishly filthy peon employee and beekeeper who has a conspiratorial agenda for the books.  What works is the intense back and forth between these two parties, (with first time autistic actor Aidan Delbis caught in the mix to provide some deliberate concern from the audience), as well as the suspense-laden dangling fruit as to the legitimacy of Plemons' allegations.  Unfortunately, Tracy's script falls apart as it goes along, introducing plot gaps and inconsistent behavior amongst its characters, as well as arriving at a conclusion that is less annoying nihilistic than the work of Lars von Trier by comparison, yet still comes dangerously close.  Lanthimos is such a singular voice and so expert as his craft though that even if this is technically a miss-step, it is just barely one.

 

VADAKKAN

Dir - Sajeed A.

Overall: MEH

 

A mess of schlock, forced found footage, animated exposition, dogshit CGI, demonic possession, and folk horror, Vadakkan is the first full-length from Indian filmmaker Sajeed A., whose career up until this point was primarily in television and documentaries.  Authored by another fellow who only uses an initial for his last name, (screenwriter Unni R.), there are some interesting ideas here that deserve a less ambitious and in turn less faulty execution.  Kishore portrays a stoic paranormal investigator YouTube personality with a vaguely troubled past who looks into another YouTube personality that had a type of Big Brother haunted house program go horribly awry on a cut-off piece of land that is home to much malevolent supernatural tomfoolery.  The idea to have the second act be nothing more than Kishore watching episodes of the doomed program is a terrible one, namely because the blatantly otherworldly footage is all edited together with scary music, multiple cameras, and even ends with a long shot that is done in the conventional style as the rest of the film and ergo could not have at all been captured the way that it was.  This faux pas is enough to sink the entire production, but the third act brings Kishore, his assistant, and his former love interest to the cursed island themselves for a lengthy climax that is sloppily handled, not at all frightening, and hackneyed.  Everything is played straight and the main performers take their assignment seriously, but there are too many mistakes to forgive.

2025 Horror Part Twelve

A USEFUL GHOST

Dir - Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke

Overall: GOOD

 

One is likely to compare the singular work of Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul to the debut from fellow Thailand-operating Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, (What a name!).  A Useful Ghost, (Phi Chaidai Kh), takes a similarly quirky approach to its supernatural subject matter where characters nonchalantly react and coexist with otherworldly entities, in this case spirits who decide to posses domestic appliances.  It is a hilarious gag that gets plenty of stone-faced laughs early on, only becoming more thoughtful and intricate as it goes along.  Boonbunchachoke winds up exploring everything from matriarchal manipulation, to conservatism, to homosexual relationships, to the 2010 Bangkock protestor slayings, to beyond the grave revenge.  At the core of all this wild thematic melding is the overarching concept that tragedies and the loved ones taken by them need be remembered or else further injustice and oppression will continue to thrive.  Wisely, Boonbunchachoke does not overburden the audience with these ideas, instead letting them find their course naturally over two hours, with touching, funny, and downright bizarre moments making this one of the most unique genre movies of its kind.

 

KEEPER

Dir - Osgood Perkins

Overall: MEH

 

Filmmaker Osgood Perkins delivers another in a mostly continuous stream of stylistically engaging yet faulty horror excursions, sticking with his exclusive genre of choice and working his auteur magic, warts and all.  Keeper is Perkins' second time using a script that is not his own, choosing one from Nick Lepard to shoot quickly during downtime on the same year's The Monkey which went on hiatus due to the Writers Guild of American and SAG-AFTRA strike.  Filmed on the cheap in Canada with a minuscule stable of accomplished local actors, the movie is a refreshing slow boil that makes atmospheric stillness and some well-placed WTF strangeness the primary focus.  At this point in his behind the lens career, Perkins has a exemplary knack for such things, and it is a joy to watch how he subverts a few genre pratfalls and kicks up the intimate creepiness in the process.  Unfortunately, Lepard's script indulges in loose ends that fail the icebox test and does what almost every horror screenplay does, which is to dilly-dally around a story that should have logically been wrapped up an hour earlier, spending half of its third act deflating itself with muddled exposition, spooky monsters crawling around like spiders for no reason, and a narrative turnaround that seems to play it fast and messy with its own supernatural rules.  As is usually the case where Perkins is concerned, there is a better film lurking in here than what it delivered, but what is delivered still has plenty to recommend about it.

 

EYE FOR AN EYE

Dir - Colin Tilley

Overall: MEH

 

Prolific music video director Colin Tilley takes his first crack at a feature with the unremarkable and occasionally embarrassing Eye for an Eye, a type of country-fried A Nightmare on Elm Street that is brimful of schlock.  We have prerequisite jump scares, characters monologuing exposition while dramatically looking off in the distance, unintentionally funny set pieces, cartoonish bully behavior that is necessary for plot purposes, awful CGI, stock/loud monster sound effects, and a sloppy third act that bulldozes through rapid-fire nightmare sequences, delivering an abrupt and weak ending in the process.  As far as the performances go, Golda Rosheuvel comes off the worst due to the cringe-worthy dialog that she is given, laying on the southern drawl thick as her uneven character both laments and warns against the dangers of a local boogeyman that she has once released while also nonchalantly giving a young child the tools to unleash said boogeyman himself.  The script by Elisa Victoria and Michael Tully feels like it is missing several pieces, particularly where the pro and antagonists are concerned.  This actually may have been more satisfying if it was fleshed-out as a miniseries instead of a lone full-length, something that would have also provided a chance to deepen the mythology of its supernatural baddie.  Tilley has a showy eye for visuals, but much of what is here is either arbitrary or hackneyed at best.

2025 Horror Part Eleven

MAN FINDS TAPE
Dir - Paul Gandersman/Peter S. Hall
Overall: MEH

 

It is unfortunate that so many filmmakers go the found footage route due to rising costs and diminishing, (if even existent), box office returns, the full-length debut Man Finds Tape from the writer/director team of Paul Gandersman and Peter S. Hall being one of the most poorly-suited to the mockumentary framework to come out in recent times.  This is a bold statement since a solid case can be made that nearly every found footage movie would benefit from a more conventional and ergo more expensive approach, but it is doubly a shame here since Gandersman and Hall's narrative comes equipped with some refreshing tweaks and hooks.  Some of the "tapes" that our central figure portrayed by William Magnuson discovers are bizarre enough to make any viewer sit up straight, and it all leads in a direction that would be difficult if impossible to guess.  What does not work, (and this cannot be stated enough times with these films), is that the finished documentary-within-a-movie trajectory is both distracting and dilutes the necessary verisimilitude for any harrowing and/or otherworldly scenario to connect.  Footage from an untold amount of cameras is cobbled together over a significant period of time, and scary music, subtitles to hear the muffled parts, text messages, 911 transcripts, sound effect enhancement, talking head interviews, and a non-linear presentation come off as unintentionally comical despite the humorless tone and undeniable supernatural events captured on film.  It makes things needlessly clunky and infinitely less believable than if the finances were procured to simply do this as a "real" movie instead of one that awkwardly shoehorns itself into an oversaturated sub-genre that rarely if ever warrants being in that sub-genre.

 

INFLUENCERS

Dir - Kurtis David Harder

Overall: MEH

 

A direct sequel to 2022's Influencer, the apply titled Influencers is a disappointing follow up to its clever if only partially successful predecessor.  Director Kurtis David Harder pens the screenplay himself this time, joined once again by Cassandra Naud as the full-blown sociopath antagonist, as well as her final girl Emily Tennant who is desperate and determined to convince the world of the events of the first movie.  The structure is jumbled up, opening with a nasty throat slitting, then jumping to Naud presumably living happily ever after having been left stranded on an island last we saw her, the dropping the opening titles arriving only once the second act begins and we catch up with Tennant playing catch up with her identity-stealing murderer.  Harder keeps things easy to follow even as more timeline zig-zags happen from there, as well as plot holes collapsing upon themselves which become frustrating as things spiral into a ridiculous and schlocky finale that seems tonally divorced from what came before.  It is this lack of focus that ultimately sinks the ship.  The first film was able to make a chilling case for social media obsession via an exaggerated and comparatively less implausible scenario than what happens here, this time side-stepping pivotal information and character building in order to delight in reckless violence, manipulation, and one-upmanship.

 

ALPHA

Dir - Julia Ducournau

Overall: MEH

 

The third work from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau is both her weakest and easily most bleak, wearing its symbolism on its sleeve yet overstaying its welcome with a relentlessly dour and increasingly incoherent structure.  Arriving five years after the onset of COVID, Alpha's viral outbreak premise inescapably recalls recent times and the current aftermath of those times on a surface level, (as well as the AIDS epidemic of yesteryear), but Ducournau's script is not interested in delving into societal discontent and division as she instead remains focused on those who are trying to save, (read into "control"), those whose behavior cannot be tamed.  Well, that is one interpretation that is as good as any since one has to be generous in deciphering what Ducournau's broad intentions are here.  Golshifteh Farahani's overwrought mother who is also a nurse is simultaneously dealing with a world gone to shit where a disease turns people into crumbling marble, her thirteen-year-old daughter is rebelling and being ostracized at school, and her infected junkie brother has a death wish that she keeps interfering with.  There are other elements at play which may or may not be important, plus the story is told in a distracting manner that jumps between timelines, making it difficult not only to tell what is currently transpiring or what the point is in going back and forth in the first place.  Things get more muddled and exhausting as it goes along, with zero room for humor.  We get the picture after the first scene, and merely wallow in this word's misery from there.

2025 Horror Part Ten

COYOTES
Dir - Colin Minihan
Overall: MEH

 

Loud, stupid, obnoxious, and predictable, the self-explanatory horror comedy Coyotes is the latest from director Colin Minihan.  Written by the team of Nick Simon and Daniel Meersand, (along with Tad Daggerhart), this is bog standard nature horror/home invasion stuff with constant psyche-outs and computer generated canines that come out of the woodwork all aggressive like after a massive LA storm and power outage.  Things write themselves from there, with some stylistic touches like comic book freeze frames to introduce every character's name and flashy camera moves livening up a plot that is as hackneyed as they come.  Like most contemporary horror comedies, it also mangles its tone, with humans and pets getting brutally murdered, and characters uncontrollably sobbing over the harrowing ordeal that they are facing, all while quirky mannerisms are played for nyucks nyucks and people get annoyed with each other.  The comedy falls flat in almost every instance, plus the internal plight that real life couple Justin Long and Kate Bosworth face with their stereotypically smart-assed and moody daughter Mila Harris is never convincing, such dramatic moments feeling unearned.  On the plus side, Long is thankfully not playing his usual snarky douchebag, reminding people that he can do emotional, (if narratively forced), lifting when called for.

 

FRANKENSTEIN
Dir - Guillermo del Toro
Overall: MEH

 

It is a shame that Guillermo del Toro did not get to make his life-long passion project until this far into his career, as the resulting Frankenstein comes off like it cost a zillion dollars and is the work of a man who has earned the status to make such a spectacle on such a grand scale.  Similar to Robert Egger's Nosferatu redux from the previous year, it is inherently boisterous and schlocky.  The Mexican filmmaker extraordinaire has long championed genre fiction and has optimized the type of romantic artist that sympathizes with "the monster", going on record as staring that James Whale's seminal 1931 Frankenstein is his favorite film due to his inert attraction to its central creature and the tragic elements of Mary Shelley's source material.  Yet through decades of rightfully lauded movie-making, del Toro has also positioned himself as someone who seemingly has no interest in doing anything tender, anything subdued, anything nuanced.  Instead and like Victor Frankenstein's creation itself, every frame of this film looks artificial.  The tone is so bombastic that it makes Kenneth Braughah's over-the-top version from thirty years ago seem like Stranger Than Paradise, but accepting such a rambunctious and sweeping aesthetic is necessary or else the viewer will set themself up for unrelenting annoyance throughout a whopping run time that nearly reaches three hours.  Does the script tweak enough and justify its existence after over a century of other sporadic Frankenstein adaptations?  Is del Toro skilled enough at his craft to make such abundance compelling?  Do we really need a Creature that growls like a werewolf and can push a massive sailing vessel that is trapped in Arctic ice?  Guillermo del Toro seems to be enjoying himself asking those questions while spending gallons of money in the process, so maybe that is enough.

 

DREAM EATER

Dir - Jay Drakulic/Mallory Drumm/Alex Lee Williams

Overall: WOOF

 

An exceptionally bad Canadian found footage movie from the filmmaking team of Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams, (the latter two appearing as the leads), Dream Eater makes a consistent amount of mistakes, almost every one that it possible can as if it is doing so on purpose.  The problems are of a "Where to begin?" nature.  A laughable excuse for our characters to film everything, unnatural dialog, an unlikable protagonist couple who have no chemistry with each other, scary music and artificial sound cues everywhere, scenic establishing shots, (?!?), an insultingly hackneyed plot, logical gaps galore, a monotonous structure that makes the movie feel ten times longer than it is, one stylistic or narrative horror cliche after the other, (too many to mention), Drakulic providing abysmal narration during an Unsolved Mystery segment that seems as if he is trying to parody said program, and quasi-terrible performances from everyone on screen.  In other words, it spectacularly fails at what it sets out to achieve.  The fact that what it sets out to achieve is just being another low budget piece of lazy found footage nonsense to toss into the heaping pile of such films begs the question of why anyone should care, let alone grant it a viewing in the first place.  It is one of countless examples of people exploring a sub genre without any clue as to what, (rarely in this case), makes that genre work.  Instead, Drakulic, Drumm, and Williams just throw everything that they have seen done in other horror movies, (found footage or otherwise), and see if they can make something stick.  Sadly and annoyingly, nothing does.

2025 Horror Part Nine

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD

Dir - Eli Craig

Overall: MEH

 

In typical modern day slasher movie fashion, Clown in a Cornfield goes out of its way to subvert enough tripe plot points and familiar beats to justify its existence, while at the same time adhering to most of those familiar beats to irk viewers that have long grown tired of this always problematic and always oversaturated sub-genre.  Getting perpetual goofball Eli Craig behind the lens for this adaptation of Adam Cesare's 2020 young adult novel of the same name is to the film's benefit since these movies never need to take themselves seriously, even if parodies of them are as common and formulaic as the straight-faced ones.  Still, it never works to have characters suffering through grounded emotional trauma and having their buddies brutally murdered in front of them while the quips keep flying out of their mouths, but this issue has plagued horror comedies for eons now, to the point where such tonal imbalances are inherent.  As always, slasher fans will enjoy the kills and the silliness, and there is plenty of both here where the good characters are likeable and the bad characters are obnoxious.  The plot serves as an even more idiotic variation, (which is saying something), of 2023's Thanksgiving from that other Eli director Eli Roth, but this one plays it too safe to matter.  It is competent, occasionally insulting, mildly amusing, and ultimately just another slasher comedy that the universe hardly needs.  Plus, can we finally agree that clowns are the laziest "scary" things to put in movies?  OK, maybe clowns AND creepy dolls.

 

GOOD BOY

Dir - Ben Leonberg

Overall: MEH

 

Considering the fact that canines have long been associated with having extrasensory perception, it is a marvel that it has taken so long for a supernatural horror film to come along that is exclusively from a dog's point of view.  Good Boy is the full-length indie debut from filmmaker Ben Leonberg who utilizes his own Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever Indy in the lead, a gimmick that mostly works because Indy is an endlessly charismatic and expressive pooch that will make any dog lover jump for joy over his delightful performance.  While the concept is exciting and enough good things cannot be said about its four-legged protagonist, it unfortunately does not warrant even the brisk seventy-three minute running time which begins to overstay its welcome after endless teases towards bumps in the night that stay ambiguous.  This would be fine if Leonberg's scare tactics were less conventionally handled.  He relies on manipulative spooky music, stock nightmare sequences, a tar-covered monster that comes and goes at arbitrary times, some jump scares, and a messy ending that fails to deliver on the minimal amount of story that was presented in the first place.  Plenty still works here as the presentation is refreshing enough to at least create the allusion that such tripe genre elements are more interesting than they are, but if one is to be fair, the film can only be applauded for its ingenious concept and not for the bulk of its execution.

 

STIGMATIZED PROPERTIES 2

Dir - Hideo Nakata

Overall: MEH

 

Director Hideo Nakata and screenwriter/comedian/paranormal expert Tanishi Matsubara follow up their 2020 supernatural real estate collaboration Stigmatized Properties with the apply-titled Stigmatized Properties 2, (Jiko Bukken: Zoku Kowai Madori, Stigmatized Properties: Possession).  It is a typically over ambitions sequel, with a near two-hour running time that goes through not just one, but four different haunted abodes.  This gives it an anthology feel even though we follow Japanese idol Shota Watanabe throughout, portraying a likeable and naive factory worker with aspirations of being a television personality who takes the gig as the new "Stigmatized Properties Guy".  There is little pronounced humor, plus Nakata's scare tactics rely on the now stock J-horror tropes that he helped popularize of long-haired, pale-faced ghosts lingering in the back of shots and occasionally making wide-mouthed scary faces at the camera.  Oddly, these would-be spooky moments are also few and far between, which is disappointing for anyone coming in with meager popcorn-munching expectations since it basically jumps from a different ghost scenario to the next while spending most of its time lingering on Watanabe's unassuming puppy dog nature.  The final act is the most touching and explores the tragic backstory of Watanabe's eventual love interest Miku Hatta, a character who matches our lead's docile sweetness.  It is a shame that nothing funny or creepy happens, (and that Matsubara's script drops some of the most predictable "twists" in recent times), rendering this as over-long and forgettable at best.

2025 Horror Part Eight

V/H/S/HALLOWEEN

Dir - Bryan M. Ferguson/Casper Kelly/Micheline Pitt-Norman/R.H. Norman/Alex Ross Perry/Paco Plaza/Anna Zlokovic

Overall: MEH

 

Another borderline terrible and now annual V/H/S installment drops around its appropriate holiday, V/H/S/Halloween delivering six segments that are linked by trick or treating, missing trick or treaters, more trick or treating, Halloween parties, more trick or treating again, haunted houses (plural), even more trick or treating, and a diet soft drink for some reason.  At this point, the only way to enjoy these films is to have a lobotomy beforehand, since they are shamelessly stupid and aggressively pummel the viewer with the type of horror movie schlock that makes people hate horror movies.  In other words, if you are annoyed by the same lazy tropes being made fun of for the billionth time, steer clear.  There are both expected, (Paco Plaza), and unexpected contributors, (Alex Ross Perry), joining the mayhem, but each vignette adheres to a bloody and tongue in cheek trajectory that never bothers to utilize the found footage gimmick in any plausible fashion.  None of this is new to the series though which has always been inconsistent at best, so at least one can say that the harebrained tone stays on track here.  Besides Casper Kelly's "Fun Size" which is the most egregiously insulting, the rest of the bits are just egregious.  Which in the case of this franchise is actually an improvement.

 

NIGHT OF THE REAPER

Dir - Brandon Christensen

Overall: MEH

 

In the tradition of needlessly convoluted 80s throwback slasher movies that abuse jump scares and feature one smart-ass "twist" after the other until they collapse upon each other, writer/director Brandon Christensen's latest Night of the Reaper is as mediocre as the lot of them.  It is dumb, but it thinks that it is smart, which is part of the fun for those who want to scratch the itch that such genre-adherence provides.  Set in the 1980s because having cell phones in any of the scenarios presented would have easily solved things, (also, nostalgia yo), it opens with a by-the-books babysitter murder where the masked killer possess superhuman agility, foresight, and is seventeen steps ahead of their prey, cutting to a later time where two different story lines eventually collide, both of which are directly linked to said opening kill scene.  The actors are given no choice but to play the material straight, and it is to the movie's advantage that there are no obnoxious caricatures here whose bloody demise we root for.  At the same time, the goofy plot gasps and multitudes of moments that do not pass the ice box test jive poorly with the emotional roller-coaster that our two leads go through.  The details and beats are all familiar to a fault, but the best thing that can be said about the whole affair is that it could have been much worse.

 

THE HOUSEHOLD

Dir - Luke Shaw

Overall: WOOF

 

An overly ambitious full-length debut, The Household from Austrailain filmmaker Luke Shaw is loaded with problems that undermine its acceptable yet barely explored premise of a clandestine cult, (Is there any other kind?), that has been able to kidnap, amputate, and sacrifice victims on the downlow for decades.  The first issue is the two-hour length which is padded with minutes upon minutes of Shaw and his girlfriend filming EVERYTHING even remotely pertaining to their latest documentary venture.  This puts it in the realm of vanity project, not just because the making of their true crime project is nowhere near as interesting as the subject which they are investigating, but also because they are poor actors who never once properly convey the type of panic that their characters should be in as their inquiries deepen.  As far as "stupid people acting stupid in horror movies" tropes go, this one is brimful of them, Shaw in particular portraying a moron who dismisses every disturbing encroachment on his personal life so that he can keep plowing forward with his little movie that could.  His dipshit protagonist also seems to possess supernatural foresight as well as multitudes of cameras since so many angles are covered every time that there is a scene change.  He even manages to cut between professionally shot talking head footage and dodgy handheld footage OF THAT footage for no reason whatsoever, all while near-persistent scary music manipulates the proceedings and detrimentally signifies any would-be frightening image on the horizon.